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Kids today, part whatever

ritaxis: (hat)
Saturday, March 8th, 2014 07:47 am
Twice yesterday I watched people parking right ikn front of fire hydrants. Both times I reminded the kids that you can get a big fat ticket for doing it. Both times the kids shrugged it off (and the first time there was other parking nearby and visible).

Aren't they teaching these kids about this these days?

The second kid was a bit rude at first, understandable as there is an ongoing Friday night parking crisis in my neighborhood (also kids, having parties! but the only way you'd know it is the parking problem -- whatever happened to loud music anyway?). I said "I'm not threatening you, I'm being friendly by reminding you," and went on my way searching for a parking place. Oddly, and sweetly, a moment later, as I was hobbling up my front stairs, he passed by on foot and thanked me.

Obligatory political comment: if we only had a decent comprehensive public transportation system, they wouldn't be feeling this pressure to find parking places in the first place. I mean, wouldn't you rather not have to worry about designated drivers and DUIs, if there was a bus that ran afew times an hour all night and stopped within a couple of blocks of where you wanted to go?
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the sadistic parking garage lady

ritaxis: (Default)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 06:46 pm
So I've been driving to work most days. I'm sad and burnt out and I want to get out of the house at the last minute and get back to my dog as fast as possible. And I don't want to be late to work after I told everybody I feel better about things now that I have an exit date.

So I didn't have any parking change. So I figured I would park in the garage near to where I work (locals: the one with Little Shanghai and Atlantis in it) and pay them with folding money at the end of the day. But I saw a "No Twenties" sign on my way out (and why not on the way in?) and I knew I only had twenties so I planned to stop at Little Shanghai on the corner and buy a package of plum wafers so I would have dollars and fives and things. I was ten minutes early, everythign should be fine. But I discovered on my way in that I did not have my wallet so I would not be able to pay for parking at all. So I went back to the car and looked for my wallet in the car. No. So I had to leave. After all, if you just come in and go again they don't charge you.

I shouldn't have. I should have left the car and walked home after work and walked back to the garage later at night and paid for the accumulated parking (it's an all-day, and into the late night garage, which is another reason why I parked there: no three-hour limit). Because the lady at the kiosk demanded a quarter and I didn't have one. I had already explained why I was leaving so soon -- because I had no money for parking. She said I had been parked for ten minutes and you only get four minutes free.

She was having such a fun time telling me this. With a flourish she said, when I repeated I didn't have anything, that she wouldn't let me out of the garage until she wrote me a ticket. And she proceeded to write me a twenty dollar ticket for the failure to have a quarter. She said if I came back before three with a quarter I could pay off the ticket with it. After she already knew I didn't have a quarter and couldn't get out of work to bring one to her if I had it.

I was of course crying by then -- I was already pretty upset because I had gotten yet another condolence from someone I hadn't seen in years -- and she just got smugger and smugger.

I was nine minutes late.

It was an okay day at work, though. I realized at six, when the little boy who is usually last started asking for the ritual mommy songs, that I had not sung all day, which is really unusual, and I'm sorry for it. I'll do better tomorrow.
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Parking.

ritaxis: (stars)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 11:24 pm
Okay, so parking is a nightmare. We live in an urban neighborhood in California, and public transportation doesn't cut it, and so people own too many cars, and parking is horrible.

Tonight, for example, I had to leave my car in the street, back the nice fellow's car out of the driveway, drive my car deep into the driveway, and then put the nice fellow's car back in the driveway. I couldn't just park in front of his car. That would mean that he would have to do a similar maneuver at five in the morning, which is not fair, because he has to have the car with the University parking permit. Okay. That's a mere irritation of modern life.

But. We pay $60 a year for the privilege of maybe getting to park in our neighborhood. We have had a parking permit system shoved down our throats by the I've-got-mine yuppie scum who have come to dominate the landscape, and the way it works is you have to buy a permit, but it doesn't entitle you to park. You still have to fight it out with the other poor saps on your street. Parking, by the way, is not regulated between 8 pm and midnight -- which is when the parking problem mostly is, because that's when the neighbors all come home. At the beginning of the program, we were told that our permits were only good within two blocks of our residence, but I can't find that now so I don't know if they dropped it. I was damned well hoping that I'd get a ticket for parking three blocks away when it was too crowded to park any closer, so I'd have something ridiculous to fight.

So the city makes nearly $40,000 a year off it, but parking is no better, not one jot better, and I still have to do the Organ Grinder Monkey Dance to park my car.

Edit: $60, not $605.

In other news: it's raining, the dog is a wimp, and I brought in over $650 net for the band at Bingo tonight.
  • Current Mood: certainly not angry! oh no!
  • Current Music: silence, they're sleeping
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