A stale old joke claims that Chicago has two seasons: winter and road contstruction. Winters here can really suck, but road construction sucks more. It’s constantly going on.
Now they’re working on Clark between Fullerton and Diversey, which spans four blocks. Clark is a busy street normally because of Wrigley Field, which is maybe half a mile north of Diversey.
I don’t even know what they’re doing. One of my favorite merchants, Graham Crackers Comics, is in that zone, and even they don’t know why the City or IDOT or whoever’s in charge is screwing things up.
The right side of the street in both directions are torn up. There are construction horses that guide you along, but the paths aren’t clearly defined. It’s like driving through a dusty, narrow maze.
Parking’s bad enough there and now it’s worse. When I go to Graham Crackers I’m usually lucky enough to find a legal parking space less than a block away because I go during the week when everyone else is at work, and so are their cars.
This road construction is a complete mess. Earlier in the week, you couldn’t park at the meters in front of Graham Crackers. Fortunately, I found a free, legal spot around the corner.
Yesterday, I drove around for at least 15 minutes looking for a spot. This time, I expanded my search to cover more blocks in different directions. Usually, I travel west on Deming from Clark and go around the block to Wrightwood, which is one-way going east. There’s almost always open spots on those streets. However, you couldn’t park on Wrightwood from 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. because of street cleaning. Grrr…
I fucked up my brand new car driving through strange alleys looking for shortcuts to the one-way streets. I went south down this alley that jogs to the east, then goes south again–to a stupid dead end. There wasn’t enough room to turn around–and I have a small car. As I did so, the rear corner of the passenger side hit a guard rail, then the front corner hit a concrete post painted a bright yellow, which dented that part of the bumper.
Finally, I just parked at a meter in front of the store even though there was a posted notice that you’re not supposed to park there between this and that date. What–the fuck–ever. Bastards.
