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Frisco Utopia

Parking Abundance By Hank Hyena Grrr! we hate it! the rudest inconvenience in Frisco is the paucity of parking. Every citizen in the Congested City is madly motoring about--searching for a slot, a chink, a nook to wedge their wheels into. NO VACANCY is the cruel curb condition here--Los Angeles has Road Rage, but we've got Parking Pissy. Traffic is snailish, and MUNI is loony. Our entire transport system is slower than the stubborn burros who minced from the Mission to the Presidio 200 years ago. Boldness is required to bury the bumper-to-bumper botulism that presently infects us. Can you visualize free movement in the Frisco Future? Do you want it? Bad? You can have it if you endorse any of the five novel notions below: TERMITE THE HILLS. There are mounds, hummocks and rocky protuberances all over the peninsula--steep chunks of stone and sand, just looming there, doing nothing! Let's bore holes in their dirty faces and buttes--let's turn our heights into teeming hives of happily parked cars. You could slide 16 Stockton-Sutter garages into Potrero Hill, for example. Clear the Streets, Stuff the Soil! Drive Autos Underground! MY "GRAVE" ADVICE, WITH A "VENETIAN" TWIST. The colossal Colma cemeteries are just screaming for pavement. Let's dig up the putrid remains of our dearly departed, let's shovel them over to the American Indians, so they can desecrate our ancestors' skeletons like we desecrated theirs. Let's clear out cadavers and pour in concrete--presto! Colma Memorial Parking Lot! Let's force everyone in Frisco to park here--NO CARS IN THE CITY! They'd just sink, anyway, 'cause it's GONDOLAS ONLY! That's right, Frisco deserves Venetian canals. Let's scour out the skanky streets, let's water them and row home. You're thinking: Frisco's flat, it won't work. Wrong, pinhead! I see huge hydraulic pumps pushing liquid everywhere. Rapids down Divisadero! Market Street Motorboat Races! A harbor in every garage! TARZAN TRAVEL. Sedentary lives are unhealthy, so let's remodel Frisco to increase our aerobicism. I propose planting baobab trees thickly everywhere, with liana vines dangling amidst. Gibbons, chimpanzees and other eager imported great apes can teach us their paw-over-paw high-swinging travel techniques. Ban Buses, Boost Brachiation! We'll be a metropolis of Janes and Tarzans--with fine pecs, chiseled deltoids and strapping lattissimus dorsi. MIDGET THE NEXT MILLENNIUM. Frisco's topography would be massive enough for a million autos if they were all the size of a matchbox. To squeeze into these vehicles, we'd have to reduce human stature to the height of a dime, with basketball players as tall as a penny. I've seen LPs shrink into CDs in my lifetime--let's do the same to our children. They'd be easier to feed--one Cheerio a week ought to do it. Parking shortages and traffic problems would be extinct in a Lilliputian Utopia. The only curse would be cats--they'd kill us unless we drugged them and saddled their backs like elephants. URBAN FLIGHT. Humanity wants to soar like a eagle. Icarus burned with this dream. Victory has thus far eluded us. We can't fly like a falcon, but maybe, just maybe, we can beat air like a bat. Or a pterodactyl. If our goal is reduced to the impersonation of some ugly leather-winged creep, we'll succeed. Skin grafts are astounding these days--a scaly web from my wrist to my waist could hoist me car-free into the ether. Wings Over Frisco--with miner's helmets for night flight--would give us all a lift, and cars would become No Necessito. Hate my ideas? Send your own Utopian Schemes to Hankhyena@mindspring.com. [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]