June 19, 1991
Dear Everyone:
Last year, the managers of BART decided that the
parking at the Pleasant Hill Station is inadequate.
This is something the people who
park at, or near, the Pleasant Hill Station have known for over ten
years.
The Pleasant Hill Station, by the way, is not in
Pleasant Hill. It's in
Walnut Creek. (Pay attention,
this is important; it comes into it later.)
However, since there was already
a Walnut Creek station, the managers decided to call this one the
Pleasant Hill Station in order to differentiate from the other and to
confuse the tourists.
Having decided that the parking at PH is
inadequate, the BART managers elected to close off half of the available
parking spaces in order to erect a parking garage, which will take three
(3) years to complete. This has
had the effect of throwing half the BART patrons out onto the streets,
figuratively speaking.
Consequently, the competition for parking on the
streets near the BART station is getting pretty stiff.
This is one reason why my vanpool
leaves at 6:00 am each weekday. We
could leave 15 minutes later and still get to work in plenty of time.
But if we delayed getting to the
street where we meet by 15 minutes, there wouldn't be any place to park
our cars.
The reason for parking near the BART station is
simple: If you have to leave
early, or stay late, and don't catch the van, BART is right there.
So you want your car to be
relatively close to the station. Although
some people do it, it is considered bad form to park your car inside
what's left of the BART parking lot if you use a van pool.
This is where the city of Walnut Creek comes into
the picture. Last Wednesday,
Walnut Creek put a shiny, new “No Parking" sign on the street where we
parked. And put shiny, new $11.00
parking tickets on the windshields of all the cars parked there, mine
included.
This is called “revenue enhancement“. One wonders
if BART gets a kickback. One
could argue that it's not fair, but there's no point in taking a day off
from work to fight an $11.00 ticket. They
count on this. People just pay
the fine and grumble.
Which brings us to this week's movie review:
Robin
Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Kevin Costner
does a fine job of playing a Thinking Man's Robin Hood.
Unfortunately, this isn't a
Thinking Man's Movie. It's an action/adventure movie. You know this by
the fact that the stunt performers outnumber the speaking parts by three
to one. Still, Costner does what
he can, shooting arrows, slashing villains, jumping over horses and so
on.
Nick Brimble,
who spend a year or so on British TV being trounced by William Tell
every week, gets to do some trouncing of his own as Little John (look
for a young
Ernest Borgnine-type).
Morgan Freeman
is the noble Moor who follows Robin to England so as to prove that Merry
Olde England is an equal opportunity employer.
But the star of the show is
Alan Rickman.
His Sheriff of Nottingham is a
pure delight. (The evil Prince
John gets left out entirely on this go around, thus leaving all the
really good scene-chewing to Rickman.) I
especially liked the part where he threatened to cancel Christmas,
something mother did on more than one occasion (threatened, that is; she
never really followed through on it).
The story-line is old, but well-worn; it can stand
telling again. If the film gets
any Oscar nominations, it'll be for costumes, set decoration and
best-paid-90-second-cameo appearance at the end.
But, if you're looking for good, honest fun with
the good guys win and the bad guys lose, go for it.
You could do worse than spend an
afternoon with this one.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |