Anyone noticed these signs besides me? Sometime in the past year, signs detailing winter parking regulations have been posted around the Northfield periphery. This one is on southbound Highway 3, just south of the Northfield Boulevard (Dakota County 47) turnoff. My first response to this is that it’s regulatory overkill, but my second response is , “What an unfortunate way to welcome visitors.” It’s overkill and ineffective, because it’s impossible to see, let alone read when you’re travelling by at the speed limit. It also makes little sense to have these signs up in July.

If there was a complementary sign somewhere in the vicinity that said “Welcome to Northfield, we’re glad you’re here,” I might be inclined to disregard these little annoyances. But there aren’t any welcome messages in the locations where these signs are posted. In the case of the sign above, it’s posted fully a mile outside city limits. On Dakota 23 (commonly known locally as Cedar Ave.), there isn’t even a city limits sign on the road so I don’t know whether the winter parking sign is inside or outside city limits. But that’s another story.

Anyway, these little bureaucratic irritations both amuse and infuriate me. They clearly aren’t on the scale of finding a solution to global warming or finding a cure for AIDS, but they’re actions that I think we could easily manage better.