A Public Space

I have seen the kindest hearts reduced to irrational, fist wielding primates over parking spaces. Although it may seem negligible, parking lots have strongly influenced the course of architecture, sports, and rock and roll. While there is much to be said about “tail-gating” outside of a Judas Priest show or losing your virginity in the back seat of a Honda Civic after your junior prom, parking lots have a more subtle, and profound influence on our lives. They are a cultural and economic nexus where there is no written law governing order or etiquette; the way we act in parking lots is just who we are.
Parking lots have been pivotal in the development of the man that I have become. My parents are divorced. Until I was 18 my mother possessed primary custody of me. My parents talked through lawyers, fax machines and me (though they swear it was never their intention). Parking lots were neutral zones where my parents were contractually obligated to be civil. These desolate, disregarded chunks of land are set aside with the purpose of putting the things one needs (car, trailer, boat) when one doesn’t need them. For me however, this was the only place where I could see the things I needed (my family) in an important context; the dad world, the mom world and the kid world all at once. We had to stop the cars to do this and we had to put the cars somewhere where when they were stopped. When they stopped our worlds collided.
Weekly, my Dad would drive the 60 miles up the coast to have dinner with me. We would inevitably end up in a well-lit empty asphalt car lot. Homework was done, Frisbees were thrown, and important life talks were had. The only reason I graduated high school was because my Dad and I sat in his pickup in a parking lot every night for the last week of school as I did the work I blew off my senior year of high school.
As a skateboarder, I saw parking lots as a series of opportunities—a blank canvas. Every parking block and speed bump is another shade that could be used to in my picture. As a surfer, parking lots are a locker room where we strip off socioeconomic hierarchy, wrap in a towel and a wet suit and become the same kind of bohemians.
I can’t support Wal-Mart’s politics, labor policies or their heartless monopolization of small town economies, but I can’t say that the world would be better off with out them. On the road, parking lots take on a completely different form, for a broke band, the parking lot is a temporary home, a place to sleep, to eat and to recharge. The parking lot of a Wal-Mart super center at 4a.m. to a touring band is sweeter than any kind of deli platter guarantee a venue can offer. While I support their business practices, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Harris Teeter have the most inhospitable and difficult parking situations that I have ever seen. No one looks twice when they see shirtless road-worn musicians hanging out of a tour van eating a cold can of Chef Boyardee outside of Wal-Mart, but security would certainly be called just about anywhere else.
As we begin to wise up to the greater impact of car culture on the environment, it is easy to forget the carbon footprints imbedded in our hearts. Its easy to resent all things associated with a car driving world because of the trouble it got us in, but we should also remember the fun we had before we got caught.
Frank Lloyd Wright had to rethink his understanding of human habitation as cars began to move into family’s everyday life. People began looking at his designs and asking, “It’s beautiful, but where do we put our car?” Wright went on to design some of the most famous and copied gas stations and parking lots the world has ever known. A world with fewer cars is beautiful, but where will we put our hearts?