People of the Lowell area love to complain about downtown and parking.
On the parking: it’s about pricing and discounts and garages. Enforcement and apps and kiosks are popular talking points. It’s a detail oriented “everything sucks” discussion. It’s like reading district councilors social media posts.
But I’ll tell ya, Lowell parking is grand compared to downtown Andover.
Those uppity mo fo’s need a garage. There is an acute shortage of spaces up there. A friend of mine has a sweet set up for her hair styling biz but the parking is so bad she’s looking to make a move. It’s at a crisis point.
Lowell has a plethora of spaces. Folks are just too tight-fisted or entitled to pay a fair rate.
We are lucky!
On the Downtown: my old man, Uncle Junior was describing a DTL of vacant store fronts and no business.
I was confused. On a recent weekend I started at a Mexican place for great food, went to a pride event around the block, then to an Irish Pub, a Greek place with authentic dancing and music, then next door to an incredible live music set and finished with Asian steamed dumplings while chugging a Murphy’s Stout.
And that’s only a third of what’s available.
DTL may be a minefield of vagrants and ankle busting cobblestones, but it’s lively, diverse, and a shit load of fun. It’s not scorn worthy.
Finally, every holiday has it’s annoying detractors. For me, it’s Valentine’s day. Or the anti commercialism folks for Christmas.
But no one out-annoys like the dog owning, fireworks hating folks for the 4th of July.
The posts will start soon, complaining about how their dogs get upset about the “booms.”
Guess what? It’s one day, or at worst, a few weeks. Your dogs bark all year!
There are a few houses I walk by on my infrequent exercise attempts that have inside dogs barking at me every time. There’s one that barks for hours a few blocks away. A few weeks of your dog’s anxiety from fireworks is a fair trade.
These loveable and loyal, but often annoying pets will get over it. Light away!
One more thing…I hate the dirt bikes but the wheelie boys make me laugh.
4 responses to “Hypomanic Coffee Induced Diatribe”
Scary situations for dogs (within reason) are what I like to refer to as confidence building exercises lol. But the empty storefronts are a thing, even if we are blessed with a great variety of bars and restaurants as long as it isn’t a weekday after 11 pm. Keep drinking the coffee and writing away!
Fireworks and foliage. Most overrated things on the planet!
I once had a dog bark at me from inside a vacant store on Market St. while I was parallel parking between a broken parking kiosk and a homeless millennial juggling loose cobblestones for “spare change to buy fireworks for the 4th.”
Owen Kivlin that may be the most Lowell comment I ever read