If you absolutely, positively have to participate in the shopping frenzy known as Black Friday then save your sanity by avoiding congested off ramps and parking lots. Use public transit instead.
Short North: The best urban shopping in Columbus and the most accessible with public transit. Served from all directions shoppers can arrive on COTA routes #2,
#5, #8 and with a short walk via the #4 and #7. When you’re ready for a break or need more options, use your transfer and take the #5 to…
Grandview: Get to and from Grandview Avenue on the #5 as well as with the #19 and 84. If you can determine how to read the schedule for the #84, please tell me because that is the most confusing COTA route in the city.
Graceland: By far the one of the best places to shop when using public transit. Connected from all directions, choose routes #2, #4 or #95. Because of the high frequency of service, there is very little waiting especially for the #2. Graceland is home to the most public-transit accessible Target store in Columbus, but if you need to find another….
Target: It’s everyone’s favorite place for holiday goodies and in addition to Target Graceland, Target at Lennox is accessible on via COTA route #84 (again, good luck figuring that one out) and Target on West Broad is accessible via #10. Target at Easton is accessible from the south on route #16 and from the east and west on route #95.
Easton Town Center: You won’t earn any fashion points for taking COTA to Easton but you’ll leave with your sanity in tact. Let routes #16 and #95 whisk you past the frenzy and view capitalism from the safety of a large vehicle with tempered glass windows.
The Shops at Lane Avenue: It’s as clean as Easton but without all the riffraff. From both north and south COTA route #3 serves this collection of upscale shops. The ubiquitous (and ambiguous) route #84 can also get you to and from. Stay on the #3 to Kingsdale to shop at Macy’s in Upper Arlington.
Tuttle Mall: If nostalgia is your thing use COTA route #18 and be a non-pedestrian in climate-controlled surrounds of the marble and chrome clad 1980’s. Despite the distance, urban shoppers looking for an excursion into the hinterlands have 8am-9pm access to Tuttle via the #18.
South High Street: The absolute best holiday values are along South High Street via COTA route #16. A new Salvation Army Thrift store at High and Woodrow is jam-packed with clothing for the entire family at pennies on the dollar. Because the clothing is pre-owned, someone else has paid for importing it and you’re left paying it’s true value.
Across the street is a smaller thrift store operated by Volunteers of America. Continue south to Great Southern where the #16 offers front door access to Wal-Mart and Kroger Market Place. There is yet another thrift store, AJ Wright, Big Lots and a few other stores.
Use COTA’s web site and the new Google public transit planner to get yourself around this season. COTA buses run on their regular schedule on Black Friday and throughout December, except on Christmas Day. Use a $3.50 day pass for an all-you-can-ride fare or ask the driver for a transfer and get around for another 2.5 hours with a single $1.50 fare.
Testing.
Add the COTA #3 to your Short North routes. I take it all the time from Upper Arlington; it lets me off at Neil and Buttles (at the Giant Eagle), and I just have to walk a few blocks east past Goodale Park to the heart of Short North.
Yes, the Grandview #84 is initially confusing, but comes in handy occasionally. On weekdays, it forms a V-shaped loop connecting Grandview, Marble Cliff, Fifth by Northwest Area, Lennox, OSU, the Kinnear “Research” ghetto, and finally, Upper Arlington, and then back again. I think I could’ve drawn the map better than COTA. Anyway, I’ve used the #84 twice. Once last year it was dreadfully hot and I was at the Grandview Caribou ready to hoof it to work near Ohio State. It was too hot even for me, so I just waited for the regular #84 that comes down Grandview. Remember: it’s a loop, so it goes only one way on most of its route, but I knew it would get me (eventually) to the Ag Campus, which is a close enough walk (less than a mile) to my destination. I don’t know if the bus driver was kidding about letting me off easy and not charging me another fare when it arrived at the “end” of the line in Marble Cliff. Anyway, what seemed like a 45 minute serpentine tour saved me two miles walking. That would never have been worth it except to get out of the heat.
