The Park U Self had been a landmark for years, even though the name bordered on being a rude joke. When FrostyCorp took over, they decided to change it to something less suggestive. Thus was born the 'Park n' Blow.' It towers over the surrounding area and has always been always a popular hang-out for local gangers. Rain or shine they had two levels for partying, and the top level gave them the height to spot any threats coming their way. FrostyCorp set out to change all this. If there was going to be rowdy parties amd loads of illegals, they wanted a cut. They installed very effective security, and managed to get the gangs to negotiate. It didn't hurt that they could close the local 'Barf' if the gangs didn't play ball. The building started life as a Fisher-Price parking garage: When it was first released it had a fibreboard base and an enclosed elvator. Later versions have a thick plastic base and an open elevator with holes for the FP peg-people. Look for the early version. The early FP parking garage. I replaced the base on mine, and replaced a rotating turntable on the top deck with a disk of cintra. I also removed the front crank and gear box. The turntable (like the later plastic base) is made of polyethylene, and will not readily hold paint. The tower, body, and ramp are styrene, and take paint well. I masked off areas of the tower and sprayed the whole building with grey primer. I then masked the tower further and sprayed with dark green paint. N.B. The building is decorated with paper stickers designed to withstand children at play. After trying various solvents proved useless, I finally gave up and primed over them. I have no fear that they'll ever come off. I attached the unit to its new base, filled the screw-holes on the ramp, and added ground-level walls of cintra. I then sprayed the base and walls with primer. I use primer to represent concrete: This is not unusual. Judging by the potholes in Winnipeg every Spring, our Civic Works Dept. does the same. Not that I'm bitter... The front of the unit is decorated with an ATM from Ainsty Castings (protected by an awning), a newsbox, and various trash cans. The ATM is affiliated with the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank (scroll down).

The elevator is pretty tall, but it'll fit most any pose of 28mm figure. It raises and lowers with the auto elevator, using a crank on the side of the tower. The auto elevator has a lever that raises & lowers the 'STOP' sign (and rings a bell) as it arrives & leaves each level. There is another that causes the floor to tip up and dump the car out on the top level. I disabled this feature. The posters are printed on my computer: Ads for the band 'Kittens', 'Tax Paying is Cool', 'Johnny Mnemonic', and Christy Turlington anti-smoking posters I masked & painted a warning area under the elevator, and bordered it with match sticks. There is a bag of something and a discarded copy of the Combat Zone Chronicles on the ground by the ATM machine. There's a Weekly World News up top. There are also ads for other businesses in my games, for Slurm, and for Castaway Arts, an Australian miniatures Company. The tower is decorated with a SMOKING IS UGLY billboard. (Christy Turlington has an anti-smoking website: She is supposedly the webmaster. Who knew?...) The 'security' is based on magnetic sheet and hangs from washers on the deck undersides. This way they don't rip hands or break off when you reach in to move figures. I always thought the sentinel cannons were perfect for use hung from a ceiling: Better field of fire, better LOS, just better overall. The side and back walls are covered with my usual badly-done graffitti. You can also see one of the vending machines (There is one on each level) As an experiment I used water-based markers, thinking that they would be lacquer-proof. Wrong again! When I coated the building, the graffitti ran. Even worse, it improved it. This view shows yet again how big this piece is. It takes up a lot of room on the table, and is a b*tch to store. (It takes up 2 levels of my figure shelves, equal to approx. 1200 figures. I'M RUNNING OUT OF ROOM!) In spite of this, it's an impressive piece, and always a focus for action in my games.. It's a good defensive position, and a logical helo extraction point. We've filled it with dancing gangers, refugees, and squatters. We even put cars in it occasionally! The Fisher-Price 930 Parking Garage is easily found in thrift shops or on ebay. Get the early version.