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The Sixteen-Quarter Two-Hour Beautiful Historic
Downtown Birmingham Shopping Spree
Through the window of my wonderful old bookshop, I can see the city streets, the city buildings, the city people, and the city Shopper Zappers.
They are all there for my viewing pleasure each day, these historic structures, these diverse and fascinating people. The privilege of watching day to day history unfold before me is one of the reasons I love this old city.
But watching the Shopper Zappers operate is akin to watching a zombie movie—each visitor to our neighborhood is stalked by these annoying and off-putting mechanisms that are designed to kill all traces of goodwill and good humor in folks who otherwise are trying to have a nice experience during their time here.
The Shopper Zappers—otherwise known as Parking Meters—are designed to give each shopper a bitter taste, a lingering impression that the City does not welcome nor encourage Downtown shopping.
Just join me at the window and let’s see what happens:
An elderly couple emerges from their carefully parked vehicle, glancing around at the fun they are planning to have—a visit to Reed Books and Sojourns gift shop and the Goodyear Shoe Hospital. The driver approaches the parking meter, digs into his pocket for a couple of quarters, and deposits the first one. Then he does a visible double-take when a mere eight minutes registers in the little meter window. Thinking the meter is broken and did not record his quarter, he deposits another. Now he knows he’s in trouble, because he sees that he has only 15 minutes to do all his shopping and sightseeing.
Now the driver has several options. He can try parking in another space that might have a working meter, he can keep putting quarters in the slot till it reads two hours, or he can become upset and drive away, vowing never to return to this apparently cold and ruthless place.
In this instance, the visitor stays calm, knowing that his wife has been planning a visit to the City for some time. While she waits beside the car, he enters the shop and asks whether I can give him a dollar’s worth of quarters for the meter in exchange for a dollar bill. Of course I can, but I know from my experience with dozens of other customers that he has not done the math. In order to put two hours on the meter, he is going to need 16 quarters—and who carries 16 quarters around at all times?
I make the same decision I have been making each day for weeks: I hand him a big handful of quarters and tell him to fill the meter. In other words, I will pay this man to park and visit my street and my shop.
He wonders why I would do such a thing.
I want these customers to leave Birmingham feeling that somebody really cares whether they shop Downtown. I want them to know that Birmingham is much more than the mere City Bureaucracy that extracts penalties and fees while discouraging all visitors from returning.
I want them to feel welcome in Birmingham.
So, periodically, I stroll to the corner of Richard Arrington and 3rd Avenue North and pick up more rolls of quarters from the friendly bankers at Iberia. They spend a lot of time doling out quarters to other merchants and professionals who, like me, are trying to counteract the ill will that these prohibitive and punitive Shopper Zappers exude.
Yep, it’s come down to this.
I pay people to come to my shop. I pay people to tour and visit and appreciate the City.
And I pay people to return home with the knowledge that we merchants and professionals care about them, that we are quite different from the Shopper Zappers and their attendants who seem invisible and insensitive to what it takes to promote a really fine and beautiful historic Downtown Birmingham, Alabama.
Y’all come to Reed Books and grab some quarters
© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.