Cnut Songs #5: Parking Lot Blues

This is my last week off with Sam (after a few days back in purgatory last week) before the hard slog through till November (when I finally start my new job). So a few more days out have been planned... and a few more middle-aged King Cnut mumbles have been expressed.

Last week I spoke (at length) about how They are slowly trying to phase out real money in favour of digital / card spending, something that C agreed with greatly (pointing us all towards this article which shows that it isn't just middle-aged Cnuts fearing the end of money). Well, here's the latest chapter in that tale of woe... car parks.

A number of city centre car parks I've encnutered over the past few weeks have refused to let me pay for my parking with coins. The machines are taped up with bin bags, forcing us instead to use their parking apps. Occasional signs describe this as a covid measure, while others say nothing, which implies this is the future. 

Like a true King Cnut, I refuse to use parking apps. I've tried and the hoops to jump through are just too many. I want to put a few coins in a slot, grab my ticket for the dashboard, and go. If I have to put my registration number into the machine (to stop me sharing a ticket with another driver... remember how nice it was in the good old days when someone offered you their unused parking ticket?), that's about as far as I'll go. But I'm not logging into one of the three dozen possible parking apps and giving them my life story (not to mention bank details) just to leave my car for a couple of hours on a piece of scraggy wasteland. I'll drive on and find another car park, thanks.   

But I know my days of doing that are numbered. The faceless oligarchs who own our car parks don't want to pay attendants any more, and they certainly don't want the hassle of sending someone round to empty the ticket machine, count up all the coins, and take them to the bank... not when they can get us to shoot our digital cash straight into their veins. And I'll tell you who I feel sorry for the most. This guy...

Here's ten songs about parking and parking lots. Because song writers prefer to use the Americanism (I couldn't find any car park songs)... probably because most of these guys are Americans (apart from the ones who sing about valet parking - Brits with too much money, obviously!).

10. Saturday Looks Good To Me - Parking Lot Blues

And in the middle of the night

I didn't care if it was right

I was sitting in the parking lot with you

9. Broken Social Scene - Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Park that car

Drop that phone...

8. Cake - Alpha Beta Parking Lot

Breathing in the fumes from so many idling cars

Right beneath the sign with the dusty yellow stars

Watching the sun go down

7. Galaxie 500 - Parking Lot

Hiding in a parking lot and

Watching all the people fall to pieces

6. Juliana Hatfield - Parking Lots  

They cut you open to get at your heart

Sounds like a metaphor for something but it's not

Like a bad memory lodged in your mind

With your eyes taped shut

A metaphor for blind...

Don't break down 'til you get to the parking lot

Keep it together until you're in your car

5. The Auteurs - Valet Parking

I'm sick of parking cars...

4. Modest Mouse - Convenient Parking

Soon the chain reaction started in the parking lot

Waiting to bleed onto the big streets

That bleed out onto the highways

Convenient parking is way back, way back

3. Super Furry Animals - Valet Parking

I just jump in my car and go

For how long? I do not know

2. Guy Clark - Out In The Parkin' Lot

You can hear the band a playin' right through the wall

Ain't no cover charge, there ain't no last call

Out in the parking lot

1. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

With no human beings or coin machines, just a stupid parking app

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot