Looking For A Book, or: Parking In Louisville Sucks

So I went to Waldenbooks earlier looking for a book--King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. They didn't have it--it's the Green Tree Mall store, what DO they have--so I decide to go hit the Borders at 4th Street Live. I get across the bridge, head down to Muhammad Ali Boulevard, over to 5th Street, and up to Liberty. OK, cool, there's on street parking.

NOT.

Well, not after 4pm anyways, although I am convinced it wasn't 4pm yet. Either way, some guy from the parking authority (better known as the Louisville Metro Revenue Generation Authority) tells me I can't park on the street after 4pm--AFTER I put my quarter in the meter. Dude, thanks for wasting my time, and my quarter, and by the way, what do you plan on doing with the three--no, four cars parked on the street in front of me? Even though I KNOW it wasn't 4pm yet, I decide not to argue with him, if only because Metro Police has a station right around the corner on 3rd Street, and I don't think jail is a good use of time, so I drive right back around the corner and head into the 5th Street Garage.

I give the much friendlier garage attendent $3 and proceed to drive around the garage, looking for a space that is big enough to fit a small '97 Saturn. The only space I saw wasn't even big enough to fit a tricycle. So I'm on my way out of the garage, now cursing the no-longer friendly attendent, and I found it--a space reserved for small cars like mine, right by the stairs. Could it get any better? (Yeah--dude could've told me about on-street parking before I wasted a quarter.) So I hop down the stairs, chat with the security guard for a second, and head over to Borders.

Well, guess what? They didn't have King Solomon's Mines, either! I decided to make the trip, and the headache the parking authority caused me, worth my time and gas and bought Glenn Beck's Common Sense and a book on the battle of Fallujah. Somewhat satisfied--I've been meaning to get that Beck book, I already have An Inconvenient Book and Arguing With Idiots (both purchases got me lectured by the cashier on how Glenn Beck is what's wrong with society)--I leave the store and see the parking authority guy issuing parking tickets to those three--no, four cars that were in front of me on Liberty Street. I officially retract anything bad I said about him and go back to my car.

I get home, where I can park on the street 24-7 for free, and get on the Borders website. Turns out, no Borders within 100 miles of here has King Solomon's Mines in stock. Even better is, the next book in that series, Allan Quatermain, is getting re-issued April 1. . .but the current copies, like Mines, aren't in any store within 100 miles of here. But not all is lost--I can just order both books in a couple weeks and pick them up at the store. So I suppose maybe it'll be worth the trouble after all. . .

The moral of this story? Don't try to park in Louisville, EVER.