This article from MIT that Astrid posted over on Parknews says the answer is YES YES YES. They posit that the number of chargers, and the speed that batteries can take a charge is critical to increasing the fleet. Fair Enough.

However I wonder. Remember that I live at ground zero of electric car purchases (California). My feeling is that until EVs equal or surpass ICE vehicles in most ways they have an uphill battle.  Yes, charging is an issue. As noted in the article above, at very best,  fast chargers can charge 200 miles of electrons in 15 minutes. However you can fill the tank of an ICE in what, five minutes. And you don’t have to hunt for a charger, wait for someone else to finish, and then hope that the available chargers are in working order.

But let’s set chargers aside. What about the cost. It seems today that Ev’s cost about $20K more than a like ICE vehicle. I don’t know about you, but that’s more than pocket change. There seems to be another issue. The major car companies (Ford, GM, and Stellantis – Chrysler) are loosing huge amounts of money in their EV divisions and only keeping profits up by ICE sales.

Trucks (pickups) are the big number for auto sales in the US. And it seems that Electric trucks don’t stand up well against ICE trucks. Their range drops substantially when fully loaded or pulling a trailer. That’s not good if you rely on your vehicle for your livelihood.

A friend told me that he loved his Tesla. Love to drive it around town. However he wasn’t so sure when he took it skiing 450 miles north. Seems he had to stop for charging at least twice in each direction. My 20 year old ICE machine can make it non stop. Oh Well. My friend was frustrated and owns an ICE vehicle for long trips. I noticed that most people who have EVs also have an ICE SUV hidden in the garage. My neighbor has a GMC SUV and a Jeep parked alongside his Tesla.

Variety is the spice of life. People want variety. With literally hundreds of ICE models available it would seem that EVs will be more attractive if there is more variety. Who knows.

I noticed that when EVs were promoted on the Super Bowl, they were promoted as ICE vehicles that ran on electricity. There must be reasons for people to buy EVs beyond government edicts. What’s in it for me is important.

Just sayin

JVH

Astrid reports over at Park News that a United Airlines Pilot grabbed and ax and took out his frustration on a parking exit gate at Denver International Airport. Although the reason the gate didn’t open is unclear, what is clear is that a number of cars were being held in the parking lot.

The pilot is on video marching up to the gate with an ax and removing the gate arm. He was grabbed by security personnel and later released without charges. He is quoted as saying he had reached the limit of his frustration.

First of all, I’m happy we could provide a release for this pilot. I would hope that his frustration wouldn’t be released in the cockpit of a 757. That having been said, perhaps this is a clarifying moment for JVH.

I commented earlier this week on a system that removes gates and uses LPR to enforce parking fees and permits. (It seems that perhaps the problem here was that some folks were attempting to leave on expired permits. – They could stop expired permits on entry, or let expired permits exit and sort them out later.) As was pointed out to me it certainly would have been better for those scofflaws at DIA to be allowed to leave than holding up countless others who had just been off a 15 hour flight from Japan.

This might be a learning experience for airlines. Perhaps they could provide a ‘frustration’ alleviating experience for their flight crews, maybe an ax throwing booth or a sparring ring where blows could be exchanged with a dummy and frustration cleared.

I do know one thing. The vast majority of people watching this video are cheering on the pilot, not the gate.

Just another weave in life’s rich tapestry.

JVH

Bill Smith wrote a great piece for the September PT on why he loves parking. I would like to add my two cents.

Parking can be a complex process. Sure, you can just open the gates and let people park, but in doing so are you doing a disservice to your asset, and to the parkers themselves. The fun part is finding out just who is parking in your facility, determining how you can serve them better, and while you are doing that, increasing the bottom line revenue.

I love parking because when it works well, it is seamless. People don’t spend hours talking about how good the parking was at a certain place, but they certainly spend hours talking about how bad it was. I may talk incessantly about how good the food was at a certain restaurant, or how great a certain concert or movie was, however you will seldom hear me talk about how great the parking was. If it was great, it was invisible.

However, if it sucked, bring out the torches and pitchforks.

This is what I love about the industry. If we do a good job, no one notices. That is a good thing. Lack of parking, or difficulty in parking means that we have failed. It is important that we think about what we do, and predict when parking will be difficult. Then we must set out using our ‘little grey cells’ to fix the problems before they occur. Simply shrugging our shoulders and saying – “there are too many cars and not enough spaces” doesn’t cut it.

