That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!
This whole Shrewsbury St ‘early to bed, early to rise’ debacle has my brain hurting. The hills are alive with the sound of bitching and its really starting to get obnoxious. Here’s the deal folks; the Shrewsbury St neighborhood association is simply trying to force the cities hand in coming up with a reasonable solution to parking in their neck of the woods. An excellent goal, unfortunately in this case it’s an excellent goal being horribly executed by all parties involved. Residents of Shrewsbury St should be pissed by the parking in the area, its miserable. But solutions are out there; like mine which I will now condense down to something so small and palatable that nobody can argue with its amazing shiny genius.
City sponsored valet for everyone.
Take all our larger existing municipal lots, start building them up like we did with the garage on Worcester Center Boulevard and offer valet service starting at 5pm on Shrewsbury St, Green St, Water St and the North end of Main St. You’ll feel pretty slick tossing the keys of your ‘93 Corolla to some 19yo college student, your car disappears and the streets stay clear. Still with me? Good. Because this is where it gets great. Since your car is being handled by the same valet service regardless of where you stop, it doesn’t matter where it goes, which means it doesn’t matter where you go. See where this is headed? So you stop off on Shrewsbury St for dinner on a Friday night, hand off your car to the valet and hit your destination. At around 10:30pm Gary Vecchio kicks down the door of the restaurant with a broom in his hands demanding that you get off his lawn. So you break for the door and decide you don’t care what Peter Luke’s says, you’re not going to bed yet. So you hop a cab that just happens to be idling like it was waiting for you and head down to Green St. After a few drinks at the Dive Bar you walk down to the Lucky Dog to take in some local sounds. Once you get caught staring at the bartenders enormous breasts, you decide its time to find somewhere to polish off the night so you hop another cab, strangely this one also seemed to know you were coming, and you shoot off to Irish Times for last call. As 1:30 rolls around the big Cro-Magnon looking guy at the door approaches and you figure you’re luck has run out. But instead of picking you up and throwing you at the new court house, he asks you if he can get your valet. But wait, you gave up your keys on Shrewsbury St. “Fear not citizen” the Neanderthal says, “in Worcester it doesn’t matter where you begin or end your night, we just love the fact you patronize our businesses. So we’ll bring your car to you, right here on North Main. Its not brain surgery to figure out citizen, and imagine what those water burning cretins in Providence will think!”
Ok so now that the underlying problem is solved lets look at one of the more foolish byproducts of not just dealing with this issue in the first place. This gem turned up in the editorial section of today’s T&G:
In the Shrewsbury Street neighborhood, residents in recent months have complained about noise and other problems when some restaurants finish their day job — serving food — and essentially turn into nightclubs. In the past, similar problems have arisen in other parts of the city.
In dealing with neighborhood issues, it can be hard to draw the line fairly for all parties — businesses and customers, on the one hand, and residents trying for safe roads and a good night’s sleep on the other. But when a line is drawn, businesses must hold up their end of the bargain.
The problem with this line of thought is it ignores the systems already in place to curb excessive noise and drunkenness. We have a very proactive set of noise ordinances in the city and if the neighborhood has legitimate concerns regarding volume then we need to act upon that. Whether its straight pipes on a motorcycle or 50 cent blaring from a Celica it can all be controlled via existing city ordinance and has no bearing on the sale of pasta, which as we know is a pretty quiet food. And on a similar note if there is an issue with drunkards running wild on the Shrew then we need to get Jamie Binenda down there and let him do his thing. I’m sure he would be happy to straighten things out on that front and it will impact exactly zero of the legitimate libation sales in Worcester.
We don’t need new laws, new rules or even exceptions to the rules to make the Big Woo an even greater city. Just a level playing field, top notch service from both the city and its business’ and a whole lot of support from our residents to keep the momentum building.
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4 Responses to “That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!”
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We don’t need new laws, new rules or even exceptions to the rules to make the Big Woo an even greater city. Just a level playing field, top notch service from both the city and its business’ and a whole lot of support from our residents to keep the momentum building.
So we don’t need a new law, we just need a new city-sponsored valet service to keep the noise down.
Right.
What needs to happen is that the folks who live on/near Shrewsbury St need to realize that it’s a hotspot and has been for quite a while. So stop trying to screw the people trying to make a living and either ask that what’s there for already overbearing rules get enforced, or figure out a new situation for themselves. You live in a city, for god’s sake.
No Jeff, the valet and garages are for parking which is not going to get better on its own. That’s clearly stated above. We have noise ordinances for noise and police to enforce them, also stated clearly above. So no new laws, no new ordinances, some new services with profit potential to compliment changes in business and resident expectations. And in the process we remove the underlying factor in this particular neighborhoods complaints.
I am wondering whether the valet needs to be government sponsored? If there are free places to park cars a few miles out of the city (or even in less populated/busy parts of the city), and the downtown spots charge $10-$15 and it is very difficult to find a spot in other areas, like Shrewsbury street, can a $10 city wide valet service support itself?
It could, but only based on continued growth in focused areas of the city; namely North Main St, Green Island And Shrewsbury St. If development in those areas continues at a healthy clip, basic services like municipal parking will become a even more of a rarity while at the same time the number of potential destinations increases. Capitalizing on existing city owned parcels in the form of storage for something as simple as valet would eliminate the competitive sport of parking while allowing for more time (and money) to be spent in local business with the bonus of offering a sort of municipal value added incentive to spend more time exploring the city; knowing your car can always find you.
We often hear people complain about the fractured nature of nightlife in Worcester, venues are scattered with little infrastructure to tie them together especially for nonresidents or others unfamiliar with the cities layout. We have an excellent opportunity to create the infrastructure now, giving both new and existing business all the more reason to set up shop in these three areas which seem best suited to their needs and the needs of potential customers.