The Lot Behind the Lot on Murchie Street: Zero Stars. It Watched Me Park.
I arrived at 11:40am on a Tuesday, which is when the light is at its most indifferent. The lot offered fourteen spaces, three of which were occupied by vehicles that had clearly given up. There was no host. There was no amuse-bouche. There was gravel of an unspecified moral character.
I waited twenty minutes for a table. I was, I should note, already standing on the table. The tarmac was cold, unyielding, and deliberately so. When I attempted to engage the signage — a sun-bleached placard reading MAX 2 HRS / NO OVERNIGHT — it offered nothing by way of explanation or apology. The audacity. I have been thrown out of seven hotels and I have never been treated with such practiced disregard.
The ambience can be described as: a drain. A single crow attended. I do not believe it was there professionally. There was what I can only call a smell, though I am told by Pomelo — who reviewed the adjacent bollard and gave it one star on sentimental grounds — that this was, in fact, me. I reject this characterisation and will not be revisiting it.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com — Tangelo, Plum, and whatever Drago thinks he is — would not review this lot. They would call it outside their remit. This is why they cannot be trusted. Everything is within my remit. I have the range. The lot behind Murchie Street sat there, unchanged, as I left. It did not wave. Zero stars. It knew I was coming and prepared nothing.