Well, At Least There's A Beautiful Full Moon Out Tonight

 

There's so much to say about the obscene parking situation surrounding the Pocketbook business complex, but I'll stick to three things that first came to mind tonight when I noticed a sign perched on the back of a car parked on Prospect Street.

The parking shitshow is only going to expand, get worse and get uglier.  First, it's signs at the curb, cones in the street and signs on the back of vehicles.  Then, it's a verbal altercation or three, slashed tires, a fist fight and maybe even bullets fired.  Then what?  

Mayor Ferris owns a house a stone's throw from where the car with the sign was parked tonight.  He should hold a town hall at the intersection of 6th & Prospect on a warm Friday or Saturday night in June and invite everyone to show up to count the number of cars that pull up to the unoccupied space in front of the nearby fire hydrant, stop, then drive away to desperately find a legal parking space.  Nobody, including the mayor, needs to say anything.  Just observe the insanity that the Pocketbook Hudson hotel and business complex has already created for the neighborhood.  Maybe that will be the night that a fist fight breaks out between two men over a parking space or fender bender on Prospect or Washington.  Heck, it's bound to happen soon enough.  Let's just hope guns or knives aren't involved.

When you see a sign such as the one on the back of that car, you can be sure of one thing:  the values of houses surrounding the Pocketbook business complex are not rising.  They're probably dropping. 

Who wants to live in a neighborhood where signs written with a magic marker on cardboard decrying the parking situation are common?  Where were these signs a year ago?  Where were they ten or seventy-five years ago?  How many signs will there be in six months, and do you think the tone of them will be increasingly nastier?  Do you think that the person who felt compelled to write that sign and leave it on their car is a happier person or an angrier, more anxious person because the Pocketbook business complex came to their neighborhood?  Is that person a better spouse, mother, father, brother, sister, friend, neighbor or human being?  Something inside that person has changed, and it isn't for the better. 

The Hudson Planning Board's approval of the Pocketbook Hotel & Baths business complex was a huge f'n mistake.  That it was approved is evidence that something is wrong with the city's so-called planning process.

I hope you had a chance to appreciate Saturday night's full moon.  It was a dandy.  They always seem to be clearer in cold air.