Every parking lot is an opportunity for community. In my experience tailgating is considerably more than minutes and has a very strong community. Admittedly I do not have much experience with tailgating but my limited experience strongly suggests that it is a very tight knit community that goes beyond the actual event.
Parking lots are private spaces where the store management can ask you to leave at any time. That some don't is almost a happy accident.
Compared to a public park where anyone is free to loiter and play. Plus parks are usually segregated from cars so you don't have to worry about a random car not paying attention killing you, the ground isn't hot pavement everywhere, there might be playground equipment and benches and picnic tables, etc.
Cities own parking lots but privately owned parking lots are generally easier to get access to for events, far less red tape and who ever owns it gets brownie points with the community.
Who said anything about big stores? Every big city I have lived in has had a stadium and parking lots owned by either the stadium or third parties which allow tailgating and I have been to/was involved in a good many events held in private parking lots. Big stores open 7 days a week if not 24 hours a day are obviously not going to sacrifice their parking lots but a good number of parking lots are mostly vacant on the weekends, they serve the 5 days a week, 9-5 buisness world and they are more willing to sacrifice their mostly empty weekend lots.
> Every big city I have lived in has had a stadium and parking lots owned by either the stadium or third parties
So not the city, the stadium corporation (which might have ties to the city, but usually a wholly separate organization) or private third parties. Like I said.
> they are more willing to sacrifice their mostly empty weekend lots.
Once again I've had a lot of very mixed experiences on this one. Some don't care, some see it as an insurance liability. I've spent a lot of my life adjacent to commerical property management, I can't imagine most of these groups being thoroughly OK with unknown groups using their lots for whatever. Seems like a good chance to get sued.
