Last night I went to the night market in Richmond for the second time this season. I’ve been many many times before in years past, but never have I been so frustrated with my experience. I was super excited for the food and to walk around the stalls selling the most random stuff ever, but as soon as I arrived, that enthusiasm evaporated. Never have I seen the market so packed.
First off, the parking – its horrendous. We had planned to arrive around 7:30. We had wanted to get there right when the market opened at 7, but decided that the stalls were probably not going to be open yet so we went a little bit later. BAD idea. I think everyone had the same thought cause when we got there, there were massive amounts of people arriving. Asians, you put them in a crowd, in summer heat, all in cars and you have a recipe for disaster. Seriously ridiculous. People were parking illegally in bus stops and in front of fire hydrants! Granted there were like 30 hydrants in the span of a (very) long block (if you count both sides – no joke), but seriously people! USE YOUR HEAD! So we decided, fine, we’ll just go and pay for parking. There is one lot that is really close to the market and others that are further away, but for the same price. Obviously we went to the one closer, but by the time we got to the front of the line (it was a very long line), they told us that there were no more spots. I felt bad for the cars in front of us that paid and couldn’t find parking. We drove through the lot without paying and if we really wanted to, we could have hung around to score some free parking, but people were being stupid and crazy, so we decided not to stay. The guy at the front of the lot should have had a clicker and know exactly how many spots there are in the lot – save a lot of frustration for all the other workers. I think the guy letting cars out got a lot of people yelling at him because they paid and couldn’t find a parking spot. As we drove by, we could hear him swearing at himself. Seriously – people are stupid.
Then there are the pedestrians. Its like they’re asking to be run over. There are barriers set up for a reason! FOLLOW THEM! People are dashing in front of cars, crossing the street without regard to traffic. There are people there to help with the flow of traffic, but they always get their signals mixed up and contribute more to the problems.
Once we got into the market, it got even worse. The crowd was massive. So many people. The food stalls were the worse. You could barely even move. To make matters even worse, people decided that it was great idea to push their strollers through the crowd. Who looked at that crowd and decided “yes I’m going to add to the madness by pushing my kid through it in my stroller" and that it was a good idea?! Seriously people, USE YOUR HEAD! Common sense! Your kid isn’t going to appreciate it, other people aren’t going to appreciate it, you aren’t going to appreciate it when people won’t move for you, SO WHY DO IT?! Then there were the dogs… sigh same thing. Your dog sure won’t appreciate the massive crowds, especially since most of the ones I saw were tiny toy dogs.
They redesigned the market this year, making a lot of the aisle shorter and moving the stage to the centre. Its not very conductive to the movement of people and the end result are huge bottlenecks where people just don’t move. The people running this operation need to take a class in operations management and logistics, or maybe just need an ounce of common sense…
Bah – I’m never going when the weather is nice again. I’ll wait for the cold, crummy weather days to go.
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