(no subject)
Jun. 13th, 2009 06:16 pmIt's a funny thing, being a pedestrian shopper in Tucson. No-one expects it, or makes any concessions or accommodations for the foot trade; presumably the powers-that-be assume that if I had money I'd spend it on a car first and shopping later. Except that I do have money; I just don't want a car -- or the hassle of learning to drive.
It's always been difficult-but-possible for me to shop in the big-box area around my local mall. It involves long slogs through the heat, treks across endless parking lots with not much in the way of pedestrian paths, politely turning down offers to carry my purchases out to the non-existent car, lugging the bags from one store as I shop at another, vaguely aware that this gets me looked at askance. This afternoon, though, hit a new level of awkwardness.
My local Michael's, source of a lot of my beading supplies, shares its parking lot with a Target that since early this Spring -- since the first weekend I went bead-shopping there, in fact -- has been in the process of being pulled down and rebuilt as a SuperTarget. Getting to the Michael's has been ... interesting ... for a while, but it's now reached a stage where there is no unproblematic pedestrian access at all. Both the vehicular entrances open on streets with no adjoining usable sidewalks, so that there's no way in on foot without either jaywalking across a busy main road or traversing a closed and thoroughly dug-up sidewalk. The least-infringing solution I could find involved crossing a few yards of churned-up but not actually fenced-off dirt at the far corner of the lot to get between the crosswalk and a shiny new concrete apron in front of the Radio Shack.
It's always been difficult-but-possible for me to shop in the big-box area around my local mall. It involves long slogs through the heat, treks across endless parking lots with not much in the way of pedestrian paths, politely turning down offers to carry my purchases out to the non-existent car, lugging the bags from one store as I shop at another, vaguely aware that this gets me looked at askance. This afternoon, though, hit a new level of awkwardness.
My local Michael's, source of a lot of my beading supplies, shares its parking lot with a Target that since early this Spring -- since the first weekend I went bead-shopping there, in fact -- has been in the process of being pulled down and rebuilt as a SuperTarget. Getting to the Michael's has been ... interesting ... for a while, but it's now reached a stage where there is no unproblematic pedestrian access at all. Both the vehicular entrances open on streets with no adjoining usable sidewalks, so that there's no way in on foot without either jaywalking across a busy main road or traversing a closed and thoroughly dug-up sidewalk. The least-infringing solution I could find involved crossing a few yards of churned-up but not actually fenced-off dirt at the far corner of the lot to get between the crosswalk and a shiny new concrete apron in front of the Radio Shack.
