On Thursday, the Savannah City Council approved an $8 million contract increase for the site remediation and development of a parking lot for the Enmarket Arena. This letter to the editor by Clinton Edminster – a self-described “Business Owner, Award Winner, Thought Leader, and Five-Time Academy Awards Watcher” – is his not-sarcastic-in-any-way response to the expense.
Dear Editor,
I write today in full-throated support of the City’s visionary investment for the remediation and construction of a parking lot near the Arena. This dazzling expanse of asphalt will undoubtedly captivate visitors and hotel developers alike, flocking to the endless expanse of heat as their bodies glisten from sweat tinged with the aroma of oil and cheap bourbon recently consumed from a River Street shots-for-a-dollar emporium housed in a former pirate brothel.
However, beneath the soon to be re-virginated surface lies a hidden opportunity of immense consequence to our landmark status as a hotbed of sexual deviancy and protected perversion – a status our tourism industry can’t afford to lose. Once the land is restored to it’s virgin beauty it’s likely the city may consider the development of yet another blow-it-out-your-nose hotel. But who needs a box of sleeping lazies?
Dear editor, let us pound our elected officials, over and over again, demanding the immediate construction of a multi-story, taxpayer-funded, gay bar. Imagine the synergy: publicly funded parking paired with municipally mandated young men, oiled up in leather harnesses, making fruity drinks and validating your parking. It’s intoxicating.
What better monument to our utter disinterest in sidewalks, bike lanes, smart growth, or a coherent public transit system than a glistening young pole dancer / former SCAD student named “Infrastructure” sliding down a three-inch steel rod like the property values surrounding the parking lot.
Sure, some naysayers may gag at the construction of a parking lot the size of Forsyth Park, when so many other interesting, less costly, and not-so-completely butt-ugly ideas were floated like community gardens, outdoor markets, bike lanes, or literally anything that doesn’t look like the most boring section of land on earth designed by a team with a vendetta against beauty, shade, and joy.
But I ask you: will a community garden serve tequila shots at midnight? Will an outdoor market grind against zoning codes while Bad Bunny plays at full volume? Will a bike lane slap poppers under your nose and whisper “Daddy” while making eye contact with the parking police? I think not.
Let us pave! Let us remediate! Let us oil the wheels of economic development with literal oil appliead to literal men. Let us build what we all desire deep down, near the trauma of our auto-centric god, a shimmering shrine to soulless convenience, an expanse of scorched pavement where trees go to die, dreams go to idle, and the only culture is exhaust.
Nothing says “vibrant community” like a sea of parked SUVs, and the echo of what could have been. It could have been a gay bar.
Forever yours, erect with municipal pride,
Clinton Edminster
Business Owner, Award Winner,
Thought Leader, and Five-Time Academy Awards Watcher
More (significantly less snarky) columns by Clinton Edminster
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