Get out and stay out and this means you

SHERWOOD KIRALY

Every now and then as you stroll down life’s highway, something

knocks you back a few paces. If you’ve strolled down Ocean Avenue

recently you know what I mean.

Downtown Laguna has been a little jammed up lately. Roadwork has

caused a lot of us to fall victim to rue arestia, or inability to

park on the street. I’ve taken to leaving my car in the Glenneyre

parking structure and going on foot, which has its points. There are

few pleasures tastier than the feeling you get when you’re walking

faster than the vehicular traffic.

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to find a space near Cafe Zinc.

Then I walked to Main Beach. On my way back I looked at the post

office parking lot and got my surprise.

As you probably know by now, the public can’t park there anymore,

except for one handicapped space. The nine spaces on one side are now

reserved for post office employees; the six spaces on the other side

are for clients of Levin and O’Connor LLP. Unauthorized vehicles will

be towed away at vehicle owner’s expense. The capitals are the usual

courtesy; they want it understood that you’ll be towed away.

Well, there are signs like that in a lot of lots. But this lot,

somehow -- I don’t know -- I always felt like those 15 spaces were

family. I thought we had those coming. I was surprised when Levin &

O’Connor signs went up over a few of them awhile back, and when I saw

the clean sweep on Sunday I felt like somebody’d pulled a chair out

from under me and walked off with it.

I don’t know Levin or O’Connor, or what kind of LLP they have. If

they’re used to hosting six client vehicles at a time, more power to

them. If not, it seems to me they could have been a little more

generous to a public which already suffers from parking deprivation

-- perhaps left one wild-card space available for a lucky contestant.

Patti Jo suggested that perhaps from now on we could all look in

on Levin & O’Connor on our way to the post office and ask their

advice about something.

That way we could park in the client spaces and not get towed

away.

As for the other side of the lot, I don’t begrudge post office

employees a parking space. They should have a parking space. But do

they need all nine? On Sunday?

Me, I’ll survive. I’m kind of liking this parking-far-away,

walking-around-Laguna, “howdy neighbor” phase I’ve entered. It’s good

for my cardio and my vascular, so really, the farther away I park,

the healthier I am and the walkier I get.

But Lagunans have always parked in that lot and now they can’t

park in that lot, even when the post office and Levin & O’Connor are

closed, and in the little poll I took on reaction to this change, the

results were 0 percent For, 100% Against and 0% Don’t Know.