A couple of weeks ago, er, maybe last week (yeah, it was totally a week ago Saturday), we had an 8am meeting at the Bookstore I work at. The entire staff. 8am, on a Saturday. After the meeting, I walked down to the Mall and made my way east towards the Archives Metro stop. As I approached the National Archives, I could hear Martin Luther King Jr. bellowing, “MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD!” A bunch of protesters had scrambled up the scaffolding in front of the building and were blasting the speech. Although I don’t precisely recall, I think the gigantic banner they’d unfurled demanded the impeachment of George W. Bush.
I had a “what the fuck” moment. Talk about closing the barn door after you’ve already burned the barn down.
I moved to DC on June 14th, 2008. I sold my car on July 4th, 2008. For roughly two weeks, I had a car, but as a resident of DC, I did not have DC tags, or a permit to allow me to park longer than two hours in Northwest, or a place to park said car (aside from street parking).
I parked my car at Grosvenor-Strathmore for two weeks. I’d run the Metro up, then drive to work. After work, I’d drive back to the garage, park, and board the train for my part-time job, or for home. If you’re familiar with Metro parking, you’re probably thinking that got pretty expensive. However, you’d be wrong. I parked for free.
How?
Well, first, when I needed access to my car on weekends, parking wasn’t an issue: Metro doesn’t charge customers to park on Federal holidays or weekends. The gate are always open.
During the week it was also just as easy. Metro controls parking through the Smartrip card — or, rather, it controls egress through the Smartrip card, which is required to activate the gate to get out of the parking area. Here’s the catch: Metro doesn’t require a person to scan their Smartrip card to get into a parking facility, therefore, Metro has no way of tracking how long a person has been parked there, without using precious man hours, which, frankly, I don’t see it (or, rather, the contractor who administers the garage) doing.
Where did I park my car? At the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station. For two weeks. For free.
How?
You might think Metro keeps the gates closed at the garages all week long, but you’d be wrong. In my experience, Metro — at least at Grosvenor-Strathmore — doesn’t close the gates before 9:30am. So, if you were to, say, depart the garage before Metro closed the gates, you could essentially park overnight (or multiple nights) for free.
Clearly, it has its limitations. If I needed access to my car after the gates were closed, I’d be forced to pay to get it out (I don’t think I ever had to do that, though). Frankly, I’d be surprised if lots of people don’t use the trick to store their car safely overnight. I know Metro has a spotty record on car safety in its garages, but perhaps because of the neighborhood, or the proximity to Strathmore and the extra staffing with events there, I never had an issue with anyone damaging my car. Of course, I would hardly call two weeks “long term.”
I’ve been a customer of Giant Foods my entire adult life, largely because my parents’ shopped most often at Giant when I was growing up, and so it was that chain of stores I’ve always felt most comfortable doing my grocery shopping in.
When I lived in Timonium, I frequented the Giant groceries in Hunt Valley and Lutherville. I think I first used the Hunt Valley store’s automated checkout lane in 2005, and if you ever want to see an almost entirely automated checkout process, look there. Of fifteen or so checkout lanes, maybe five weren’t automated.
These weren’t like little half lanes, either, these were full, long, checkout lanes, with a belt long enough that you could empty an entire cart onto it without filling it. You’d scan your items at the start of the belt, they’d pass under some sort of sensor-thing and then they’d be deposited at the end of the belt, where you’d bag them up.
Now, flash forward, and I’ve moved to Washington D.C. Here, also, I use two Giants: the first being the store at Van Ness. Being a fellow without a car, I quickly realized how much more comfortable the re-usable bags Giant sells are for people who are going to walk two miles home with their groceries, and it’s an investment I don’t mind making: the bags cost a dollar. When you use one of these bag, Giant takes five cents off your total purchase (per bag).
I’m not going to say it’s a great movie, but it’s a fun movie, it’s got a bit of heart, and once it gets past some of the crazy slapstick stuff in the beginning, it finds its legs. Forget the peeps mentioned in the trailer: the actors who make this film are Tom Cruise, and Steve Cogan. I can’t decide if my favorite line is “I FARM LAND MOTHERFUCKER!” or “Who’s the keygrip? Punch the director in the face!”
WE OWN THE NIGHT
I got about forty-five minutes into this film before I just couldn’t take it anymore, and I popped open the player and put the disc back in the envelope. It just wasn’t doing it for me (although, certainly that opening scene with Eva Mendes … wow).
YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN
I wrote about this earlier this week, but I’m tempted to put it back on my Netflix queue. It’s got surprising substance and depth amongst all the slapstick stupidity.
FOGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
There’s a lot to like about this film: Veronica Mars, er, Kristen Bell. The pop-references (especially enjoyed Billy Baldwin’s parody of David Caruso on CSI: Miami, which reminds me, check this YouTube video) are a delicious icing on the cake that is this movie. Oh, I remember something that I don’t like about this film: full frontal Jason Segal nudity. I’m okay with it in the sense that, in movies overall, there’s a lot more female nudity than male nudity, but, um, personally, I think some full frontal Kristen Bell nudity would’ve done considerably more than compensating for those eye-searing images at the start of this film. (On the other hand, the full-frontal nudity might be unique to the extended cut, in which case I might just want to stick with the theatrical editions.)
