Author: admin

If you missed yesterday’s post, we here at the Clam have come up with a tournament that pits the worst parking lots in town against each other, bracket-style, until only one crappy parking lot remains. Some are public, some are private, all are like pulling teeth. Which will win? Your vote counts in the Clam’s Tournament of Shitty Parking Lots.

Railroad Ave Shaws vs. Tedeschi’s

Railroad Ave Shaws

This parking lot is near and dear to my heart, being located about 75 feet from my house. I consider myself lucky that I merely walk through it, which is painful enough – driving is even worse. It’s one-way, but apparently no one got the memo.  A few years ago, they re-did the whole thing and made the entrances and exits even more illogical. Now there’s a wide enough spot at the old exit where cars occasionally still try to escape, even though it’s now only for pedestrians and has a giant god-danged sign. Add in random pill dealers, fights, and commuter rail traffic, and it’s a real humdinger of a lot.

Tedeschi’s

The Tedeschi’s plaza on lower Washington is a veritable incubator for depression and/or road rage. Only one person can back out at once, and the person whose turn it is is probably fervently scratching lotto tickets while their reverse lights are on, completely blind to the world around them. It’s also occasionally a weird hangout for people with dumb stereo systems on weekend nights, and has the notoriety of being where Ray Borque’s daughter got bagged for a late-night Tuesday DUI a few years ago. Try to find a parking space when Midori is hopping, and you’ll wish you stayed home and crushed your hand in a pepper mill instead.

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Dogbar Public Lot vs Pleasant and Middle Public Lot

Dogbar Public Lot

The tiny lot in front of Dogbar’s main entrance off Rogers is the type of lot where you wonder why it even bothers existing. It has like three spaces, and if you’ve made the egregious mistake to even pull into the lot, it’s so small that you have to freakin’ back up onto Rogers St, and everyone in the street will try to end you with their angry honking. Also, you’ll scrape your trailer hitch or bottom out your car trying to get in and out. Unlike the rest of the lots here, I have never actually even successfully been able to park in this lot. I give up and go to the GloHo lot, which is 50 feet away and doesn’t want to rip my oil pan from me.

Pleasant and Middle Public Lot

Why is this lot always one-way in the exact wrong direction, no matter which way you’re headed? I am pretty sure someone just changes the signs every fortnight to fuck with us.

The spaces aren’t angled, so it makes zero sense that there’s even specific ways to go, aside from reducing confusion, I guess? In this lot, you’re always left with the space directly adjacent to the 8-inch-tall granite retainers, which eventually you’ll forget about and while backing up, take a chunk out of the stupid tires you just bought last month for your stupid minivan.

And it’s a lot where you have to go over to the pay machine, put in quarters, get the stupid little piece of paper, go back to your damn car, and put the stupid piece of paper on the dashboard with the 50 other stupid pieces of paper you keep forgetting to clean up. This isn’t that bad, except that usually I have two kids who WANT TO GO TO THE YMCA RIGHT NOW COME ONNN WHY AREN’T WE GOING ALSO EVAN LOST HIS SHOE.

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Parking: What the FUCK?

Our editorial staff here at The Clam have logged a few intricacies in the parking lots in our combined 31 years living here in town.  Parking here has all too often become a contact sport. And the lots we park in play a huge part in whether we escape undented or simply needing a new rear quarter panel.

As a public service, The Clam will be striving to discover the most treacherous parking lots on our fair island. With your help we may save someone from that dreaded call to Geico.

Some of our local lots are great – they make sense, they’re spacious, people are polite. Some are horrifying, dent-attracting circles of hell. We have decided to pit lot against lot, tournament style, until we come up with the absolute worst lot in town. Help us decide the worst parking lot in town! Our first four parking lots will be up for vote today.

First Round: Second Glance vs St. Peter’s Square

Second Glance

Second Glance’s Pond Road location is an interesting parking lot. Eschewing the modern philosophy of “have more than one entrance and exit,” Second Glance and the assorted other businesses (Karate school?) have chosen the simple “everyone goes in and out in the same 8 foot space” method. Also, the paint lining the spaces has long vanished. The lot shrinks in random unexpected parts, making you feel like you’re viewing an M.C. Escher painting. And there’s always a Prius idling in exactly the wrong spot.

