Watch for Radical Lefts and Rights when driving in downtown Columbus on Friday nights
The Radical Left was against the law, I thought, but by practice no prohibition persists, apparently.
The “Radical Left” in this context is not a political movement. It’s a traffic maneuver drivers pull in downtown Columbus, while they’re hunting for diagonal parking along the medians of four-lane avenues.
It’s an abrupt left turn from the right lane across the left lane into a parking slot, without a turn signal — of course, because this is Columbus — nor any warning to other drivers, such as a hand wave or finger or other gesture.
The strategy here perhaps is that creeping along in the right lane enables you better to see ahead, should an empty space be up the avenue, and that way it won’t sneak up on you.
But the suburban assault vehicles so fashionable today can hide an empty space in their shadows, and if it ambushes drivers while they’re horror-movie spider-crawling up the right lane, they’re smashing the gas and cutting left.
If you happen to be coming up behind them, you cannot assume they are outsiders so impressed by our downtown architecture they have to block traffic to gaze at it in wonder. (“Look, Bill! That building’s going to have a balcony, too! Amazing!”)
You can’t pass them like you would the sightseers or other people who park in the street for no apparent reason, or the ones who don’t know not to stop at cross-street red lights when they’re turning off a divided avenue on a green and nothing’s coming.
If you try to cut around them at the same time they see a free space on the far side of your lane, they’re going to take a Radical Left right in front of you, especially if they think you’re trying to steal the space.
Thunderdome
The other night I naively ran an errand forgetting it was Friday when all the theaters were going and everyone downtown was trying strategically to street-park an assault vehicle to go out to eat and make the show.
Though I was just running this gauntlet, it was like venturing onto the set of some apocalyptic hellscape where wild-eyed survivalists in homemade battle tanks were fighting for advantage.
Beyond the Radical Left was the Radical Right: Like I was northbound on First Avenue at 11th Street in the right lane when a white pickup to my left hit the gas and made a Radical Right to cut me off at the light — ensuring he would get to any empty space in the next block before I did.
You hate to think what could happen if some of the zombie jaywalkers ever stumble into this Uptown Thunderdome.
Last summer I saw a guy talking on his cell phone as he obliviously crossed a one-way street under a green light, with the phone blocking his view of the traffic charging toward his flank.
This may be understandable, downtown at midday in midsummer, when the spotlight sun bounces blindingly off the pavement, leaving people dazed. “Nearly always the sky was a glassy, brilliant azure and the sun burned down riotously bright,” native author Carson McCullers described it in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.”
I should have shot a picture of him, had using a device with both hands while driving been legal, because Oblivious Cell Phone Guy could have gone viral being photoshopped into other settings: Oblivious Cell Phone Guy strolls through the Australian wildfires; Oblivious Cell Phone Guy crosses the stage in front of the president at a campaign rally; Oblivious Cell Phone Guy wanders onto the set of “The Walking Dead” as stunned extras stare.
You just don’t want to imagine Oblivious Cell Phone Guy crossing against the light, between the Radical Left and the Radical Right, downtown on a Friday night, when everyone is not so riotously bright.