Parking garages suck. I hate them. I despise them. Parking garages are evil.
This seems to be a commonly held opinion; I have never heard someone expound on the wonderfulness of parking garages, except for once when a friend accidentally took the wrong medication for three straight weeks. While he was raving about how parking garages "kick major butt," he was also trying to convince me that Howard Stern and Christie Brinkley were the same person. But that's a story for another time.
Anyway, parking garages are about as revered as athlete's foot, but they keep popping up everywhere. This makes me wonder: Why?
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Jimmy, you massive hemorrhoid, parking garages keep popping up everywhere because people need a place to park. Duh!" I understand that, but there has to be a better solution to parking problems than the diseased multi-level mazes we call "parking garages." (Note: Do not ask me what that solution may be. I am a humor columnist, and therefore I am exempt from writing things that may actually involve thought or valid points. Thank you.)
First of all, parking garages are ugly. Once again, I have never heard anyone extol the beautiful virtues of parking-garage architecture. Not even the highly medicated folks are whacked enough to claim such a heresy. All above-ground parking garages that I have ever seen look like someone unsuccessfully tried to mate a Venetian blind, a tic-tac-toe grid and a cardboard box, and that the offspring was then subjected to incredible amounts of radioactivity, causing it to mutate into a gargantuan size.
That's just what the outside looks like. Inside, parking garages are even uglier. The sloped floors, the one-way paths, the dark corners, the oil splotches, the 1976 AMC Gremlins -- in terms of aesthetic qualities, the insides of parking garages make the King's Inn look like the Taj Mahal.
And I don't think I need to tell you that parking garages are freaking dangerous. I don't know why, but parking garages attract a selected subset of adolescents with sports cars (a subset I call "dufus morons"). These people, who have apparently seen the movie "Speed" a time or two too many, feel the need to go no less than 63 miles per hour at all times inside the garages, except for when they reach the bottom to pay their fee, when they slow down to about 47 mph in order to throw a dollar bill or two at the parking-garage attendant.
I can't tell you how many near-death experiences I have had in parking garages because of these speed-cretins. I've been driving around a corner at a decent speed when all of a sudden a car came swinging around the corner towards me in my lane, only to swerve at the last second, missing my car by no more than the thickness of a coat of paint.
These people should all be beaten.
However, there is one group of people that is worse than these dufus morons -- I call them the space waiters. You know these people. They're the ones who will stop traffic in order to wait for a person to back out of a space so that they can get that space -- no matter how long the vehicles behind them have to wait. Now, I have no problem with someone stopping for a vehicle that is in the process of backing out -- i.e. the reverse lights are on. But I have seen some people wait for a person to pull out who isn't even in the car, or near the car yet. Heck, I've seen people, apparently as a result of some schnapps-induced premonition, stop for a car to back out when the driver of the car that is supposedly backing up is still inside the casino. Meanwhile, 53 cars are backed up behind this space waiter, concocting creative ways to use windshield wipers as bludgeoning devices.
I think I've made my point. Parking garages should be abolished. If this is not possible, vigilante corporal punishment against all speed-cretin dufus morons and space waiters who are full of schnapps should be legalized -- and encouraged.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and take my medication.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who finally snapped this week after spending 20 minutes (seriously) inside the Nugget parking garage Saturday night waiting in a line of cars to move. Doctors say that with the proper therapy, Jimmy should be back to normal by 2003. Despite Jimmy's mental issues, his column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.