This is one of several transportation stories from the first issue of The Pulp’s new quarterly print edition. Read the rest of the package:
Fresh off the pages of our print quarterly, here’s another batch of Rants & Raves — this time all about getting around Missoula.
Have a gripe to air or a shoutout to give? Doesn’t have to be about getting around town — send us anything. It might appear in The Pulp’s next print edition and right here on our site. Submit by sending an email to rantsandraves@thepulp.org or use the form at the bottom of this page. We’re all ears — no copay required!
Not interested in playing ‘chicken’ with your Subaru Outback
To the drivers who creep halfway into the crosswalk on Brooks and Higgins while I’m trying to get to the other side: No. Absolutely not. You are a rhinoceros pretending to be a housecat. You are a dump truck trying to tiptoe through a yoga class. You are a grizzly bear attempting to politely squeeze into a birdhouse. You are a Roomba with a machete duct-taped to it.
Meanwhile, I’m standing here in a T-shirt and cutoffs with only bone density and prayer to keep me intact. Please just wait the extra two seconds. You’ll survive.
Wrong place for a manhole
Why in the eff did the city of Missoula line the fucking manholes — that sounds weird already — up in a straight line right where your left tire goes on East 6th Street between Higgins and Madison so that you hit them like potholes as you go down the road. EVERY BLOCK. WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM. I’m afraid I’m gonna get pulled over for driving erratically to avoid them!
Milwaukee happy trails
If ever I am feeling fed up to the gills with development, traffic, infill, newcomers, and the growth of our fair city, I know that it is time to pack my panniers, pump up my bike tires, don my helmet, and set out for the Milwaukee Road Trail.
Something inside me starts uncoiling as I roll through the trail under Orange St. and around the adorable and barely necessary bike roundabout where the Bitterroot Branch veers south. Each section of trail reminds me why Missoula is still my home. Russell Underpass — safe and smart. Trailside entrance to Home Resource — semi-secret, insider, old-school Missoula cool. Flourishing pocket community garden. Cute backyards. Fancy and unfancy, side by side.
“Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, turn off the goddamn TVs at the pump.”
The trail does something a little different on each block it passes through. It takes over the sidewalk, or it takes over a lane of the street, or it is placed in a separated bike lane, or it moves away from the streets altogether. I like to think about the various negotiations that it took with neighbors to decide what to do on each block and the persistence of probably decades of Missoulians seeing it through.
By the time I scoot through the underpass, beneath Reserve Street to pick up my vegetables at the farm, I have remembered why, after all this time, I’m still here.
To the gas stations of Missoula
Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, turn off the goddamn TVs at the pump. I don’t need a forced feed of ESPN highlights, local weather, or some perky morning host telling me how to live my life while I stand there with a nozzle in my hand in the hot, hot sun. It’s three minutes of my day. I do not need it filled.
Yes, I know, technically you can “press here to mute.” But the principle is the problem. I don’t want one more screen in my face or one more voice chirping at me about things I should buy or know or care about. I want silence. I want to hear the sound of people laughing on the street or, at night, the Hellgate wind rattling through the valley, or even just the little click of the pump when it shuts off.
Back in my day (and I hate myself for saying that phrase), you could go to a bar with friends and not have 12 LCD screens blasting ESPN2, CNN, and golf highlights all at once. And you certainly did not need an entertainment package to fill your gas tank.
It’s insulting, honestly, that you assume my attention span is so weak that I can’t just exist for a moment. That I can’t possibly handle three peaceful minutes of stillness without needing moving pictures to keep me company. Newsflash: I can.
Signed,
Would Rather Stare at Clouds Than a Gas Pump TV
Pavement dreams
There are so many problems … BUT, the city just had N. 2nd St. fully repaved from the Ryman St. intersection to the Greenough Dr. intersection and — my goodness — what a dream.
Parallel parking rant-rave-rave
Rant: Do you know why there is “no street parking” downtown? Because even with backup cameras, people choose to leave three feet of space on either end of their vehicles when parallel parking.
Rave: There is tons of free parking downtown after 5 p.m. if you’re not afraid to use your eyes and walk 100 feet.
Rave: Most people are so incapable of parallel parking that those of us who can have plenty of parking options.