St. Peter’s Square

St. Peter’s Square is occasionally a nice, easy lot to park in. Like, on a Wednesday at 4 AM. Other times, it’s a cut-throat adventure in bitter desperation. On weekend nights, the lot looks like all cars were valet parked by a man high on Angel Dust. Cars block in other cars, park in the corridors, and generally go wherever there is a 10×5 block of brick to park on.

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7/11 Maplewood Ave vs 7/11 Bass Ave

7/11 Maplewood Ave

My god, this lot. Not content to only be known as the most drug-infested spot in town, the lot is also a logistical nightmare. There’s a drive-through on one side, several spaces in the middle, and then a crapload of broken-down monster trucks and a carwash on the other. In the middle is a shuffling man on painkillers yelling at traffic. Cars back up at warp speed, not caring what’s behind them. It’s a disaster.

7/11 Bass Ave

The other, less painkiller-related 7/11 is still a logistical nightmare. “Let’s make one single line of parking that involves backing into the worst of beach traffic!” Said some asshole. As an occasional morning backshore cyclist, it’s terrifying to ride by this lot – cars are forced to back up the split-second they have an available millisecond, and they aren’t looking for you in their fear-based driving decision.

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If you’re an ardent hipster like myself, (or a gaming nerd of any kind) you will be most pleased to know that this upcoming Friday, June 20, BARCADE IS COMING TO THE BREWERY FOR EXACTLY ONE EVENING.

For those not familiar with Barcade, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A craft beer bar with arcade games. All the sweet, awesome, unrepentant hedonism of Funspot with more booze and no screaming, over-tired children demanding one more token to go on the animal bumper cars.

Way better than Chuck E Cheese.

The original Barcade location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is pretty great (aside from being in Williamsburg). We went a few months back and dumped at least 20 quarters into Bad Dudes. Enough to beat the game. Enough to get my initials on the high score screen. Except that when I went to add “POO” to the winner’s list, I accidentally exited instead. It has been my regret. My Rosebud. I want to avenge this in the worst way. I thirst for it.

Since Barcade is an awesome concept, it’s been spreading – they’ve opened other locations in Manhattan (which I believe I stumbled into while drunk but memories are fuzzy), Jersey City, and Philly.

I’m not sure exactly what games will be appearing at Friday’s Barcade Brewery Takeover aside from the article’s mention of Tapper, NBA Jam, and Ms. Pacman (AWW YISS), but according to the Brewery’s website, there will be ten games trucked in for the evening. I shall play all ten, unless a burping vortex of bros shows up and Bogarts all of them.

LIKE BATHING IN THE LIGHT OF ANGELS

It’s important to mention that this is the first time Barcade has had a Brewery Takeover, and we got it first. That’s correct, for you following along at home: Gloucester, MA is weird and hipster enough for this to happen here. Not Salem, not Somerville, not Cambridge, not even Portland, but GLOUCESTER.

THOSE WITHOUT MOUSTACHES WILL NOT BE SPARED 

We’re getting on the map for Hipfrastructure. Jim warned us, people.  It’s not like we didn’t know this would happen. We have freakin’ Mystery Train, which is pretty much the most hipster thing to ever hipster in this wild fish frontier, and people routinely come from all around Eastern Mass for it.

But again, I’m a fervent, unrepentant hipster. I don’t mind being called a hipster. I collect vintage beerware, own a rainbow of Chuck Taylors that have been previously worn by other people I don’t know, I have a tattoo with birds on it, and I don’t automatically punch myself in the face for being so unbelievably twee. I own my hipsterism, and for that reason, I say: HUZZAH, AND LET THE GLOUCESTER BARCADING COMMENCE.

On Friday it was the D-Day anniversary. We indulged in our personal tradition of Six June, which consists of watching the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan with the sound all the way up. This is pretty much the closest we can get to understanding the unimaginable sacrifices those guys made in the name of Liberty during the Second World War.

