"Until the advent of automated ticket machines, many garages were controlled by the mafia. Grabar takes us on a tour of parking’s underbelly, including the Phil

"Until the advent of automated ticket machines, many garages were controlled by the mafia. Grabar takes us on a tour of parking’s underbelly, including the Philadelphia airport where attendants collected between $3 million and $7 million in cash a year in the 1990s by underreporting long-stay parking. Owning parking was a good way to launder money and cheaply get a piece of downtown real estate to develop later. Parking was a tough business, and it has been routinely made macho in popular culture. Garages are unloved parts of the urban landscape, and they produce an unsettling feeling when inside. Deep Throat set up his meeting with Bob Woodward in one, and Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered in the subterranean garage of the Dallas Police Headquarters. Yet, despite the suspicion that garages are where bad things happen, most cities want to build more of them rather than phase them out." Is this a joke? Parking garages are bad because the mafia owned some, Bob Woodward interviewed a source in one and Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in another? Like, the mafia built a lot of children's playgrounds and playgrounds have been the site of many horrifying crimes. So what? It might be true that we should reduce parking space but this argument structure is insulting and contemptible.