Why It Was so Damn Hard to Find a Parking Spot Today

​PARK(ing) Day is an annual event where metered parking spots are turned into temporary parks. It started in (where else) San Francisco in 2005 and has since gone worldwide, including Seattle, which today saw about 70 "parks" scattered throughout the city. So wait...what the hell is the point again?

The friendly folks at Miller Hull Partnership, an architecture firm that had converted two spots on Yesler & Western into an impromptu dance floor, had trouble articulating that at first: "It's about raising awareness," said one of the architects, without actually specifying what awareness was to be raised.

The answer only came after I asked what the hell the stacked tires were all about. There were two stacks on either end of the "park," one twice the size of the other. The smaller stack represented the 500,000 square feet dedicated to public parks in Seattle. The other, twice as large stack, the amount of space devoted to parked cars.

"PARK(ing) Day is really just about taking space that's usually about cars and making it about people," an organizer explained to PubliCola.

Which is all well and good. In the grand scheme of things, taking up 70 spots on one day of the year to make a larger point isn't that big of a deal.

But still, it seems a little silly to be making an UP WITH PEOPLE argument in the middle of a depression. Especially since, as I stood watching the architects explain their confusing set-up to other passer-by, I saw a number of cars packed full of tourists making their second and third trips around the block in a fruitless search for a spot, ready and willing to spend money downtown if only they could find a space.

(Photo from Mayor McGinn's Twitter feed, from a PARK(ing) Day celebration at 12th and James.)