Baby, you can park my car

I know that when I read these two articles earlier today, I had an idea about how to tie them together in a terribly incisive and clever way. That was many hours ago and the synapses simply aren't firing properly to bring back the ephemeral thread I'd hoped to use. I hate it when that happens. But in the interest of getting to bed at a reasonable hour (and no, the time of this post is not the actual time it is right now -- it's quite a bit later. What can I say, I'm a night owl.) I'll just bumble along and hope it all comes out in the wash.

So first is yet another interesting (to me) story about parking in a big city. The most shocking part as far as I'm concerned isn't the amount paid for the spot in Boston, it's the casual passing reference to the cost of some spaces in San Francisco. I knew it was expensive, but really, that's beyond the pale. And, as far as I know, none of the SF spaces are even in automated garages! (See the 4/1/04 post if you don't know what I'm talking about. And if someone can tell me how to create permalinks so I can link to my past posts, I would be very grateful.)

Second is another story related to cars and, tangentially, parking spaces. I did a little searching and these cars would probably retail here for under $9,000. I had a chance to check out and sit in one at a car show and it's totally viable from my perspective. I don't really understand why they're waiting a few more years to sell them here and not capitalizing on the success of the new Beetle and the Mini. They don't seem too different, style-wise, than the electric GEM cars and they're starting to catch on, too. Maybe if more people had cars like these they either wouldn't need to pay so much money for parking spaces because they could actually wedge it in somewhere on the street, or they would save enough money on the cost of the car, registration and gas to be able to afford one of those "wow" spaces. Hey! That could be that thread I had in mind. Lucky me for stumbling back over it in my sleepy-fogged state.

Oh, and by the way, I know a lot of people depend on the BBC for their international news because they supposedly don't have the same degree of bias in their reporting. But they sure seem pretty critical of the U.S. -- and its citizens with their sense of "civic entitlement" -- in this one and, deserved or not, that seems a bit like bias to me.