Save the marquee, save the world

Look, I get it.   The City Council loves the Alameda Theatre.   They love the way it looks, they don’t want anything to interfer with the look of the front of the Theatre.  They don’t want people to park in front of the theatre/cineplex, they don’t want bikes in front of the theatre/cineplex and considering their decision on the mid-block crosswalk the other night, they don’t want people in front of the theatre either.

I hate to state the obvious, but — as others have said before – the sidewalk on that side of the street is too narrow to accomodate sidewalk dining, people queueing in line for tickets, and folks just trying to use the sidewalk as a sidewalk.   And there are plans to let Angela’s at the corner also further narrow the sidewalk with its own sidewalk dining.   I’m not against sidewalk dining, in fact, I like it, but if the City is going to allow businesses to take up precious sidewalk space, they need to make up for it by widening the sidewalk.

The plan is, now, just to blub out tiny sections on each side of the marquee in order to protect it from any other damage.  Not to, oh, provide more sidewalk space for folks when there is a line in front of the theatre and the Alameda Wine Co. which severely limits the sidewalk space for other purposes.

Rather than bulb out a small section to the west of the theatre, bulb the whole section from the Wine Companty to Oak out.  The space won’t ever be used for street parking — the Park Street Business Association has said it will fight any effort to being parking back there — so use it for sidewalk space, particularly in light of the fact that Angela’s will be adding sidewalk dining as well.

Anyway, I was a little frustrated with the discussion around the mid block crosswalk, which is a no go, at least after this meeting.   The Council felt as though the better option was to try to modify the behavior of jaywalkers through enforcement rather than put a mid block crosswalk in.    In fact, that was the rallying cry that night, to ticket the jaywalkers, because once someone gets one, they’ll tell their friends, who will tell other friends and bam! problem solved.  

Or people will just continue to jaywalk when there aren’t cops around anyway.

There seemed to be a consensus with the Council that putting bicycling parking in Lot C (across the street from the theatre) was a better alternative than putting bike parking directly in front of the theatre.   Even though it’s clear from the many many bikes using street poles, lights, and other assorted furiture to secure their bikes to that more bike parking is necessary for theatre goers.   So people going to the theatre will be parking in the lot across the street, yet be expected to detour their way either to Park or Oak, cross at the intersection there, then walk all the way back to the theatre.  Yes, it’s not that far of a walk, and if it were a four lane arterial road I’m sure most people would take that trek in order to preserve life and limb, but the reality is, it’s not. It’s a two lane road. 

As we all learned in grammar school, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Folks parking their bikes (or their cars for that matter) in Lot C, if they are heading directly to the theatre will walk across that street.  Mid block crosswalk or none.  So we can either put one in and anticipate that Alameda drivers will honor it or we can ticket the crap out of the scofflaw pedestrians.

And apparently the Council just wants to ticket the crap out of pedestrians.  That’s one way to raise funds in the City.