Parking garages are everywhere. They offer a strange sort of public space: planted right in the middle of town, open to all callers, but with a narrow intended function. Well, urban areas are meant to be repurposed, and I'm not the first person to do something other than park in these big halls of reinforced concrete. Photographers like these big angular assembles of beams, rails and stripes, and skaters like playing around in what is essentially a big coiled ramp.
A long walk is a great excuse for a phone call, and by the same logic, a long phone call is a great excuse for a walk. I was walking the neighborhood and talking on the phone, when I realized that I was just mindlessly pacing my familiar turf. I was on the phone with Max, who really explored the heck out of our neighborhood in Boulder, and so I asked myself, where would Max go? I looked up, and noticed, with new intent, the 9-story park garage that looms near Kelly and my apartment.
I ran up the stairs by two's and three's, endless laps through fetid piss-stench, and finally opened the door at the top of the stairwell to find a big, open sky, and spectacular views of the surrounding Victorian structures. Down Harper's Lane can be seen the slate-and-lead rooftops of redeveloped warehouses, like our own apartment, which appears behind "I.J. Dewhirst" in the following photo. Standing a couple of blocks away, the broad glass-and-iron dome of the Corn Exchange and its boutique shops. To the west, the turrets and glass skylights of Kirkgate Market, the sprawling multi-ethnic heart of the city, and a highlight of our life here that deserves a post of its own. Just below the garage, Saturday shoppers wander among the primary colors of the outdoor market stalls. On the skylines, church towers of pale Yorkshire limestone, darkened with age.
