a note about parking in palo alto.
Parking in downtown Palo Alto is the weirdest shit ever. First of all, it's
an incredibly yuppie area, so it's always packed with both pedestrians and
their parked cars. Nevermind that there's a brand-spanking-new light rail
system that runs right there; each and every person must drive their
BMW/Porsche/Monstrous SUV (y'know, for all that off-roading in downtown
Palo Alto). Now, Palo Alto can't have parking meters like the lesser cities
in the Bay Area, no siree. Too ghetto. But Palo Alto still needs a way to
regulate its parking, and give the otherwise-meter-checkers something to do.
So they have "zones." As in, "The Purple Zone." "The Blue Zone." "The
Green Zone." This works as follows: you park your car in The Purple Zone
(note: there are actually signs near the starts of zones saying, "Welcome
to the color Zone." I shit you not.). You are now authorized to remain
in The Purple Zone for 2 hours of that business day (9am - 5pm). After that,
you must move your car to another color zone. The thing is, there's more than
one zone for each color, but once you park in the Purple Zone once, you're
done there for the day. I can't park in a Purple Zone, and then move my car
an hour later to a new Purple Zone 4 blocks away. It is honest-to-god
someone's job to walk around with this mini-computer doodad, checking cars
and comparing them to the other zones they've been in that day. If Joe
Assplunge with the keyboard types in my license plate number and hits
"purple" twice in one day, it automatically pukes out a ticket. *shudder*
Palo Alto honestly gives me the creeps. Who came up with this zone crap?
i love those magazines.
Uh, yeah. Anyway. So although I haven't been riding all that much, I've been
trying to keep up in the motorcycle world. While at the Mecca of Consumerism
(aka Fry's) over the weekend, I picked up a copy of "Rider" magazine,
which came recommended by someone on the Short
Biker's List as being informative and women-friendly (i.e. most women
pictured in the magazine are dressed as though they might actually ride a
motorcycle, as opposed to merely posing nude near them). While thumbing
through Rider, I found a subscription card for one of Rider's sister magazines,
"Woman Rider." Of course, I scribbed out a check posthaste and sent off the
card. I'm not sure when I'll get the first issue, since I thought I had heard
that it was still in "pre-production," but assuming it does release (god,
I just realized that I talk in software-engineer-ese even in normal
conversation. Sorry.), I'll be sure to give a review.
Rider magazine, for what it's worth, was really fun. Good articles, a couple of sportsbike reviews (neener neener, the Honda still kicked ass), a couple of well-written travelogues accompanied by nice pictures, a good "technical Q&A forum" column....overall, a really nice magazine. I'll most likely end up subscribing to Rider as well. I dunno, I'm so bloody addicted to anything bike-related that doesn't have poseur women draped all over the bike (yes, I'm a motorcycle addict; that doesn't mean I have to compromise my ethics or succomb to horrific taste). I buy "Tour and Cruiser" magazine from Walgreens every month when I go to get my medicine refilled, even though I neither tour (yet) nor have a cruiser. I read every little detail of the sportsbike comparisons even though I don't race, don't even own a sportsbike, nor can *ever*, for the life of me, remember what "rake and trail" are.
are you sure you can ride that big ol' bike, there, honey?
OK, now I'm on this "women in biker magazines" kick. Can someone explain
this to me? OK, sure, I can appreciate a beautiful woman. I can appreciate
a beautiful bike. I can even appreciate a picture of a beautiful woman posing
on a beautiful bike. But, why, oh why, can't she at least be wearing something
that might insinuate that she could be at least a passenger on said bike?
Like, I've seen people wear some pretty scary shit while riding their
sportsbikes down I-280 at 90mph, but the day that I see a woman zipping down
the road wearing naught but a lime-green string bikini is the day I start
performing mercy killings. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking. I am not,
in fact, the target audience for "Hot Biker Stud" magazine or whatever, and
you're absolutely right. I also know that there are a lot of magazines and
ezines emerging that are by women, for women, or at the very least,
women-friendly. And that's great. But it's still irritating.
I went to pick up Peter from the airport a couple months ago, and while I was waiting, I bought a copy of "Cycle World." There were no women in any of the pictures or articles. At all. None of the letters were from women (no real surprise there, though, statistically). But the kicker was when I *did* see the women: they were in an ad (I wish I could remember what the brand was) for biker gear. The ads featured a couple, shot three times. In each shot, the man was in full leathers; the woman was wearing a miniskirt when she was modelling a jacket, and in a tight white cropped T-shirt when modelling the biker pants. The best part was the posing, however: in the first shot, he's standing up while she's kneeling in front of him, hugging his leg. In another shot, his hand is cupping her breast. This is AN ADVERTISEMENT. For CLOTHES. Unbelievable.
Yes, yes, I know, I know, it's not any worse than, say, a CD player ad or whatever, it just always annoys me. Like, first it was the whole women in computer science thing, where it was me saying to all my (guy) classmates, "uh, why is this naked woman selling this PC? And why do I feel inferior to all of you for no reason?" It's annoying to find it in other aspects of my life, too.
I guess it's good to be a trend-setter. I don't have a problem with being a role model. It just frustrates me that women who were my age and older 20 years ago said the same exact thing: "maybe this will all change with the younger generation." And it hasn't. Maybe it's getting better, but it hasn't changed. And I'll be pretty pissed off if, 20 years from now, a mid-twenties young woman comes up to me and says, "I program a computer" or "I ride a motorcycle" followed by "and I sure wish women got the same respect men do. Maybe it'll change with the next generation."