When I was training in the army, we rotated as company commanders. There were three platoons and each one had its own bus. When we got on the buses the platoons were in order, 1, 2, and 3. But when we got off, the buses were parked in a tight area where when the platoons came off, there was chaos and the commanders struggled to keep the platoons in order.

I noticed that if we simply let the platoons come off and line up as they could, there was no chaos, everyone had a space, and the off loading took much less time. So when it was my turn in command, I tried it.

The monitors who watched the event were puzzled. They complimented me on the fact that the off loading took much less time and lacked the normal chaos, but couldn’t understand how I got the platoons ‘out of order.’ That little bit of outside the box thinking was confusing to the military mind. Of course the platoons being ‘out of order’ made no difference in any way, and in fact made the entire day run smoother.

There is a stretch on the 405 that has been a terrific bottleneck, with traffic slowing to a crawl. There was seemingly no reason for that phenomenon. I was puzzled. Then I noticed that next to the freeway was a huge billboard with a scantily clad woman hawking beer. A few weeks later the billboard was changed to a pitch for dog food with everyone fully clothed. The bottleneck mysteriously disappeared. In the future, the traffic engineers asked to approve the advertisements along that stretch. Problem solved.

It’s fun solving those kinds of problems. And parking is full of them. The event ends and cars back up five levels in the structure. The street can’t take the cars fast enough. If you step back and look at the problem, you see that the traffic light on the corner is holding the cars back. If you increase the ‘green’ light there by one minute, you find that cars are pouring out and the structure is emptied in half the time. A quick and fun solution.

We installed a central pay system in one garage. When the parker got to exit, they were to put the paid ticket in an acceptor, the gate would open and they were off. We were concerned that they couldn’t get the ticket into the acceptor quickly enough so we put staff in the lanes to ‘help.’ You already know the problem. Long lines developed. We stood back and watched the exit and the solution was obvious. We removed the ‘helpers,’ had one person hiding behind a column to assist when needed, and sure enough the exit lines disappeared. It was fun to solve these problems.

Parking is fun. It’s sad when ‘we have always done it that way’ doesn’t work. But working through the problems, getting folks moving, can be exciting, and yes, fun. I love it.

JVH

Boy, I don’t know how I got that burr under my saddle when I wrote the last post, but I do know that some clarification needs to be had. I’m a passionate guy. I sometimes fly in the face of reality and need to be trained a bit. I may be an old dog, but I can learn new tricks.

It seems that the use of data from license plates is not unique to the parking industry. Toll roads do it all the time. Cops, particularly in the EU use data from license plate cameras to control speeding on highways, many municipalities use license plate information to enforce on street parking regs, and in fact, I have a ticket on my desk that I got from such a camera when I slipped through a red light. The issue is not the collection of the license plate or the use of that plate to enforce scofflaws, but what else that data may be used (sold) to do. Therein lies the tale.

It seems that the operator, the equipment supplier and the data collector in this case go to extreme lengths to ensure that the information they supply is to enforce the parking rules, and nothing else. My sincere apologies to those folks for my comments linking them to those data sellers who end up on the rolls of those nincompoops who call you during dinner and try to sell you something, or link to your search engine to supply ads to your home page. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have known one of the founders of the data collection service and know him to be honorable and extremely concerned about the reputation of our industry. He was concerned about being lumped in with those who collect and sell data, and rightly so. Mea Culpa.

The parking industry is constantly looking for technology to make parking easier, safer, faster, and frankly more cost effective for the parking facility owner. Systems like the one in Chicago help greatly to do that. We can argue whether or not that technology is good or bad, but that’s a conversation for another day. As someone mentioned to me earlier today, that ship has sailed.

Let’s face it. The removal of gates does in fact make parking easier for the parker. Enforcement is still important. The alternative is what? Foot patrols – they certainly aren’t cost effective. The requirement for the use of an app for payment and then an on line charge for those who don’t is certainly easier for the parker, and the operator.

I learned a lot about data collection and license plates over the past few days. I certainly know more now than I did then. All the best to those who provide such services, and fight to keep data safe and used for the reason for which it was collected.