Then the #84 came in handy once again, Friday. After my tour of the pedestrian-unfriendly wasteland of Polaris (see below), I finished my normal activities on High Street near Campus, and was ready to walk the relatively easy 3 miles home via Woodruff, Woody Hayes and West Campus, as the Campus (CABS) bus service was not in service. Fortunately, the #84 rounded the corner from High Street, and for a $1.50 I was dropped off a block from my house. This time the #84 definitely made sense and was very convenient.
Now, let’s talk about Polaris. Black Friday was my third attempt to land anywhere north of I-270 via bus. I wanted to end up at Polaris and lend moral support to the Spore activists, who were holding a “Really Really Free Market hosted on liberated space at the Polaris Fashion Place.” See http://sporeprint.info/ . Anyway, I have no problem with folks shopping till they drop, but I do have a problem with anomie-inducing suburban sprawl, an issue that perhaps the Spore folks can take up – if they haven’t already. I figured I could combine camaraderie with looking at bathroom fixtures at the Great Indoors (I just wouldn’t buy any commodes or fixtures this time).
Having all day free, I figured I’d try the #29 express bus to Polaris; it only runs twice in the morning and twice in the evening – I guess it’s really intended only for mall employees and not shoppers. The convenient and ubiquitous #3 took me straight from my house down to the COTA City Center Terminal, where I boarded the #29. It wasn’t a long wait for it to get on its way. And its way. And its way. Why do they call it an express bus when all it does it circle downtown for a good 10 or 15 minutes? Couldn’t the bus just get onto I-71 and be done with it? Cutting out the pirouette and maybe having only a few stops on the direct path to the freeway would cut down on its travel time and perhaps a allow a few more trips.
And then there was another curly que at Polaris, first going right off of I-71 and making stops at some nondescript suburban office park. And then it back-tracked onto Polaris Parkway. The bus doesn’t wend its way through the Polaris mall lot itself – you have to alight on the “Parkway” and trudge across out-lots, bushes and a four lane road before you even get to the acres and acres of “free” parking. This is not pedestrian friendly, mind you.
By 7:30, when I arrived, the Spore activists had already been run off the premises (i.e., parking lot). I found out later they pulled up tent and moved to the Wal-Mart at Easton, where their free stuff was well received by passers by and shoppers. Talk about an issue Spore could run with – this conflation of public and private spheres. The public space – where you shop, eat and drink – has been privatized with no First Amendment protections in most places, and this certainly has to have a corrosive effect on citizenship and debate (oops! – maybe that’s why we’re now called “consumers” instead of “citizens”). These places (“private” shopping malls) probably wouldn’t make economic sense but for the massive direct and indirect subsidies the taxpayers are forced to shower on developers, like TIFs and wage rebates where the (often minimum wage) workers’ income tax withholdings are kept by the employer.
Now, getting home might’ve been a nightmare for any but the most intrepid pedestrian-cum- bus rider. Like I said, the #29 only runs back downtown in the evening – and I was all tuckered out from mall’ing after only 45 minutes. Looking at the map, it didn’t really seem like it was all that far to get to the Crossroads bus #2 – probably no more than 2 miles as the crow flies. But I’m not a crow, and had a hard time crossing the 8 lane Polaris “Parkway” and walking in gullies. I thought I saw a path south through neighborhoods off of Park Road, but it was nothing but dead-ends and wild goose chases and fences everywhere; the sidewalks lead to nowhere. I retreated back to Park and walked to Flint and back down to U.S. 23 (I won’t dignify that 8 lane stretch of 65 mile an hour traffic with the haughty “High”), traversing gullies and ditches most of the way. There’s a sidewalk down U.S. 23 to Crossroads, at least. I saw only two other pedestrians the entire time I left Polaris to give you an idea what a car-induced wasteland this area is. I think that’s what’s most difficult about walking in suburban sprawl. I think nothing of walking 3 or 4 miles on High Street through Campus or Short North, or along Fifth Ave., passing thousands of other people. Sure, some of them are crazy pan-handlers and ne’er do wells, but at least they’re identifiably human – something you can’t say that about the 2-ton steel and rubber behemoths the lone pedestrian must share the suburban landscape with.