This place? Ick.
To start, it might be called Stanford University Parking Structure 7, but when you type that into Google Maps, it shows you the way to Campus Drive Knight Management Center Garage. That mouthful is the official name of Parking Structure 7, which might be helpful to Stanford insiders who know where the Knight Management Center is, but I'm not a Stanford insider (thankfully), but I do deal with college locations and location names on a daily basis for my work, and I can tell you that Stanford is doing it wrong, because it should just be the Knight Center. You don't need to tell us what is taught there. It's not Wheeler English Hall on UC Berkeley's campus; it's just Wheeler Hall.
But donors gonna give give give give give, so we have to name things after people who made their billions directly off the exploitation of sweatshop labor. What, I've got the wrong billionaire? Different day, same problem.
The parking structure sucks. It's mysterious as to whether you have to pay. You do. Sometimes. If it's within certain hours. Finding a spot on a Sunday was harder than I thought, but there were other basketball-game parkers as well. But upon leaving? We had to wait almost forty-five minutes to go up one level because this place has the worst traffic-management and merging and exiting ever. OK, not ever, but it's really bad.
So the entire time we're waiting in this line, I'm wondering whether I should have paid; maybe all these people are stopping to pay. Apparently, they weren't. It's just poor design.
I read up on the actual process of paying for parking later, and you know what? There are no attendants and no machines. Nope, you have to download an app to pay. I realize that the world is changing, but there are still old people around who want to attend sporting events, concerts, movies, and plays. Stop forcing everyone to download your dumb app. Let people pay either way. Belt and suspenders, because society is already needlessly cruel, expensive, and stupid. Stanford makes plenty of money on tuition alone; they don't need to be charging exorbitant rates for food and drinks or parking at their games. Silicon Valley is sick, as in ill, as in I want to stay away from it and its machinations.
Thanks for the free parking, Stanford! No thanks for wasting all the gas as I waited to get the French out of Parking Structure 7--I mean Campus Drive Knight Management Center Garage. read more