Roughly 6 months ago, I started vlogging my life on TikTok and Instagram. If you’re unfamiliar, that mostly means sharing short videos about where I go, what I’m doing, and what I notice along the way.
I’ve always loved Dayton and I wanted folks to see how incredible it is (plus how great the parking is) through my lens. I’ve been to 46 states, three continents and seven countries, and I still choose to live in Dayton. Because it fits how I actually want to live. Dayton offers many of the amenities people associate with much larger cities such as Broadway tours, museums, festivals and great food all without requiring weeks of planning or a large savings account.
It’s also uniquely well-positioned, with major cities such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Detroit — all within a reasonable drive, which makes day trips and weekend plans feel easy.
What keeps me here is the ease of it all. Making plans is simple, downtown is accessible and the city’s size makes it easy to meet people, build a social life and grow a career without feeling lost in the city’s scale.
I enjoy exploring the Dayton area through food, historic buildings, local events, parks and museums. And yet, whenever weekend plans involve downtown, parking becomes the deciding factor, not the event, not the food, not the experience, but whether someone thinks they’ll be able to park.
I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count. It usually starts with someone mentioning a show, a restaurant, or an event downtown. Someone else hesitates. Then comes the question: “But where do you park?”
What follows is rarely an answer, it’s a collection of assumptions: That parking will be expensive. That it will be confusing. That it will involve accidentally going the wrong way on a one way street.
What I’ve found, though, is that parking itself isn’t really the issue. It’s the perception of parking. The unfamiliarity with it.
It’s not knowing what to expect before you even leave the house, whether you need cash or can pay with Apple Pay, when meters are enforced, if there will be accessible spaces nearby, or where the money from parking actually goes.
All of those small unknowns stack up, and suddenly the easiest option feels like staying home. The parking isn’t the problem; the uncertainty around it is.
That’s the part that gets me. Not the parking itself, but how often it becomes the reason something doesn’t happen. A dinner turns into a “maybe next time.”
An event stays on the calendar instead of becoming a plan.
That’s what “Anne’s Spot” is all about. Each week, I’ll be sharing something I’ve either experienced recently or am excited to check out, food, events, buildings, or places that caught my attention. While most of the column will focus on downtown, where I spend a lot of my free time, I’ll be exploring all across the Dayton region.
In my weekly column I’ll aim to tell you where I parked, how much I paid and how accessible the parking was.
I’m not interested in convincing anyone of anything. I just want to take some of the mystery out of it. To show what it actually looks like to go somewhere downtown, where you park, what it costs and how it fits into the experience as a whole.
Where I park isn’t really the point. But it’s often the part people have the most questions about. If sharing a few details helps take some of the guesswork out and makes trying something feel easier, then it’s worth including.
I’ll be here each week just trying my best in Dayton.
Columnist Anne Kane is an Instagram and TikTok personality who built her personal brand by showcasing all that Dayton has to offer through lifestyle vlogs. She’s trying her best around Dayton, covering local food, events and places where she can always find parking.
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