It’s difficult to nail down why we love the things that we love. For whatever reason, there are some things that excite us and turn us on emotionally that really don’t do much for other people. I can gush enthusiastically about utilitarian cell phone designs or old-school video game intros, while someone else gets jazzed about mid-’80s fashion advertisements or World War II-era tanks.
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For this gentleman by the name of Gareth Wild, he’s really, really into a wonderfully laid-out parking lot. And while I don’t go over the moon and become a ball of passion for the concrete structures, I can appreciate one that was created with a lot of thought in mind. Getting people in and out of a location conveniently and without congestion is no easy task.
He’s got a “top 5” list of different car parks in Bromley that are just the bee’s knees, and the one at the Sainsbury’s is one of his favorite. He even provided a wonderful satellite view of the said car park so people can appreciate its beauty.
If you think that Gareth’s a little weird for loving car parks so much, think about that the next time you’re trying to get out of a Chick-fil-A.
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Like anyone who’s obsessed with something they enjoy, he began to dig a little deeper with the Sainsbury’s car park and began to wonder: how long would it take to park in every single spot in the lot?
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For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all. This week I completed my Magnum Opus! A thread.
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
So instead of just walking around and manually counting out each spot to make a map, he employed the use of Google to get a satellite view and then plotted out the viable parking spots.
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I live in Bromley and almost always shop at the same Sainsbury’s in the centre of town, here’s a satellite view of their car park. It’s a great car park because you can always get a space and it is laid out really well. Comfortably in my top 5 Bromley car parks. pic.twitter.com/Q1CwLdFqJ3
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
After quite a few years of going each week I started thinking about how many of the different spots I’d parked in and how long it would take to park in them all. My life is one long roller coaster.
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
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Of course there were some spaces that weren’t available for his vehicle to be parked in. He discounted the motorcycle spots along with areas designated for disabled and handicapped commuters.
Rather than walking around the car park counting each space and exposing myself as a lunatic, I used the overhead view to mark out a vector image to make it easier to identify each space.
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
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The orange boxes dotted around the car park are trolley bays, the black space is an irregular shaped patch which is too small for a car and is therefore void and then there are a number of family, disabled and a motorcycle bays. pic.twitter.com/EWJE2xOCYo
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
He thought that he’d be able to accomplish this task in a matter of four years. That’s right, this dude had a four year plan of hitting up every parking space at his local Sainsbury’s, ticking off each space.
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I don’t own a motorcycle and I’m not disabled but I do have children so I can legitimately use the family spaces. This means that in the car park there are 211 parking spaces that I needed to conquer.
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
To make it easy for me to identify which space I was parking in I assigned each ‘block’ a letter and within each block, bay numbers which I would make note of on my phone and then add it all to my super awesome spreadsheet. pic.twitter.com/y785tdxhhw
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
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The COVID-19 pandemic did make things a bit more difficult, especially with all of the insanity surrounding grocery stores and the great TP shortage of 2020.
The spreadsheet has been given a bit of extra razzle dazzle to spruce it up a bit for presentation but this is it, this is 6 years of monotony. pic.twitter.com/kjCpMXeKo6
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
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For anyone keen on taking a pilgrimage to the Bromley Sainsbury’s car park to bathe in my glory I’ve also marked out the best and worst spots to park because I’m such a swell guy. Seriously though, avoid the spaces next to the trolley bays, they’re just terrible. pic.twitter.com/M5gNBRJwja
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
However, he was finally able to accomplish his goal of parking his car in every spot in a matter of six years. And he has the hard data to back it up.
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I will now be taking a short AMA for all you car park nuts. Fire away.
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
If you like car parks you’ll love donating to food banks, @BromleyFoodbank do amazing work across the borough and have drop off bins in Sainsbury, so why not visit the historic car park and do some good whilst you’re there!
— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021
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He’s basically the John Wick of getting his car into parking spaces.
What’s more is that he decided to spread his knowledge for the benefit of all other shoppers as well.
I would like to know your reasoning on parking spots to avoid. Especially this one: it’s close to the front so it seems that it would be considered a “god tier” spot but you labeled it as “avoid”. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/6jZJl5FshP
— 𝔹𝕣𝕚𝕥 🦒ᴱⁿᵈᵘʳᵉ & ˢᵘʳᵛⁱᵛᵉ (@britinthewoods) April 28, 2021
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have you considered an autism diagnosis? this very cool experiment is something we would absolutely do and lots of my also-aut friends have commented on how cool this is
— josefina awareness month (ongoing) (@vaccinelover666) April 27, 2021
He highlighted the best and worst parking spots one can snatch up while frequenting the grocery store, which left some people with questions about his car parking preferences along with…other queries.
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have you considered an autism diagnosis? this very cool experiment is something we would absolutely do and lots of my also-aut friends have commented on how cool this is
— josefina awareness month (ongoing) (@vaccinelover666) April 27, 2021
I walked every street in Edinburgh in lockdown. A friend just recommended your thread to me as my next challenge! You Sir are a hero. Lovely work. pic.twitter.com/LRBwl9CTVx
— Gary Wicksted (@chegaw) April 27, 2021
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And people were very thankful for his contributions. Mostly, though, folks were impressed that he stuck to such a mundane tasks.
Can you label the best and worst streets like he did with the parking spaces? 🙂 What are the ‘god-tier’ streets (and which ones should I avoid!).
— Michael Taylor (@hammer_mt) April 28, 2021
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If you drove an Audi you’d have been able to complete this in half the time by parking across two bays
— PW (@waltonyeah) April 27, 2021
It clearly made him happy to do so, and of course there were some detractors who criticized Gareth, asking him if he didn’t have anything better to do.
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I love this sort of thing. I have logged all my 883 fights and mapped all the airports, hotels and sports arenas I have visited. Not sure why but it could come in handy if I ever needed to prove to the police where I was…
— Matt Bunnell (@mattbun) April 27, 2021
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But he is the company director of a creative brand, and he did go viral for doing so. I mean if this guy can make parking spaces interesting, then there’s a good chance he’d be able to do more with inherently cooler subject matter.
Never in all my years have I witnessed someone document 📃 such an utter waste of time. You did make me laugh 😂. I have shared your tweet with many of my family of what they should never do if board and why.
— Engineer3kids (@sean3kids) April 28, 2021
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Do you go in front first (better boot access) or reverse, meaning better parking (generally) but worse boot access, generally?
— Daniel Cornwell (@CornwellDaniel) April 27, 2021
It also got people thinking (I know it did for me) about some of the “niche” ideas/things that I’m a big fan of that I’d like to inspect a little further.
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Hahaha I love the completely pointless nature of this and your determination to complete it lol 🤣🤣🤣
— MillenialBoomer #xrp $xrp #xlm $xlm ripple hodl’r (@MillenialBoome1) April 27, 2021
What about your? What are your obsessions that are peculiar to you that you could talk for hours about and do something creative with? Is it parking lots as well? If so, you should probably hit Gareth up.
Source : https://www.distractify.com/p/supermarket-parking-lot-chart