From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Milpitas Peeves (was: more flashers)
Date: 28 Sep 92 23:15:33 GMT
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



In article <80659@ut-emx.uucp> logan@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Logan Shaw) writes:

>Austin, Texas, with it's typically odd approach to traffic control,
>has two such intersections. 


Our local hotbed of traffic control weirdness is the town Of Milpitas
("mill-PEET-iss," or "little corn fields," for the Spanish-impaired).
Milpitas, also known as ".EBay" in Sun-speak because of our mail-domain
suffixes, is the southernmost town on the eastern side of San Francisco 
Bay, southeast of our other campuses in Mountain View and Menlo Park.  

Aside from being a sterile, soulless little burg with too much traffic, no 
downtown as such and no discernible color or personality, Milpitas also has
a pervasively braindead style of traffic control.  The place is full of signs
saying that you can't do necessary and perfectly reasonable things like
make a U-turn at a logical place or turn right against a red light.  What
makes the town all the more annoying is that this general mindset carries
over into the private sector. 

Milpitas is full of strip malls and small shopping centers whose parking 
lots have insufficient and/or bizarrely placed driveways, and for some 
unknown reason, adjacent parking lots are usually separated by low concrete 
partitions and flowerbeds which make it impossible to move between them 
without plunging back into the town's characteristically heavy traffic --
which all too often is backed up in front of the driveway from the nearest
perpetually-red traffic light.

The entire situation was encapsulated for me early on when I made the ill-
advised mistake of chancing a lunchtime trip to the local Togo's, the Bay 
Area's best sub-san snarfiteria (presumably named after the WWII Japanese 
general), with branches Almost Everywhere(tm).  Venturing forth from the 
Sun campus, I drove into town and turned into the small parking lot of the
strip-mall in which the Milpitas Togo's is located.  This was a little after
noon, and I noticed immediately that the small, preposterously inadequate 
lot was completely full.  I also realized that instead of there being a 
driveway at either end, the only exit from the tightly packed lot was the 
way I'd come in -- and by this time, predictably, there was another car 
behind me.

I was driving my truck that day, and since it's fitted with a rather large
camper shell, it wasn't readily apparent to the people behind me that there
were no remaining parking spaces, or that I had no way out but to back up.  

Figuring that simply showing my backup lights would prove insufficient, I 
had to yank the parking brake, unbuckle my seat belt, get out, walk back 
and explain this as briefly as possible to the driver of the car behind
me, who by that point was also blocked in by someone behind *him* -- it was
one of those situations in which the standard repertoire of gesticulations
would've proven woefully inadequate.  I was eventually able to back gingerly
out using my oversized side mirrors, without running into anyone or being
rear-ended by another vehicle.  By that point I'd lost my interest in Togo's
fare on general principles and sworn never to return to that particular
restaurant.  


Geoff


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Newsgroups: alt.peeves