Blessed by the Potato

Unionville will block the roads for just about anything. A town festival, or a music show, a baseball game or for just a pedestrian-only weekend along the shopping strip, they’ll block that road at the drop of a hat. Any hat. It is, in fact, one of the most popular summer time sports in Unionville, edging out even swimming in a backyard pool.

I don’t really mind the fact that they do it, turning Main St. into a pedestrian mall is often a step in the right direction because there’s usually someone who steps into the road without looking anyway. But it really bugs me how they go about it — they block the road off just before the first usable turn-off. There’s a bit of a drive up Main St. from Hwy 7 before you get to where they block the road, and never has there been a sign saying “road closed ahead” or something like that. If there was some kind of warning, then it would be faster to turn around, go back out to Hwy 7, and take one of the other streets into the residential area of Unionville (and of course, not having a functional grid layout contributes to the hurt here). There have been many times when I’ve had pizza rapidly cooling in the car, just to find Main St. blocked, and being forced to go around the un-named alley just to the east of it. That alley is essentially a parking lot, and it can take quite a while to get through, and then turning left onto Carleton when you do get through it is always an adventure, since there’s no sight line thanks to the ubiquitous parked cars, the slope, and the curve in the road. What really makes me mad though is the stupidity of blocking the road right before an actual usable street. It’s literally 100 feet from being a serviceable blockade, and there’s just no reason to block the turn onto Fred Varley, especially since all the shops are to the North of it (and there’s also a strip mall on Fred Varley itself — potentially a good place for Main Street walkers to park, and also housing a bunch of business owners who probably get cheesed off when people can’t drive up to them).