July 16, 2008
Velleity
It's hard to argue with Slate's declaration that the Random House Dictionary contains the best definition of velleity:
1. volition in its weakest form
2. a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it.
That is precisely the definition that comes to mind when gazing at this sign guarding a driveway leading to the LCBO store on Yonge Street north of Davisville Avenue. The driveway joins two small parking lots, one that serves the LCBO store to the north and another that serves a smattering of other stores to the south. Someone must have decided at some point that they no longer wanted LCBO customers using the southern lot and the connecting drive. But in the place of an actual barrier to block access, this sign was erected to declare what is quite demonstrably a bald-faced lie. Watching both cars and pedestrians regularly cross the unbridgeable (yet smoothly paved) chasm to access the LCBO's main entrance, we're more than a little heartened to know that Torontonians still believe their own eyes over a neatly printed sign.
Photo by Val Dodge.
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What does the other side of the sign say?
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Rek: No access to street.
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Or, you know... no access to whatever store is in the adjacent lot. Next time I'll read AND comprehend before commenting. :\
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I believe it was also an attempt to keep drivers from avoiding the intersection at Yonge & Davisville, and to keep a stream of LCBO customers from taking over their parking lot. As I recall, the other side of the sign said "exit only."
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I wish more parking lots were like this, and less like the road island hell design of what I like to call the M.C. Escher style where you don't know where it starts, you don't know where it ends and once your inside of it there's absolutly no way of getting out.
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I always just drive in. If it was a city sign, I'd obey it. But it's a private sign.. and that lot does require patrons to "pay" for parking, sooo in my logic that means I can disobey.