When did an open parking space become the measure of self-worth for the denizens of Ketchum?
The debate over a proposed zoning change to allow development of a new, second grocery store there has the aggrieved parking-deprived beginning to show up at hearings in full voice.
It's astonishing to hear the whining and complaining about having to walk or push a grocery cart a block coming from a community where pride is a matter of hiking to the top of a 3,000-foot mountain carrying food and water—and then hiking down again. (It's worth noting that truly disabled shoppers can park in specially marked spaces near the door of Atkinsons' Market.)
It's amazing to hear people with closets packed with clothes for every conceivable condition whine about the weather in which they sometimes must go to the market in a place where weather is notably serene compared to other wind-whipped Idaho towns.
What's more puzzling is the painful and debilitating shyness that apparently overtakes them when they enter Ketchum's sole grocery store.
When the food in their carts reaches a certain height, they are rendered mute and incapable of asking market employees to push the carts to their cars. Or, they become too frightened to ask employees to load their purchases into their car at the front door of the store after they retrieve it from wherever it may be parked.
Can these be the same citizens who demand that a space be available for them at the market's front door on any day and at any time in July or August, the valley's two busiest months of the year?
Has living life at the elevation of 6,000 feet really distorted their visual acuity so much that they can't see that distances in sea-of-asphalt parking areas around big box stores and shopping malls are similar to a block or two or three in Ketchum?
Some people's judgment has become so impaired that it's impossible for them to recognize that zoning has largely protected them from the unsightly sins of urban commercial sprawl that once threatened to dominate the Wood River Valley.
If valley life were all about instant parking and cheap goods, residents long ago would have torn down the zoning barricades to allow big box stores and drive-in mom-and-pops to populate both sides of state Highway 75. They would have been content to watch as sprawl gutted the area's downtowns as businesses collapsed or moved out in search of cheap land and car-centered convenience.
Contrary to myth, parking problems in Ketchum are few and far between these days. The problem lies not on the street, but between the ears of the impatient.
