GREEN City Contrasted by A Big Yellow Taxi: SLC's PARKing Day 2009 Opens Up and Illustrates "Open Space" in Downtown

Just yesterday, my very creative boy was showing me his three tape-wrapped fingers--adorned in Spy vs. Spy-like, black, white, and black again.

The first black finger had dark-side superpowers; The archetypal white middle finger, good powers; and the second black index finger had the ability to reverse actions of the first or second finger. To restore.

Those of us spending time from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Friday on Salt Lake City's Main Street by the Boston and Newhouse buildings, were able to enjoy an index-finger like transformation. A transformation that Joni Mitchell would like: A three-hour restoration of some parking stalls to the good part of the phrase--A park!

A tribute to open space (and to the landscape architecture/urban planning industry), PARK(ing) Day is an annual, one-day global event where artists, activists and citizens collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks.

Even though I had read about the concept, on FaceBook, seeing it, live, was really quite a different matter. Just looking at the parking space re-done--or, per my son's magic fingers' powers, un-done--really brings home the concept of just what we are missing with so very much pavement around us.

It was refreshing, yesterday--

To just sit--on grass, versus concrete.

To just see--black-eyed susans and tall grasses, versus in-progress construction eyesores.

To just smell--fresh sod being the first arrival to the nose, versus the car-altered air.

To just enjoy a community made new around the change.

I met a still-new FaceBook friend live for the first time, connected more formally with a woman who had attended a Green Drinks party at my house just a few weeks ago, synched with an interesting budding entrepreneur who has worked in some similar circles as I; was introduced to a local artist whose spouse designs and builds the portable adirondack furniture adorning the PARK strip; and met the Salt Lake City landscape architect who  literally put our City on the global map for yesterday's PARK(ing) Day. (Check out http://my.parkingday.org/ for more information on the concept.

Mark Puddy is his name, the Salt Lake City landscape architect working for IBI who, literally, put not just Salt Lake City, but, according to the D-News,the entire Intermountain West on the map with yesterday's PARK strip on Main Street. He is nonchalant about his contribution, minimizing the work required, but noting he has done this for three years in a row.

I like that his last name is "puddy." Makes me wonder what the guy could do with a raw canvas. Or, even better, what he could do with parts of our very un-raw canvas, our concrete jungle.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum
And then they charged all the people twenty-five bucks just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

She (Joni) and later, they, (Counting Crows), go on to mention the song's title event--the "Big Yellow Taxi" taking a lover away.

Curious to me, how very circular the world is. Within the past two weeks, surrounding not a love life, but a political one, a big yellow taxi was to potentially play a significant role with me. I didn't have to invoke the index finger to restore...


http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705331017/Park-defies-meaning-of-parking-space.html?linkTrack=rss-30

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/content/mobile/705331017/Temporary-minipark-livens-Main-Street-in-SL.html

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[True Religion Outlet]

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