This was the traffic TWO AND A HALF HOURS BEFORE GAME TIME on Opening Day. People were pissed. The LA Times has run 3 articles about how shitty the parking situation is. And now you come up with this load of bullshit?
I love the Dodgers. But this made my (Dodger Blue) blood boil:
Johnston said the organization did receive negative e-mail about Opening Day, but very little regarding any parking problems for Tuesday and Wednesday’s games. The e-mails showed there is a certain type of fan that is having a hard time with the new system.
“Many of our fans who have been coming here, some of them for 45 years, they like to drive in one gate, out the other gate, park in their favorite spot, all those things,” Johnston said. “Those are the people that this has been a difficult change for. For the average person, not much has changed at all. They come into a gate, they are directed to a parking spot, and they walk into the stadium. [Then] they come out and get out.”
So what you’re telling me, Camille Johnston, Dodgers’ senior vice president of communications, is that you would prefer to cater to Miss French Manicured Toenails who wears wedge sandals to the ballpark and has no idea what a double play is beyond that it sounds a little like something she did for Girls Gone Wild back in Cancun last spring and her date Mr Greek Letters with a ratty backward baseball cap that says Abercrombie (which division is that? AA?) in flip-flops with hairy foot tops who decide it would be “really cool” if they went on a date to the Dodger game and spend the first 35 minutes of their arrival talking about how long it’s been since they’ve been to a ballgame and then leave in the 7th inning because it’s “boring” instead of your long time 45 year dedicated fans?
And don’t even get me started on the disgustingly faulty logic that the system worked because parking troubles improved on Tuesday and Wednesday. The ONLY reason it looked any better to you from your sky high glass protected box seat is because there were HALF AS MANY PEOPLE AT THE GAME. Even if paid attendance was 56,000 on opening day and 35,852 on Wednesday, I am willing to bet my peanuts and cracker jacks that a higher percentage of people didn’t show up on Wednesday than Opening fucking Day where tickets were being sold by brokers for 8 times the face value. The people who show up on Opening Day and pay exorbitant prices to go (because you lied about selling single game opening tickets online, but that is an entirely different rant) are the die-hard Blue Thinking Dodger loving fans who believe in the religion of Vin Scully and pray in the church of Chavez Ravine. They are not going to miss Opening Day. Your statement that parking has “improved” just because 50% fewer cars showed up is insulting to those of us with brains, which comprise a good 60% of your fan base.
This is your “new and improved” parking system on Tuesday night. Note the hoards of cars here trying to log jam out the Downtown Gate. Also note the wide expanse of empty space leading to the Academy Gate. Last season, these cars would have been able to veer left and exit out the back gate, thus cutting down on the crowd here. But with the new system we have sealed our fate upon entering, and lust as we might for a chance to speed down that path to freedom there is no chance in parking lot hell (why do you think brake lights are red?) that anyone will be allowed out an alternate route. Even if it made everyone’s life a bit easier.
And while I’m addressing this monstrosity of a problem which is sucking hours out of my week, may I please bring up the fact that the earlier you get there, the farther from the entrance you have to park. See below, I got to the park at 5:30pm for a 7:10pm game.
The lots were entirely empty. I grinned with delight at the perfect parking spot right by the exit which I knew would be my path to freedom. And then the giant walking highlighters (pictured above) start waving their orange flags at me, coaxing me through rows of pylons until I am in the absolute furthest spot from the exit. Please, I begged them. Let me park over THERE! But no, there is no sympathy in highlighter-ville and I was exiled to a deep dark corner of parking lot hell, so that I may spend the next 4 hours grimacing in anticipation at the thought of trying to go home.
I’ve been going to Dodger games for a long time. Last year I attended 33 home games, and my parking has a system so fine tuned and perfect that once I set foot in my car it was guaranteed I would be speeding along the 110 freeway within 10 short minutes. It did not fail me. To me, this was my reward for being a dedicated and quick-thinking Dodger fan. Sure I had to pay $330 in parking last season, but hey, I got in and out without any trouble at all and I got to see my beloved team make it to the post-season.
This current situation is a kick in the scrotum to those of us who love the Dodgers. I have tried to think of creative solutions to this problem:
1) Take a train to Union Station and take a taxi cab up to the park, then call another taxi cab to come pick me up when the game is over. Unfortunately, even the cabbies were stuck in traffic this past week, and I’m sure they’d charge more than $15 to be put through this torture.
2) Purchase a pit bull. Park in the $5 flat rate lots over in Chinatown and walk the mile or so up to the stadium. Tie the pit bull outside the park during the game. Game is over, walk back with the pit bull next to me, as I will likely be mugged a total of 34 times on my way from Stadium Way down to Broadway.
3) Move into that apartment that sits at the entrance of the 110 freeway with the boarded up windows and rusted barbed wire fence and the old toilet on the stoop. I would call for the next open house but the numbers on the door are disguised by so many tags and so much spray paint that this is rendered impossible.
4) Purchase a nice tent and live on the grounds of Dodger Stadium in the bushes where all of the drunk fans throw their Corona bottles and pee after the games because they know they’re going to be stuck in the parking lot for 2 hours trying to leave and they are going to have to empty their bladders before that.
5) Start picking up transients downtown on the way to the stadium and pay them off to sit in my car so that I can park in the special “carpools of 4 or more only” lot.
Until then, I’m just going to bitch and moan. April 13th is Cap Night. There will likely be 55,000 people there. I’ll tell you how it goes.