Light the way
Why can’t the city put the lighted crosswalks on Arthur, Daly and University? When the university is in session and you’re driving Arthur at night, it is frustrating to try to see the students who are walking, looking at their phones, wearing dark clothes and often not even looking up and just walking across! Why?!? Don’t they know the human body will always lose when a car hits it? (Maybe ASUM and the administration can start an education on just this.) I emailed Jennifer Savage about this and heard nothing — perhaps the city is moving on this?
Ode to a roundabout
Oh once-reviled roundabout, you tamer of traffic and streets. I’m no good at telling sweet tales, so I’ll poach some rhymes from Keats: What curb-lined legend speeds around your shape, of battered Saabs or Subarus, or of both, on Higgins or the slants off Beckwith? What commuters or joy-riders are these? What reticent pedestrians? What police pursuit? What struggle not to scrape, a cyclist or fender? What driver’s ed perplexity?
You used to dash my hopes of making it to the dentist on time. Used to bring out my inner demons as I sat stuck behind some addled newbie to your ways, those motorists who never met a Yield sign they didn’t treat as a Stop. Your gradual spread throughout Missoula’s roadscape bedeviled my cross-town momentum. Oh how I cursed your name!
But dammit if familiarity or age hasn’t made me a convert. I find myself stymied at three-way stops dreaming of your elegant flow. In those idle moments I grip the wheel and feel myself blending in behind some janky old Tacoma and navigating your seamless arch. So help me, I wish the city would drop a few more of you around. I’ve even got a running list of intersections where you’d fit right in, if any urban planners are listening. As Keats, again, might say: beauty is a roundabout, a roundabout beauty.
Red light district
The danger for pedestrians downtown, especially Higgins and Broadway is the number of cars running the red lights and not paying attention to the left turn off of Higgins onto Broadway. Back a couple years, I saw an older man hit by someone doing this. The city could make a fortune just installing red light cameras on this and a few other intersections around the city. Besides the boost to the budget, it just very well might slow traffic down to the point where it is safe to walk the intersections. Speaking of sidewalks: There is a city ordinance that makes it illegal to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk downtown unless you are under 15 years. Enforce it or eliminate the ordinance.
Hands-on cycling
Dear hands-free cyclists: Unless you’re auditioning for the circus, could you please keep at least one — preferably both — hands on the handlebars?
As a cyclist myself, I know city streets have a knack for throwing surprises your way: potholes, squirrels with a death wish, car doors and, in my case, a wire hanger I did not see until it wrapped itself around my cassette, throwing me over the handlebars.
When you’re riding with no hands, you’re not just gambling with your own safety. If you lose control and end up under someone’s bumper, that driver and their passengers have to live with that moment, too.
By all means, enjoy the breeze, show off your balance, and pretend you’re in a bicycle commercial. Just save the no-hands routine for an empty bike path, not busy city streets. Don’t be the reason for the ruining of someone’s day or for scratching their car’s paint job!
Zoning and chill
I would like to RAVE about the new zoning framework that creates a path for more diverse housing and density. We have lots of community organizers to thank for a more progressive plan!
I would like to RANT about how much Missoulians complain about parking. It is truly not a big deal to not be able to park literally in front of your home or a business. Chill out, everyone.
Dear road rage
Please leave me alone. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with your intrusive negativity. Yes, the guy on Reserve was driving under the speed limit, and yes, the car windows were rolled up. But did that really give us the right to blow our top? Seriously, the last time I heard swearing like that I was rewatching “Deadwood.” You’d think after all the grounding exercises we’ve learned in therapy, we wouldn’t treat something as minimal as a five-minute delay on the way to Target as a world-ending event. I know it’s partly my fault. If I left the house a little earlier, maybe we’d be under less pressure. Then you wouldn’t feel the need to drop into the passenger’s seat next to me and fume about the elderly driver two cars up being part of some universal plot to ratchet up our blood pressure. Still, that’s super irrational, and your overreactions leave me feeling sheepish and guilty the moment you vanish. As far as I know Jung never did crack the secret to breaking up with an ego state, but here I am anyway asking you to stay away and hoping this time the message sticks. At least until my next drive through Bozeman.
Rants & Raves is your chance to send us complaints, odes, confessions, or a blow-by-blow of something wild you saw go down. What behavior around town makes you irrationally angry? Want to give a graffiti artist their flowers, or declare your love for a specific breakfast burrito? What Missoula phrase makes you want to scream? Give us the details. We’re here for it.
Submissions we publish run anonymously — so let loose. Just be kind. Send your rant or rave (or whatever) to rantsandraves@thepulp.org. Or use this form:
