Community Corner
Nyack Parking Authority: The Musical!
Or, why improving parking would behoove the village.
Downtown Nyack: a neighborhood with over 50 delightful businesses, and almost as many parking spots.
The problems with Main Street and Broadway is one shared by Rockland at large; they are a series of Colonial footpaths united by mega-highways. These historical trailways are terrific for sightseeing, generating revenue from traffic tickets and leading a cow to market on a piece of rope. They are, however, much less conducive to the weekend reveler. Or the daytime shopper. Or anyone, really.
(I'm exaggerating, of course. Some of them were actually wagon paths).
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Now that the Nyack Parking Authority's iron grip on the change-purses of this community's innocent citizens has been shattered, it's time to devise new systems for this little stretch of road. The right-angle at the edge of town contains 90 percent of nightlife in Rockland, while the remainder of the county is swallowed up by malls and burger joints. It's a lot like the dwindling rain forest, come to think of it.
Meanwhile, up the road, businesses come and go on Route 59 like women in a T.S. Eliot poem. The solution is obvious: buy the next couple of businesses to fold, turn them into unbelievably cheap parking garages, and use that income to fund a couple of short trolleys on Main and Broadway.
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Of course, where you have streetcars and Broadway, you have musicals, so expect a full-fledged return to the '40s, which I'm almost wholly in favor of. Maybe then Nyack will attract a better class of gangster than the kind brawling in its schools. Just think of it: this little village spilling over with the blood of legitimate businessmen in silk suits, their hands still clutching pearl-butted tommy guns!
Oh, that our day would come at last! Sassy girl reporters would swing round the lampposts, having finally found love with earnest, hard-working shipbuilders. Maybe the criminals would even bring back that quaint Hudson Valley tradition of enslaving Jerseyites. Yeah! Oh boy, this'll be tops! Somebody call the Elmwood Playhouse!
With those two roads now limited to traffic, the corners will be safe for street urchins to peddle newspapers. Perhaps the top story will be about an incorruptible young District Attorney's crusade to make this town safe again—though with the Parking Authority finally broken, I don't know what he'll expect to combat. Maybe ration-hoarders or polio (but like a sentient, human-sized polio virus). Yeah, and the whole thing will come together when Edward Hopper's ghost appears and tells the D.A. how to save the town from being steam-rolled into a golf course for Piermont residents.
As for the businesses and residents in the neighborhood, we'll give them permit parking stickers in a big finale that crescendos with the whole town's lovable characters flying jazz-hands amid the refrain "Thaaaaat's Nyyyyy-aaaaaacck!" (which looks horrible in print, but you get my drift).
It's so simple I'm surprised nobody's thought of it before.