Parking in Phoenix, Arizona before it got really crowded


You can get a real insight into someone's personality by watching how they park their car in Phoenix, Arizona. Some of it has to do with whether they're a visitor to Phoenix, or have newly-arrived from another city, or have been driving in Phoenix for a long time. It's the latter category that catches my eye. And seeing Phoenix through their eyes gives me a window into what it was like before it got so crowded there.

Since I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, Phoenix has never seemed crowded to me, especially the parking lots. Even back then LA was so crowded that you were happy to just find a parking spot at all, and you grabbed the first one you saw, you didn't drive around looking for one that might be closer to the building, because if you passed that spot, it would be taken immediately after you, and there might not be another one. Not just handy, but at all. You might have to go looking for a parking spot blocks away.

Sharing the road, or sharing a parking lot is indicative of someone's ability to be in an area with other people, in a crowded space. Using a turn signal is an indication that the person is aware of a shared space, the same way that suddenly stopping, and backing up into traffic behind you, indicates a lack of consideration for people around you. But I see more than rude behavior, I see what would be perfectly natural if it wasn't so crowded. If you strip away the density, and see an empty parking lot, maybe of dirt, with no lines painted on it, you get an idea of what many parts of Phoenix looked like not so very long ago, and definitely within memory of the people who are, ahem, "of age" (like I am!) driving around Phoenix.

When I look at photos of old-time Phoenix (like the one at the top of this post, which is the late 1960s or early 1970s), it makes me think how ridiculous it would have been to criticize if someone was parking crooked, or didn't signal before they turned. That's 24th Street, near the airport, and there's so little traffic it looks me as if you could stop your car in the middle of the street, and not only consult a map, but also take a nap. And I'll bet'cha a nickel that the keys are in those cars, and the windows are rolled down. After the sound of the airplanes roaring overhead went by the loudest sound would be the fluttering of that paper bag.

So there you go - the next time you want to time-travel to old-time Phoenix, just watch someone park their car. The newbies will be shaking their fists with anger, and they'll never know.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, along with a LOT of cool old photos of Phoenix, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more