Parking Problems & RubbleBucket

Song of the day: F U C My Enemies. No particular reason, I just like it.

Tl;Dr: Why do they park so bad? A: it just takes one

We live on a block with parking on one side of the street. I learned this by carefully observing the local signage: ‘No Parking’ signs every 50 feet all down the block.

But sometimes people park on the North side even though it’s clearly marked don’t park. Why?

It’s an avalanche effect – once the first car parks there it’s open season. And I do appreciate that the nice person who’s bringing whatever I (or you) ordered or is trying to pick up a fare sometimes needs to idle for a few.

But Car #1 in this particular stack was nothing like that. He just snuggled up to the curb and left for over an hour. I was out cooking when he finally came back, so I took the opportunity to ask: Why? The following conversation was a master class in manipulation and mis-direction.

Me: Hey there – just curious, why are you parked here?

They: Oh yeah, I agree it’s a huge problem. I mean look at all these cars?

Me: You’ve been parked here for over an hour.

They: Well, it’s her house (pointing to my neighbor, who infact does live in that house)

They: Furtively gets into the car and drives away very, very fast for our narrow little road.

I think This Guy was the primary cause, but what about the other two? I had thought maybe they were here for a party or something, but further conversation lead me to believe they’re just going to businesses in the neighborhood.

In fact, one of the 3 pictured left, and some lovely Italian folks swooped right in to park. I had to ask to be fair, so: Why? Welp, they’re just going to a local restaurant (which has awesome pizza), and just though it was a legit parking space. Once  I mentioned that there was a no parking sign 10 feet in front of them, Mr. pizza found another place to park.

I feel a bit bad about ‘get off my lawn!’ especially for those who were legitimately thinking it was an actual parking spot because other people were parked there. But the road is very skinny and we have fire trucks coming through it on a regular basis, the fire station is a block away. So I don’t feel too bad about trying to keep the street a little bit more clear, it really is a hazard.