Blog 5 - Zine yelps

         Our subject is a Zine talking about the parking situation in BC. As we know, the scale of BC has grown up fast in the recent years and now it serves about 37,000 students. Buildings for education have been established each year. But the parking of this college has been more and more serious. Since 2008, students have begun to complain about parking problems on Yelp.com using words such as “suck”, “bad” and “insane”. The problem has really been prominent and the purpose of our Zine is to show our dissatisfaction and to require a better parking condition.

         I still remember the first time I went to BC. We turned right to SE 28 Street and soon found that a lot of students’ cars were heading home or going to school. We passed unconsciously the only mark (I didn’t find it at that time but finally saw it until last Saturday) indicating where the visitors can park because many cars were followed behind. When we found the garage and the guideboard from which we were told to park at level 5 as visitors at the entry, we happily entered the garage but found the entry was so small. Ah, a drive skill test was taken on that day. I have to say, the payment machine worked so slowly. It didn’t response for quite a while after sliding our card so that we thought it was broken and nearly wanted to change to another machine. Hum, not easy.

         For this subject, I especially went to college to do a field research last Saturday morning and to take some photos or evidences. I finally found the direction mark before the roundabout and was able to stop to read the small words on it since it was not a weekday. (Can you see that in the following picture?) 

         Another issue I found inside the garage is that each level is not numbered. This is not good to those new comers and visitors because they cannot locate which level they are at and have no idea to go up or go down.

        I took the same entry as that when I visited BC for the first time. I wanted to go to level 5 but I missed the way near the entry to go up and had to go down in no time since I didn’t notice it as soon as possible. All right, it was weekend and I moved back a little and turned left right away. I remember one time we were in the garage, the leaving line encumbered the way going up so we gave up in the end because the cars were rushing out.

         I found an interesting thing standing outside the entry. It is a garage parking monitor. I do think it has been built for more than 15 years. Only “FULL” can be indicated. It is supposed to monitor the situation of the whole garage, right? I think the light works rarely because that every stall is taken cannot happen usually. We need a newer monitor which can display the parking situation for each floor while it is better to build a new garage since the lack of stalls is the basic problem.

        Students spend much time on searching a stall, which is not encouraged and may damage students’ confidences to their schools.