!!!! For a minute I did a double take with that mention of "Nick's Gaslight."
You see, when I lived on the east side near I-94 and Morang, I used to go to a barber whose name was Nick and who owned a barber shop called "The Gaslight." It was on Harper almost right at Morang, across from the post office. If I hadn't noticed your mention of "downtown" - as well as vaguely remembering that my barber himself used to talk about people erroneously calling him thinking they were calling the downtown Gaslight - I would have thought that you were talking about that area.
But wait - don't write this off as completely off-topic - because there is in fact also a parking lot connection to this story. In the early 80s when I was still there, there used to be a small parcel of vacant land on the northwest corner of Harper and Morang - across from the barber and other businesses in the area - and my barber was one of several businessmen who got together to push for the construction of a parking lot on that corner.
And lo and behold, they succeeded in convincing the powers-that-be - a parking lot was indeed constructed on that corner.
But then the same powers-that-be also got the bright idea to make it a metered lot.
I never saw anyone ever use the lot in all the years I remained in the area. The only long term benefit of the whole project was that there was less grass to mow.
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