Suddenly, after all these years, the administration and the city of Kalispell have figured it out. By closing off Smokers' Corner, its present occupants are suddenly going to disappear, and since they can't park there anymore, they'll be so discouraged they won't park anywhere at all. All those problems - the littering, the immature behavior and those incessant cigarette fumes permeating the air - will magically go away.
That's the idea, anyway. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?
For one thing, it's strange that one would think students would no longer congregate there. It's their lungs that are fried, not their legs. How difficult is it for students to walk over there? It's just across the street from the school, and with an open campus I'd wager students would still eat lunch, smoke cigarettes, tell off-color jokes and blatantly litter those neighbors' lawns. It is, after all, called Smokers' Corner, not Parkers' Corner.
The intersection of Forth Avenue West and Sixth Street has been a smokers' haven longer than I can remember. We would walk by the area my first grade year and watch all the "slippies" over on "Stoners' Corner." The '80s have turned into the '90s. That corner is exactly the same as 10 years ago, give or take a few fences.
A place with such a history won't die easily.
Imagine the parking congestion caused by closing off the block to parking. It would worsen the present parking shortage. Surely the city of Kalispell remembers funding those new parking lots last year. And still, not a spot can be found within a two-block radius on any given school day.
By closing an entire street, the parking shortage will only get worse. Much worse.
If the present occupants of the corner abandon it (like I said, they probably won't), it is very likely that they'll just find another corner. Remember, there are two smokers' corners already: the present one, which parking will be shut off to, and the intersection of Third Avenue and Seventh Street. By closing off one corner, the two areas will merge into one Mega Smokers' Corner, and the administration will have created an even bigger problem there.
So that leaves us with one solution: close all parking to all students. Require each and every student to walk to school, even in the dead of winter.
Come to think of it, that probably wouldn't work either. I can see it now: there, in the snow,
wind and subzero temperatures, would be 30 smokers over on Smokers' Corner, drawing that
next dose of nicotine into their lungs.