I would like to invite anyone to participate in a discussion about this topic. Its important that we understand just how carefully that the information is used.

JVH

“The Kid” drives his father’s car to the movies. Parks in the lot out back. After the movies he drives home. His father received a text telling him he owes $80 for the parking charges. Then the story gets really interesting.

Everyone involved is asking just how the parking operator got the phone number of the owner of the car to send the text. Channel 2 news in Chicago launched an investigation into this issue, and they found that it took the investigatory powers of Sherlock Holmes and the genius of Nero Wolfe to come up with the answer, but even then, they didn’t.

The path wound its way through the parking operator, the supplier of the parking equipment, the State of Illinois and the legal morass that basically said that 1. The state didn’t supply (sell) license plate information, 2. The companies involved were not doing anything illegal, and 3. The license plate info was supposed to be used only for law enforcement and insurance company purposes.

Somewhere in the blurry story it was inferred that the phone number was discovered through the use of ‘multiple’ nationwide data bases. It was not determined just what that means. I think I can tell you what it means. It means that whatever privacy you thought you had, you don’t. But that’s another story.

Here’s the official lawyerese put forth by the operator (ABM) the equipment supplier (FLASH), and the database searcher (Parkpliant):

Multiple nationwide data providers are used by our service partners in compliance with federal, state, and local laws to facilitate the process of contacting those in violation of the posted signage terms and conditions for the facility. While newer to some communities, the technology used to support gateless parking is becoming more common across the parking industry. While we recognize some may prefer a more traditional approach without such connectivity, this offering has proven largely popular with drivers for its convenience and speed of entry and exit from parking facilities. We continue to study and welcome feedback through customer surveys to guide the experience we provide.”

There was signage in the garage (‘the kid’ didn’t see it) that said that if they paid (probably using an app and credit card), they would only be charged $10 to park, and if they didn’t they would be charged $80. Fair enough. But are we in the ‘big brother’ business? Do we really want to be known as an industry that can find just about everything possible about a person in efforts to collect fees.

It should be noted here that the folks contacted by Channel 2 were not opposed to paying for parking. It should also be noted that during Covid parking in the facility was free so ‘the kid’ really might not be faulted for thinking it still was — the facility it seems, was using gateless technology.

We have had this conversation before. What else is that information about me that you gleaned from my license number used for? Will I see ads on the internet for the first  Indiana Jones movies because I went to see the Last? I parked at Home Depot. Will I suddenly receive letters and emails from home repair companies? I went to see my doctor. Will I suddenly receive texts and emails for prescriptions for the aged? All because I parked in a certain parking lot.

The kid is off the hook – he was where he was supposed to be. His parents, and others contacted by Channel 2 news in Chicago said simply, “We won’t be going to movies at that theater ever again.”

In our never-ending battle to save personnel and equipment costs are we really benefiting our customers and our industry? Frankly I “prefer a more traditional approach without such connectivity.”  How about you?

JVH

It is certainly true that in the US, the vast majority of motion, that is getting from one place to another takes place in privately owned vehicles. And as much as our betters would like to see that change, I just don’t see it happening anytime soon.

There are a lot of reasons for that, the main one being freedom. Owning a car gives you freedom. Freedom to choose when and where you want to go. You may live in an apartment and cannot afford a single family dwelling, but owning a car gives you a piece of your country. Yes, its not a square of dirt, but it is something that has value, and something you can use to your benefit.

I don’t think POVs are going to go away anytime soon because people like to drive. Get behind the wheel and experience the open road. POVs take you to neighborhoods across the city. You get to see how other people live and dare I say it, you get to meet people out there, if you like.

Many of us simply love cars. We like to look at them, we like to lift the hood and be impressed with raw power, and frankly we like to keep them shiny and clean. I’m sorry but you don’t get the same feeling holding a chamois in your hand and polishing a bus or train as you do wiping that last bit of polish off the hood of your Belchfire V-12.

I thought it interesting that at “Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress” to be held in Barcelona in November, that I couldn’t find one word on their web sites that mentioned privately owned vehicles. The topics included: Mobility Data Spaces, Inclusivity, Affordability &Fairness, Connected, Cooperative & Automated Mobility, Sustainable Urban Logistics, Multimobility, Urban Air Mobility, Energy Transition, and Active Mobility. Fair Enough.

