Okay, I will be up front about this. I’m about to grind a proverbial ax. Your hero (that would be me) is whizzed off and before I explode into a heap of smoldering ash I needed to vent (or whine, your call).
Without further eloquence, I will cut to the chase: Don’t spend your money visiting that southern Oakland County city known as Royal Oak. They don’t really want you there, they only want your money (and city government has stacked the deck to make sure they get their cut of your money).
If you want to take your family out for a nice time, stay up here in God’s country.
Visit our local eateries, theaters and places of entertainment — in communities that actually want folks to visit and are welcoming. Don’t go to Royal Oak, Michigan, they’re money-grubbing types, whose sole purpose is to pickpocket you.
Stay in Clarkston, Ortonville, Goodrich, Oxford or Lake Orion — or if you’re feeling sassy, trip on down to Auburn Hills, Waterford, Pontiac or even Birmingham. Just steer clear of Royal Oak, I don’t want you to be forced to pad the city coffers with your hard-earned dollars.
I feel sorry for the businesses there, because there are some good ones. Oh, well, I reckon it sucks to be them.
What has caused this total outrage?
About a month ago I took my family there for my birthday.
Two of the guys from the SciFy cable TV show, Ghost Hunters were in town, talking about their show. The boys (Shamus and Sean) and I dig that show, so I bought tickets. We had reservations at an Italian restaurant near the theater.
That evening, when I found a parking spot in a parking lot, outside with salty slush every where, I pulled in… and much to my chagrin noticed something we don’t have up here in our local business districts: money sucking parking meters. I didn’t see anywhere else to park in this unfriendly city called Royal Oak, Michigan!
It’s not like the city doesn’t charge enough taxes to the local business owners to take care of running their government. Nope, Royal Oak, Michigan’s motto must be, ‘Let’s ding the out of towners, too!? Money grubbing, nickel-diming pesky parking meters.
And, not the new ones where you can electronically make deposits, Royal Oak has the old crappy ones which burns through coinage like a whole in your pocket. We searched the car, put all the change we could scrounge up into the meter, then trudged through the shoddily unkept parking lot, through the windy, cold January night to our destination.
I looked and didn’t see any dollar to coin changers either. That convenience might cause the city’s bank roll to shrink, I guess.
Our local parking lots in our business districts have no meters. Our local business districts actually want people to come, have a good time, leave and then come back! I think Royal Oak, Michigan is living off their reputation as a ‘cool? city and figure if you don’t come back, it’s no skin off their backsides.
Normally, I do stuff locally, but this one time I went against my routine and tried to do something different, nice. I pinched my pennies, and saved money for the big Saturday night event. Between dinner and the tickets, we spent close to $400 in their city. I will not spend another dime in their city and I will make sure I tell as many people as I can, to save their money for other communities. Royal Oak, Michigan doesn’t want you to visit. Royal Oak, Michigan is a city that is not welcoming.
I just told you a lie. I will give them 25 more dollars. When we got back to the car, on the windshield was a $10 parking ticket. Less than a month later, I got a notice in the mail from their local court my fine had more than doubled and was now $25. I am gonna? pay the $25 ransom. I am going to wrap the check in a copy of this column — which will go, in print to about 20,000 households in northeastern Oakland County and Goodrich.
I am going to post this column on-line, where our website gets about 5,000 visits (not hits) a day to make sure the on-line readers can feel my pain. I am going to link it to as many Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter pages as I can encourage sharing.
I know, I am just a hick from ‘up north? and should not have expected those Royal Oak city slickers to be as accommodating us we yokels.
I know, I know: I should have gotten change in the restaurant, left my kids at the table, gone back outside, trudged back through the salty slushy parking lot and fed the meter my money, only to have walk back through the crappy Royal Oak kept parking lot to my family. I should have.
Or the city leaders could make it easy to park, easy to pay the meter instead of just paying somebody to write tickets.
So, one more thing, just to be clear: Don’t visit Royal Oak, Michigan — they only want your money. Hey, while we’re at it, what’s your crappy Royal Oak, Michigan experience?
Send your experiences to Don@ShermanPublications.org