Dusting off the mothballs on this thread in the interest of tying up loose ends.
What may be the last in another round of meetings regarding access to and parking on 8th street was held yesterday, between owners of properties and businesses there and city tourism and transit officials. The result was that
8th street has been declared a newly pedestrianized zone, closed to traffic just as 5th Ave or some of the other cross streets (calle 4, for example, where Mimi del Mar is). Indeed a police officer was stationed right between Jungla Caribe and La Parrilla this morning when I came in, with a line of 5-6 orange cones between those two locales, and whereas yesterday the street was more or less full with parked cars, today there were only 5, evidently those that haven't been driven out yet.
Naturally this is Mexico and enforcement in particular is always somewhat questionable and variable. However this move appears to be more or less definitive and permanent, as the meeting was convened by tourism head Lenin Amaro, there were more owners or owner representatives at the meeting than there ever have been before (including several who showed up for the first time), a vote was formally taken and counted after discussion, and, for example, paperwork is already going around regarding the 1,000 pesos or so that each owner will be paying the city every month to cover the salary of the officials like the one I mentioned above.
Why so many would support this idea is a bit beyond us, as it seems both unnecessary (if people could revert to exercising a bit more common sense and respect, as in the past, with a little consistent enforcement to help), and we can only chalk it up to lack of deeper thought and the success of some politicking among some owners. Chief among those in favor of simply re-establishing the previous system, with increased mutual respect and consistent enforcement, were us, Treetops and Dive Mike, though a few others were also involved. Ironically the chosen speaker for the side arguing to close the street was definition the one with the least knowledge of the history of this subject, namely a woman from Mosquito Beach who had not been at previous meetins and who (based on her comments) would appear now to be the manager of the Mosquito properties (though just who is the
responsable there can be rather a tricky question, in our experience).
[Note that I say that about being the least informed precisely because of the late arrival of that property and its personnel on the street, after the period in which the previous arrangement for parking was working well. I'm not on a vendetta against her personally, as was suggested in the fray of the meeting.
]
Unfortunately while things did work before, what we have seen in the past is a proliferation of the cones-at-the-(alleged-)entrance battle, whether somewhat more excessive involving half a dozen spaces
or more reasonable, involving just 1-2
but of course adding up to big problems when everybody started doing it. Which is to say it's basically another case where the world would work better except that people are too unwilling to be respectful and cooperate (if you ask me, at least).
Well that and, as I say, not a lot of evident thought going into the decision-making process, and a fair amount of what seemed to be rather questionable or maybe irrelevant input, such as that guests don't complain about loud music from clubs even right nextdoor at hotels on 5th, but do complain about noise from people walking down the street. (
Just why that bit of info, even if strangely true, would mean 8th street should be pedestrianized just as 5th is frankly escaped me.)
Anyway, I should add that officials indicated what we already suspected, namely that other streets would follow. (The MB2 rep seemed a little more concerned when that was said about 12th street!) And they went on to add that eventually, there would be no free parking in the tourist zone anywhere. Those folks who built that huge parking garage diagonally opposite La Tortuga would seem to have excellent timing.
Well maybe that does it for this topic, and as always, FWIW...
Steve