I understand that this meeting is being held in Europe and the EU is not nearly as car-centric as is the US. However there are still millions of cars in the EU and millions of people who get around using them. I just wonder if it’s reasonable to simply ignore the transport that in the US at least, takes 80 percent of the population to and from wherever they are going.

Even if it’s only 30 or 40% in the EU, wouldn’t one or two seminars about how to work with POVs be reasonable? Of course, if your goal is to do away with them, perhaps not.

JVH

When I mentioned Taylor Swift in a previous blog, little did I know I was talking not about a singer, but a phenomenon. It seems she it taking the country, and the world, by storm. When Swift comes to town, the economy in the area takes a quantum leap, To Wit:

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve has noticed and has concluded that Taylor Swift’s concerts and her fans are single-handedly rescuing the hotel industry. Hotel revenues are their highest since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. No pressure, Taylor.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve released its Beige Book Wednesday. The Beige Book’s findings report that hotel bookings were at the strongest growth level in years, thanks to the Swifties.

“Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city,” officials wrote.

The Beige Book is released eight times a year. It summarizes how the economy is performing in cities throughout the country. The summary of Philadelphia’s economic boost by Taylor Swift concerts might just be an interesting coincidence if it was a single finding. But, it’s not. Cities around the country are experiencing the same thing. Philadelphia is just one example. NBC News reported that when Swift’s tour was in Cincinnati for concerts on June 30 and July 1, the influx of fans brought more than $2.6M into downtown hotels and $5.3M to hotels in the surrounding area.

Its called the “Swift Effect.” When she sang in Chicago, the three night concerts brought in over $39 million in hotel revenue. In Denver, the Taylor Swift concerts are billed as the biggest concerts in Denver evah.  Tickets were going for $1000 and $3000 for seats on the floor.

If you couldn’t get tickets, you came to the parking lot anyway, “just to be part of the experience.”

It was a Taylor Swift concert outside of the Taylor Swift concert.

“Yeah, this is crazy! All these people are here who don’t have tickets, just to be here,” said Danielle. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I think it’s really cool! You can hear her perfectly and all of these people are really nice. They’ll trade bracelets with you and sing with you. It’s fun,” said another fan.

I wonder how you charge for parking if the persons goal is to attend a ‘scene’ in the parking lot? Is there a “Taylor Swift” surcharge? Do you charge more for spaces closer to the venue? What if you want to simply hang out and not park a car. How much to do charge for “The Concert outside the Taylor Swift Concert?” Go Taylor.

JVH

I was soundly criticized for my comments on the 15 minute city. Fair Enough. I would like to expand on my thoughts.

The 15 Minute City is the brain child of Carlos Moreno, of the Sorbonne in Paris. Here is a direct quote:

A new urban planning model which can change a capital and the goal is to reduce replacements. Sounds familiar and very recent, right? Staying in your own area is something we have been doing since lockdowns, haven’t we? Carlos Moreno : “COVID-19 has accelerated the introduction of the 15-minute city in many cities, thanks to the rediscovery of proximity, the use of active mobility and the strengthening of social ties.” To be confined to only a 1 km radius to your home can be refreshing. You get to know your neighbourhood and buy from local shopkeepers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs. This increases our social contact and we meet new people. (Emphasis mine.)

Christopher, in response to my blog, said the following:

You know it will be rubbish, when the article is by JVH. a 15 minute city makes life MORE convenient, and is more sustainable. There is no restriction of traveling wherever the hell you want. The point of a 15 minute city is to make it so you dont HAVE to. Your freedom remains intact. (Again, Emphasis Mine).

Christopher and his ilk truly believe that ‘your freedom remains intact.’ However, the inventors of the 15 minute city use words like ‘confined’ and ‘staying in your own area.’ That doesn’t sound like freedom to me. In the end, they want to do away with all mobility, except bicycles and feet. You won’t need buses, or trains or airplanes since you will be confined in a 1 km radius. Hell, that’s only six tenths of a mile. About the size of a medium sized prison. Cars are anathema.

