by Sean McCallum
Webmaster

This year, with “The Pit” closed,
student parking at Shoreline Com-
munity College is looking more hag-
gard in the morning than Bea Arthur
after a night out with Lindsay Lohan.
There are, of course, some alterna-
tives to driving to school that could save you this daily parking hangover. Students can carpool or take the bus.

Not being much of a swimmer myself, I don’t carpool, but I’ve taken the bus and it’s not such a bad prospect except that I have to walk ten blocks, which gets miserable as the weather turns foul. Also, the round trip on the bus currently costs me more than gas for the same trip, so I’ve cast that option into the fire.

Another alternative is to park in the Sears lot and take a shuttle to campus. That’s a bad option for me because the closer I get to Sears, the more likely I am to apply for credit there so I can finance that $1500 uber-BBQ that easily fits a small family on the grill. Nope, I’m too much of a sucker for long-pork to risk it. Short of cannibalism, what can I do to solve my parking problem?

A motorcycle would probably help, but even a used vehicle is not in my budget, let alone the sidecar I’d need for my overstuffed calculus book. I’ve also thought about joining the throngs that set up their tents in the best parking stalls at night, but I’d have to purchase a generator to run my laptop in order to do my homework while camping. I figured that if I had to run down to Sears for a generator, I may as well just park there and get the Barbara-que instead.

No, my best bet, like that of many others, is to do whatever is necessary to secure a spot in one of the on-campus lots. My personal schedule prohibits getting here early enough to park near the tent city, so with these options out, I suppose it’s time that I joined the growing number of student drivers involved in the sport of Parking Lot Jousting, or as it’s called locally, “Lot Jousting.”

Lot Jousting has no hard and fast regulations or on-field officials to mitigate disputes, but follows localized, dialectical rules. As it’s played here at SCC, it is not the actionpacked spectator sport that its horse-faced ancestor was. In fact, it’s mostly a waiting game; an elite contest of patience generally only watched by other players and those that are filthy-rich enough to be smoking cigarettes at the ringside shelters.

Lot Jousting tournaments begin when all of the most sought-after parking spaces are full. Each player craftily maneuvers into place so that each row contains two opponents facing each other from opposite ends in a one-on-one face-off. In longer parking rows, additional contestants can edge in a fair distance ahead of an occupied launch pad, effectively cutting the playing field in half for the player behind him.

While putting the new player in the running for a parking space, this also puts him or her in double-jeopardy as there is risk of being lanced not only by the front, but also from the rear, which sounds like an uncomfortable prospect at best.

Once in position, competitors wait in place until an “Occupier” comes forth to claim a parked car from a stall in the contested row. Instant wins often occur without a “Challenge” if the now-vacant stall is noticeably closer to one opponent. A Challenge occurs when the Occupier is arguably parked equidistant from the viable opponents.

When the Occupier begins backing out, all Challengers lower their lances and rush at each other to converge at the contested stall, leaving the departing Occupier feeling like a bleeding sheep standing on a raw T-bone between two rabid lions.

The result is that all contestants except for one yield at the last moment before any lances actually connect with their targets. The remaining driver is declared the winner and awarded the parking space, while losers gracefully acquiesce by rapidly flashing their headlights, loudly reciting select entries from a slang dictionary while making digital appeasement gestures or laying on the horn. The pre-contact deferment is crucial to the sport of Lot Jousting and what actually makes it a sport, rather than vehicular assault.

Because there are no on-field officials, this civil pastime relies on its well-mannered players to follow the many nuanced and even tacit regulations as opposed to committing the sort of mindless incidents of road rage that you might read about in off-campus newspapers for the unwashed. New players are always welcome. In fact, you’ll often see novices practicing without lances, but for anyone still considering participation in this refined collegiate competition, it is recommended that you observe the veteran players in action first and familiarize yourself with the etiquette of the thing before you go quixotically charging in.