Light-Rail and the Symphony | 05/18/2009 |
 Saturday, the Meesh and I took a cultural day off. We went to the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Phoenix Symphony.
Parking in downtown Phoenix appears to have become a precious
commodity, since the parking structures now charge ten to twelve
dollars for "event" parking, and events now happen every weekend. This
being an increase of 100-140% of the prices in the last couple years,
we finally found a reason to use the light-rail.
Now, I have disagreed with the implementation of the light-rail,
and I have a number of reasons that I won't go into here, not the least
of which is that it runs no where near where I live or work, so I can't
use it to commute (the primary reason for its existence); However,
where it comes to parking in downtown Phoenix (and Tempe, but mostly
Phoenix) it has provided a nice loop-hole to the parking issue.
Along with the light rail, "park and ride" lots have been created.
You park in these lots for free, and for $2.50 per person, you can ride
the light rail ALL DAY. So, if you do the math, it's $5 for parking.
And thus, we made use of a convenient loop-hole for parking, and took smelly public transportation. It was our first trip on the light-rail. The trip wasn't unpleasant, but I'm hard pressed to see anything overtly beneficial to it beyond skirting the parking fees in downtown Phoenix. On top of this, the last train leaves at 11pm, so if you're thinking about going out and having a good time at a bar on the weekend, expect to get home using a taxi or bus, because the bars still close at 2am. Hell, we just went to the symphony, and we had to catch the last train (serves us for being chatty with the person that invited us. That 15 minute conversation almost cost us extra).
The museum was nice, nothing "special" going on. The symphony played a tribute to Rogers and Hammerstein, so if you've seen their Broadway shows or movies, you'll get an idea of the theme of the night. It was fun, and the person who'd invited us is in the chorus on stage, so that was neat as well.
All round, it was a good day.
Of course, I still disagree about the light-rail, but it does make for cheaper parking.
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Sounds like a great day! Zen Jen and I used to do stuff like this all the time. Lots of fun! 