The Many Parking Lots of Edgewood

Above are four examples of parking available in one shopping center. They were all taken in the Edgewood Shopping District, the “live-work-play” development on Edgewood Avenue, just past Little Five Points. The first picture is a view of the basic parking lot commonly found outside big box retailers. There are rows and rows of parking spaces for people to leave their car and travel into one of the many stores that surround the parking lot. There are the customary cart corrals that take up a few spaces here and there, but as you can see there is ample parking for anyone coming to shop on a weekend afternoon. Also, if you look closely to the upper left hand corner, you can see an arch (several of which appear throughout the larger lot) that was meant to deter large vehicles and tractor-trailers from entering the parking lot.
The second picture is of an above-ground parking deck that sits between two of the larger stores in the shopping center. It was designed to blend in with the buildings around it, making it less obtrusive and unpleasant looking. It has the same brick façade and stucco accents that the stores in the shopping center sport, but one can clearly tell it is a parking deck. The stairs can be seen in the tower-like structure in the middle and there is a large sign (partially visible on the right-hand side) that says “PARKING”.
The third picture is of below-ground parking. There were approximately 15 cars in this lot at the time of the picture, all of which could have been easily accommodated in the large parking lot or parking deck pictured above. This is likely just a cooler (temperature wise) place to park your car on a hot day. It may also come in handy Black Friday, the most feared day for any retailer, when thousands of angry men and women swarm into stores at 6am and begin to cross things off their Christmas list.
The final picture is of off-street parking found near the boutique-style shops that sit between the two nodes of big box retailers in the Edgewood shopping center. This harkens back to the days when you would drive to Main Street, park your car right outside the store and go talk with your neighbors in the general store. There a far fewer of these spots than can be found in any of the parking lots/decks in the rest of the shopping center.

"... safe, clean, aesthetically appealing ..."

Calhoun, Georgia, has provided spaces of play since the inception of the town. A park managed by the Women's Club stretched parallel to Wall Street (main street) in the 1800's. Spectators gathered at the fairgrounds and wild-ish gardens of Salacoa. One of these early spaces, Amakanata, is still intact. And strikingly, both the Calhoun Recreation Department (the "Rec") and a new downtown park mimic this older space's design. These three spaces of play all rest on architectures and arrangements which privilege nostalgia while simultaneously providing gathering spaces in which that nostalgia can be challenged.

The first picture, from Amakanata, shows the remnants of a once-lively park. A quaint stone bridge leads from one area of the lake to another; earthen berms line the lake and provide (prescribe) walkways among marshy grounds. Groves of trees and staircases attest to bathers and waders. In the foreground is a square fountain which was probably added at a later date when the lake functioned as a fish hatchery. The cracked sign on the right reads, "Amakanata: Danger in Swimming," a remnant which reveals one of the uses to which this space was put. Picnickers, daytrippers, and families traveled to Amakanata to relax from their jobs as professionals, cotton mill workers, orchard workers, and laborers.

The second picture is of the newest recreational space in Calhoun, the downtown park and bandstand. Finished within the last five years, this landscaped space includes colorful and vivid sculpture, a fountain, a bandstand, open spaces for play, and benches for resting. While the downtown park is full and overflowing during Friday nights when musical groups give concerts, the park is empty most of the time. The elements of Amakanta show clearly: fountain, prescribed places for walking and playing, and a pavilion/bandstand. One reading of this space is similar to that Weinstein gives for Disneyland, a recreation of an earlier, romanticized space. Marling would add that the tension between the 'real' uses of the downtown and the 'almost-real', managed experience of this park is what gives it some of its public power for townspeople.

The third picture is of the "Rec," a space which includes ballfields, playgrounds, picnic facilities, basketball and tennis courts, and a swimming pool tucked into a bend of the Oothcalooga Creek, in which visitors fish and play. This image shows the large pavilion which hosts family reunions, casual lunches, Girl Scout meetings, and corporate employee appreciation days. The gray memorial in the center of the image discusses a community member who was key in establishing the Rec (the pavilion was destroyed in a tornado in 2003, and the memorial put up when it was rebuilt). Also visible are old oaks and walking paths. All of these elements hearken back to Amakanata's design and purpose. The sign at the foreground, however, reveals the ways in which the uses of the space are in conflict with a nostalgic ideology of the space. The sign indicating that no soccer should be played in the large open spaces at the Rec (which have hosted such play as frisbee, football, catch, horseshoes, and many others) directly points to the recent emergence of a Latino/a population in the town which is in conflict with the traditional definitions of use for this space.

All three of these spaces of play shift the conception of "play" from child to adult (or at least child and adult). Yet, like Disneyland, they draw on turn-of-the-century nostalgia for "safe, clean, aesthetically appealing" places (Weinstein 132)--which is currently being challenged by a cultural demographic with a different conception of "play."

Orchard Beach Amusements

For my GOLD STAR:

These are photos I took in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.  The pier arcade is one of their staple tourist features.  While there I read varying accounts of fires and storms that destroyed the pier and how it was built back to different lengths.  The current pier is about 500 ft shorter than the longest pier built.  Below is a photo of an on-the-beach amusement park.  We visited here between their two main tourist seasons (summer and full-on fall...for the fall foliage tourists.)  The town was pretty empty and the pier and amusement park were not open.  Nothing is eerier than a space where one would expect crowds of people but is devoid in that respect.  Noir in its own right I suppose.  These were taken with a black and white disposable camera, and perhaps is in keeping with the whole noir theme.