Wednesday, 7/12

Repeat after me—the sidewalk is NOT a parking lot!

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna spend this blog complaining about something. I know I seem to have been doing that a lot recently, and if you don't want to hear me do it again, you have my permission to come back tomorrow. I promise to talk about something cheery, like sunshine or rainbows or unicorns.

Honest.

Now, on to my rant. There are, sadly, many places around the city of Marquette where people do not know how to park. I know this because I run and walk up & down city streets all the time, and I always have to duck into the roadway when I come across something like this--

I see this a lot--vehicles, especially vans and pickup trucks, blocking the sidewalks, sometimes so far that they're even out to the street itself. That means that every single person who walks or runs down this particular sidewalk, plus many others in the city, every parent pushing a stroller, every child riding a bike, and every person who needs a wheelchair or some unblocked access to the sidewalk, has to veer out into the Street, where traffic, because drivers are too busy staring at their phones, is often speeding past at 10 or 15 miles an hour over the speed limit.

All because one individual does not know now to park.

Now, if this was just a one time event, I wouldn't be raising any kind of ruckus about it. But this happens all over the city, thanks to people oblivious to the both the fact that the sidewalk is not a parking lot and to the fact that they could be putting people in danger by making them veer out into a very busy street. I don't understand people who do things like that. I don't understand why people would break the law by using the sidewalk as a parking lot. The sidewalks belong to everyone, not just whoever happens to live next to it.

They're OUR sidewalks, not yours.

I think that's what getting my goat here. It's the same thing that gets my goat when I see dog owners bring their pets on a beach or some other place where there are “No dogs allowed” signs. These are public areas; they're not your personal playgrounds. By using them as your own, and by willfully flouting the rules, you're disrespecting every other single person who might need to use them and every single person who does try to follow the law. There are 22,000 of us living on a small piece of land, and the rules (like not blocking the sidewalk or not taking your dog on the beach) are there to make sure that we can all live together in harmony. I try not to disrespect any of the other 21,999 people in Marquette. I'd hope everyone else would return the favor.

Apparently, though, that's not the case. At least for that's the case for people like the one pictured above.

Okay; I'll shut up now. I just needed to get that off of my chest. Like I said, tomorrow we'll talk about puppies or flowers or chocolate.

And I won't complain about a thing. Promise.

(jim@wmqt.com)