This year was somewhat different – before we popped the DVD in, we had heard NPR talking about Uber boats. For those of you who don’t know, Uber is the car service that is the greatest invention since online liquor delivery. It is designed to be better than having to take cabs. The bane of working and/or living in an urban setting is the taxicab. They are notoriously crappy (except in Japan where the drivers are ninja-intense, wear white gloves and spray air freshener in the back seat before you get in and there are doilies everywhere. Japan is weird). Cabs always seem to smell like a pile of discarded jock straps, are driven by dudes talking intermittently to you and random other people on their Bluetooth headsets so you can’t tell who they’re addressing at any given time and sort of maybe show up when you call them, but probably don’t because rando sorority girls waved money outside a bar.

Thanks for the ride, Jimmy.

Uber changes all that. Uber isjust dudes with their own nice limo-type black cars and SUVs who show up when you push a button on your app and then charge the credit card you registered with them, and it’s sometimes not even more expensive than a cab. The cars are always clean, the drivers are more in the Japan-style of things and it’s all very simple and nice and of course the cab drivers hate it and want to make it illegal because everyone should have to smell jockstraps when they are trying to go out to dinner with a client.

I had to sign my credit card slip with a Hello Kitty pen.

But Uber Boats? What the frick is that? We didn’t get to hear the whole story because children were whining, but apparently they are going to do the same thing with boats in Boston Harbor as a water taxi service. This changes everything.

Think about it, Gloucester. It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re out in East Gloucester where you live and you find yourself having to drive your daughter to the soccer team volleyball game at Stage Fort. Yes, you are as confused about this as we are, but we have learned to just roll with it. This means you have to navigate epic traffic just to get yourself to Rogers Street, not to mention the likelihood that the bridge will be just about to go up as you are behind a car with Rhode Island license plates slowing down to take an iPad video of The Man at The Wheel. But Uber Boat Gloucester would change all that.

Now, we fully expect to get comments telling us that there is already a water taxi. THANKS PEOPLE FOND OF POINTING OUT OBVIOUS THINGS ON THE INTERNET! We know that. It’s pretty awesome. But the drawback the water taxi is that once you get there you have to walk, so it’s great if I want to say go from one seaside restaurant to another, but it’s not very fucking useful in getting me to The Basket is it, now? We want Gloucester UberBoat to be comprised of LSTs.

Back to Saving Private Ryan- remember those blocky boats they landed on the beaches of Normandy with? The ones with the big fold-down front door? They are called “Landing Ship Tanks” or LSTs. That’s what we want. Where are there a bunch of those the military wants to sell cheap? You just drive your car up in there and they take you by sea right around the clot of minivans with little families stenciled on the back windshield.

Think of how awesome this would be. We’re buzzing down E. Main and see Sayward is backed up. We hit the Uber Boat button and right at Cripple Cove comes an LST (we’d have to build a ramp). I drive my Subaru up in there and the driver buzzes us over to the Stage Fort. We drop the girl off, then over to Dun Fudgin he yells, ‘God be with you’ (he would be required to be dressed in WW II battle regalia at all times) and we’re off to face my personal Normandy of trying to get cold cuts at The Basket on a weekend.

Load me up, I need to get to Ace Hardware posthaste!

And think of how this would change going to the beach. Instead of cramming everything into the car only to unload it .3 miles later, you load the kids, the coolers, the chairs and all that and just have them drive straight up onto Good Harbor, drop the door and yell “Go! Go! Go!” as you drag all your crap up onto the sand. How awesome would this be?

We, for one, can see ourselves doing it in highly-dramatic slow-mo, realizing we’ve left a man (or nine year old boy) behind, bogged down  by the weight of his equipment (lawn chairs mostly) and unable to continue, and having to carry him across the beach to safety, dodging seagull feces-missiles.

Anyway, if anyone has access to one of those LST deals and wants to start an Uber service in Gloucester, please contact us care of this webzone. We also have a plan for getting past Fiesta using dirigibles, but we’ll save that for another post.

Just watch out for the fireworks.