ROTHENBURGER – Searching for a parking spot in the asphalt jungle

WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME obsessing over downtown parking rates but that’s only half the issue. The other half is parking spaces and how to find them.

We’ll all agree that we have a desperate shortage of downtown parking spaces in front of the place we want to go. This sets up a battle of wits and wills that has been going on since cave people fought over who got the juiciest chunks of the mastodon.

This does not bring out the best in us. It’s impossible to venture into downtown Kamloops without seeing examples of it, or taking part in it ourselves.

The experts call it parking rage. I was reminded of this phenomenon when reading this week about Alec Baldwin’s latest adventure with the law. The hapless actor was ordered to take an anger management course after shoving a man he said had stolen his parking spot.

The first law of parking rage is that there will always be a parking space exactly where you want it, except it’s on the wrong side of the street.

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Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former school board chair, former editor of The Kamloops Daily News, and a current director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He was awarded the Jack Webster Foundation’s lifetime achievement award in 2011. His editorials are published Monday through Thursdays, and Saturdays on CFJC Today, CFJC Midday and CFJC Evening News. Contact him at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.