This Parking Lot That Replaced Paradise Is Actually Pretty Convenient

With apologies to the great Joni Mitchell.

All right, I’ll just say it: I really, really like our town’s new parking lot.

And I know how controversial it was, given that it replaced paradise. Those were some of the longest, angriest meetings of the zoning subcommittee I’ve ever attended. But you know what took even longer and made me even angrier? Trying to find a parking spot before those meetings. And that is thankfully no longer a problem, thanks to this pristine, gorgeous slab of pavement stretching out as far as the eye can see.

Look, we have a lovely little downtown. The Italian restaurant, the gazebo, the pink hotel, and the highly affordable tree museum ($1.50 for a ticket in this day and age is simply unbeatable)—it’s all great. But the fact is, the easiest way to get there is to drive, and if you’re going to do that, you need a place to park your car. And sure, it may have been an easier political sell to pave over the shuttered sludge factory than the idyllic green space filled with laughing children and frolicking puppies where it never rained and all your problems just sort of melted away, but was that space really contributing as much to our town as the sludge factory? Or at least as much as the sludge factory will contribute once our town’s economy turns around and it reopens.

Plus, rain is pretty important. So getting rid of paradise may have actually helped save our town from a devastating drought. But you don’t hear all of those paradise obsessives talking about that now, do you?

You know, I wouldn’t even mind building off of this recent parking win by adding a few more options. The new lot is great, yeah, but I do sometimes worry it isn’t big enough. Like the other day, I had to park in a spot between two other cars, so I couldn’t even get out in my usual way of swinging my door wide open and shouting “IT’S GO TIME, BABY! WE HAVE ARRIVED!” to no one in particular.

Well, I shouldn’t have gotten out that way, at least. I did anyway because it’s kind of my thing, and it left a serious dent in one of the other car’s doors, which never would have happened if there were more available spots.

Maybe we could build an auxiliary lot where the tree museum is? I know I was just praising it, but do we really need a museum dedicated solely to trees, what with our town’s dire parking shortage and the abundance of tree videos on YouTube? It’s worth thinking about at least.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. For now, we need to keep the focus on preserving the parking lot we already have, as these paradise fanatics still won’t give up their doomed fight. Just the other day I saw one of them circulating a petition to get rid of one of the three rows of parking spots in the new lot designed exclusively for stretch limos and replace it with that playground in paradise powered by memories of the first time you tried chocolate chip cookies on the absurd grounds that “sixteen parking spots for stretch limos is enough.” Can you believe these people? That lyric about not knowing “what you’ve got till it’s gone” from Cinderella’s classic 1988 hair metal hit—and absolutely no other song—has never rung truer.

But still, a man can dream, can’t he? Maybe someday I will finally arrive in our glorious downtown and be greeted by nothing but a sea of parking lots with plenty of available spots and no distracting trees, tree museums, or utopias to get in the way. Now that sounds like paradise to me.