People's Park

A few images from Alan Copeland and Nikki Arai's book, People's Park.

A reasonable place to start on our parking lot might be the destruction of the paving.



Then perhaps the erection of a totem, flag or sign informing the public of what we are doing. Maybe this step should come first. There are two metal posts on the Southeast corner, near "kurrent" at the base of the Press Condo building, that could support a banner or a sign of some sort.



Finally, if the lot is to be transformed into a park, the community should come together to tend to the grounds.

Other ideas

From Inhabitat, entitled "How to Turn a Parking Space into a Park". Seems like this could be applied at a larger scale...

Also check out the Rebar Group, the organizers behind Parking Day. This year's parking day isn't until September so there would be ample time to organize a large scale occupation of our favorite Capitol Hill space.

Parking lot to public space

They did it in NYC...

Flickr group

Tag your Flickr photos of activity in the lot with 'peoplesparking' to see them on the sidebar.

my friend, the parking lot attendant

—he's a dandy
—small moustache
—usually sucking on a cigar

he tends to lean into cars as he
transacts business

first time I met him, he said,
"hey! ya gonna make a
killin'?"

"maybe," I answered.

next meeting it was:
"hey, Ramrod! what's
happening?"

"very little," I told
him.

next time I had my girlfriend with me
and he just
grinned.

next time I was
alone.

"hey," he asked, "where's the young
chick?"

"I left her at home...."

"Bullshit! I'll bet she dumped
you!"

and the next time
he really leaned into the car:

"what's a guy like you doing driving a
BMW! I'll bet you inherited your
money, you didn't get this car with your
brains!"

"how'd you guess?" I
answered.

that was some weeks ago.
I haven't seen him lately.
feIlow like that, chances are he just moved on
to better
things.

Charles Bukowski

Intelligent Post

Thanks to Kery Murakami at the Intelligent Post Blog at the Seattle Post Globe for the link to my video. For those of you that don't know, some of the former Seattle P-I writers started this website when they found themselves without a traditional paper to write for. Their site is excellent and I believe will become a staple of the evolving Seattle news media. As one commenter on their site wrote, "Go Post Globe!"

Thanks/Flickr

Thanks to Capitol Hill Seattle for the link!

I'll start a Flickr photo pool tonight or tomorrow. Please use it to post photos of you, your friends, pets, strangers, bikes, graffiti, or whatever finds its way onto the People's Parking Lot.

(Dated) Inspiration

Now on Facebook

Thanks to Kevin's comment I've started a Facebook Group. Click here to join.

People's Parking Lot

As you can see, I'm just getting started here. Please leave a comment or send me an email at the address in the top right-hand corner if you'd like to be on an email list regarding this project.