A solution to that parking problem
No, not the problem of finding a parking spot — as long as you’re willing to pay twenty bucks, you can always find a parking spot in LA.
No, I mean the problem of those tight parking slips — so fashionable and in-demand during our brief fling with econo cars in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and so impossible in the present reality of SUVs, pick-up trucks, and, in Parking Structure X at USC, DeLoreans. Just try parking between two cars in, again Parking Structure X, and then actually getting out of your car without having to shed a layer of skin.
Ah, but with this simple improvement we could all do it easily. (And then USC could fit in twice as many spaces.)
March 12th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Being a bit loony for cars (the way they look more than the way they run), I’d already run across this disappearing door video.
Have you ever seen one of those cars that has the disappearing headlights, parked somewhere, with one headlight closed and the other open? Seemingly, a malfunction in the motor or circuitry to one of the headlights. Now consider the same malfunction, both sides, inside a car with disappearing doors. Hope you brought water and a cel phone.
When you mentioned the DeLorean, I thought you were having a laugh at someone parked between 2 other cars, and the DeLorean has gullwing doors. With a standard door, if you can’t open it all the way, you might be able to squeeze out. With gullwing doors, you’d have to slip under the bottom, a bit undignified for the owner of a high priced luxury auto.
And one final note. Your blog on this matter seems to have gotten cut off before the end. Or are you becoming terribly parsimonious of your words in these troubled financial times? Never fear, talk is cheap.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
The car you reference is an Opel (a German car most seen on these shores in the 1970’s), and yes, I have seen many of the winking Opels, especially circa during the early 1980’s during my brief career in foreign car parts. The headlights were actuated by being flipped over and open, and that was accomplished by yanking with all your might on the sort of lever last seen in the late industrial age (few women were able to do it). The cable attached to that lever broke with regularity.
Re the DeLorean, you are right: I should have gone further and noted the gullwing-door design. During that auto parts career, I was invited to ride along on a test-drive of a DeLorean. I got in, noticing of course the gullwing design as the door closed after me. Then I noted that the windows didn’t go down. Then I saw how high the seam of the gullwing doors went (to about the middle of the roof). Then I realized that in many accident situations — flipping over, being hit on the side — I would be trapped. Where were we? The sharpest curve of the Black Horse Pike going into Atlantic City, which was also the single most accident-prone area of Atlantic County, on the same curve but across the street from where I’d seen a man die before my eyes, his car crumpled in around him. I said to my brother Ray, who was driving the DeLorean, “Pull over!” and got out.
Re the end of my original post, that was a hanging chad left over from editing. (Believe it or not, I usually edit these posts before they go up.) I’ve removed it, but George W. Bush is still “president.”
Now’s as good a time as any to once again plug Mark’s own blog, filed under this easy-to-remember header: http://blog.myspace.com/173888927 . Lately Mark has been amusing me with rants against the Post Awful (I’m amused because for once it doesn’t concern me personally), and rebuffed would-be My Space friends. Go Mark.