The privately owned vehicle is our passport to freedom. Picnics in the country, quick weekend ski trips, maybe a short visit to a cabin in the mountains or the beach. Our kids can visit friends across town, or play soccer or little league. It means that if we want to work at a job that we enjoy but live an hour away on our little piece of ground, we can. And it’s our business whether or not we do so. No urban planner will tell us where we are to be “confined” and in “what area we are to stay.’

I live in a diverse neighborhood – within 200 yards are blacks, Hispanics, gays, folks from India, Pakistan, and Eastern Europe. seniors, young families, singles, apartments, single family dwellings. We all know each other. We meet when we walk our dogs. We chat about the neighborhood, the issues within our city, and have one another’s back. No one told us to live there. It was our choice. Yes, Christopher, our freedom remains intact. We all own cars and use them to go to the Bowl, or Dodger games, or to work building other homes for people who want them. Some work in nearby hospitals, in offices downtown, or at the airport. We are a few minutes from professional football games, from a dozen universities, and we love it.

However if, by choice, we want to live in the country, we can do so. There are many small communities within an hour’s drive. To have freedom, Christopher, you have to have someplace to go. Whether you go there or not.

But if you wish to live in a 15 Minute City, more power to you. It’s your choice.

For me, a 15 Minute City is Balderdash. But that, fortunately, is just me.

JVH

When Pete Seeger wrote those words, he was talking about war and its horrors. When the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary made the song famous, they too were singing about the inability of mankind to learn from its mistakes. It is a classic example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. We simply refuse to learn.

I’m talking about a different war of sorts. The war being waged by those kool aide infused folks concerning anthropomorphic (made by humans) climate change and their inability to learn from the results of their own activities. To wit:

Report after report are showing us, for various reasons, that wind and solar generation of electricity simply don’t work – They are expensive, and create so little power that they don’t make any reasonable inroads into nuclear, natural gas, and coal generation. Oh, they don’t work at night. Who would have thought. Plus an hour of heavy hail can take out and entire megawatt generating solar operation.

Suddenly we discover that Ford’s newest EV, the F 150 lightning, loses up to 30% of its range when carrying its full payload, even more when it’s cold outside.  Plus, those who reserved the truck at a price tag of $40K now find that its cost is over $60K. Oh Well.  Even though Tesla is booming, other EV startups are going out of business. I hear the defense department wants to make tanks fully electric. Let’s see how that would work – They run out of a charge and have to take half a day to recharge? Or even an hour? What are these people thinking. Report after report says that the charging capacity is nowhere near meeting demand in the US. Throwing money at it doesn’t seem to help.

Electric bicycles are catching on fire, as are some EVs, and the fire is almost impossible to put out.

I could go on, but you get the point. Plus, I defy any of you to point out any of the predictions made by these folks that have come true in the past half century. Can you say polar bears, glaciers, rising sea levels, increased natural disasters (hurricanes, etc), any prediction by Greta Thunberg, the list is endless.

Plus it seems that even though birds, whales and sea life are inversely affected by windmills, that is suddenly is OK. Undersea mining for materials to manufacture batteries is now de rigueur. Oil drilling is not. Seems its OK that most if not all rare earths for batteries now available are mined by near slave labor and the strip mines are destroying the eco structure in Africa and China. I won’t even mention that most of the supply of these products is controlled by our friends the Chinese. What happened. Have we forgotten ‘Blood Diamonds.’ Perhaps someone can come up with “Blood Batteries.”

If you want to consider just how ludicrous is all is, a recent report by the White House actually considers the possibility of cooling the earth by reducing the heat from the sun. Wait, doesn’t that mean that the so called warming trends are being caused by something other than human activity? It’s been my experience that its not nice to screw with Mother Nature.

We are more than two generations into this now, and these folks have learned nothing, zero, zip. What will it take?

When will they ever learn?

JVH

We celebrate the Fourth of July as the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And who could comment more on those words of Thomas Jefferson than Abraham Lincoln. He was locked in a campaign against Stephen A. Douglas for the office of Senator from Illinois. He lost. However his speeches, like the one below, positioned him to lead those against slavery and eventually to beat Douglas for another office, that of President of the United States. Take the time to read his words, and remember them this Independence Day.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us.

We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations.

But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down” [Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice—“Hit him again”], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.

Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.

That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices—“me” “no one,” &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of “no, no”] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]

Happy Fourth of July

JVH