http://www.ballardnewstribune.com/2008/07/14/news/design-your-own-new-bike-rack

Boy did I smile cheek to cheek when the Monday after our reunion the economy started crashing hard.

With those six one hundred dollar bills tallied for each of us came thousands more worth in paperwork alone and gasoline again to deliver all the notices that the check is in the mail if only we’d file our optional tax forms for a change.

That’s right! According to the tax law, filing a 1040 (or equivalent) is optional, and many of us don’t. The men with the guns paid with money from the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank will argue otherwise, but taxing our hard earned work income is unconstitutional. In fact, when nearly a century ago bankers tried to make it mandatory, the proposed Amendment to our Constitution wasn’t ratified; that is, wasn’t signed into law.

Just ask a tax lawyer to find where in all their law books it’s mandatory we pay income tax and they’ll blow a ton of hot air trying to avoid the subject. (I’d suggest bringing a wind powered generator just to store some of that energy because gasoline surely isn’t going to get us through this crisis.)

I cringe to think how many people actually jumped on those six hundred dollar checks because I could not in my right mind allow myself to kick the economy when it was down by accepting mine.

You *are* kidding, right?

(1) it’s not 1:1 car:bike ratio. These racks fit how many bikes? In this photo (http://post.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/02/02/1233623337-img_0500.jpg) I count 5 bikes with room for 5 to 10 more bicycles. That means, per inch of parking space, more people are being served.

(2) where do the people who staff these businesses park? This one space provides 5 to 15 people with affordable, free parking so that they can get to work and keep more of their paychecks.

(3) “making the neighborhood one parking spot lighter is not a way to encourage commerce between the neighborhoods” — the neighborhood was made 10 parking spots RICHER. How can you be so clueless?

(4) sidewalks are for walking, not parking or riding.

Why take up valuable real estate on the street, perhaps the only real estate that is still holding strong in value, when the sidewalk outside The Broadway Market is a more appropriate choice.

The perception that we bitch too much in this here town is as tired as asserting that we are funky. We don’t bitch enough here in Seattle. Besides, no would hear us from up on this high horse anyway.

Just the other day, at my job as a valet, after my coworker bought a lottery ticket, we were talking about what we would do if we won. I said that I would go to the top of a very tall building downtown, and dump a few hundred thousand down onto the street below. People would lose their shit for that cash, in this town, in any town. It would be sweet.

Hundies would rain and we would bitch, really now. Sheesh. Peace out ever’ buddy.