Quote:
Originally Posted by 1ajs
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I spent eight months working in a little enclosed room with windows just above those red awnings. People would wind their way down the parking merry-go-round in their cars, stop at my office just before the last ramp leading to the street, and hand me a ticket through a small sliding window. I would insert said ticket into a punch clock, and then request an amount of money corresponding to the amount of elapsed time indicated on the ticket. After the transaction was completed to our mutual satisfaction I would press a button to activate the mechanism that raised the boom barrier, allowing the motor vehicle to be driven out of the parkade lawfully and safely, and then I would wait for the next driver to arrive.
Some days or nights there were long stretches where the parkade wasn't busy, but I didn't mind. I read a lot of books and did a lot of writing. I was only 21, after all. Some nights I'd lock the door, and wander down the ramp and out onto the street in my uniform. Just to stretch my legs and look out onto the emptiness of Portage Avenue. It was a game of chance, though. I might come back after ten or fifteen minutes to find a disgruntled motorist stuck behind the barrier, honking or shouting for someone, anyone, to take his ticket and let him out. Though more often than not they were polite, assuming I'd needed a washroom break.
Portage Avenue at night is satisfyingly big city bleak during the height of summer, and soul-crushingly Arctic bleak during the depths of winter. I like how it looks like a muddy canal in this pic, as if the buses and cars were barges and pleasure boats. I used to sit in that little parkade office and dream about places with canals that I'd heard about or seen in some magazine: Venice, Bangkok, Camden Town. I'm not a fan of Guy Maddin at all, but his films really do capture the sense of isolation you feel in Winnipeg.
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