This artful mover always finds a parking place.
He/she makes his own luck!
Have parking space, will travel.
Showing posts with label Manhattan Street Parking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manhattan Street Parking. Show all posts
Monday, June 17, 2024
Friday, March 1, 2024
Frog in a Boiling Pot
It’s official. NYC will be transitioning to a new side-loading garbage truck. According to Mayor Adams, lucky Manhattan Community Board 9 (Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, and Hamilton Heights) will be the first CB with 100 percent of its trash containerized and serviced by next year.
(Image courtesy of The Official Website of the City of New
York)
This is all happening four years ahead of the Mayor’s own previous schedule, which is not a case of grandstanding by a Mayor who had his phones seized by the FBI and is the subject of at least three criminal investigations including an investigation into the mayor’s former buildings commissioner that is expected to yield bribery and mob-related charges against several people who helped raise money for Mayor Adams. Nor is it a public relations ploy to distract from the lowest mayoral approval rating (28%) recorded in the over 25 years Quinnipiac University has been polling.
We won’t look askance at the whopping influx of funds needed for the re-fitted Sanitation Industry in these currently lean years of austerity budgets where almost everything but Sanitation has been earmarked for cuts. Still, a fleet of new trucks for our infamously Italian-cuisine-loving Mayor with a mechanized side loader made from superior Italian technology may be more costly than we realize. In addition, there is the maintenance of said trucks, worker training, new signage and much more that will rack up additional costs for this giant overhaul. We won’t mention these concerns because everyone knows Rats are a real problem in NYC, at least from a human point of view.
What about the rats’ needs? This program is designed to reduce the rat population by starvation. The program champions proudly inform us these containers will effectively deprive rats access to food. Is that fair? Have we completely forgotten about the rats’ right to live and breathe? Sure, they can’t embarrass us on X or GoFundMe, but what if they did have a voice? Will PETA come to their aid citing cruelty and torture? What news outlets or action groups are taking up their cause? Is this the one species that has no right to live or just another species that can’t afford to live in New York City?
Some Paleontologists believe that a small rat-like mammal is the first known creature belonging to the evolutionary line that led to human beings. Its fossil, uncovered in China, is evidence of the earliest “placental” species, an ancestor of all placental mammals (mammals that diverged from other mammals) like us. To assert our Manifest Destiny over rat territory we may be starving to death part of our own ancestral heritage.
So, let’s assume we do effectively begin to starve out the rats. What recourse will rats then have? Will they go quietly in underground rat hospices surrounded by equally emaciated rat friends and family? Will they fight and cannibalize each other to the bitter end until there is nothing left but a few rat bones to pick over? In the course of history, when the means of sustenance runs out, animals have adapted their food source, migrated or gone extinct. I, for one, have had rats chew through my car wiring on four different occasions over the years disabling lights, hindering transmissions, you name it. Apparently, the insulation is yummy, but they go right through the copper strands as well. I no longer park overnight near restaurants. With this new program, will any distance from our finer food sources be safe? Any New Yorker can tell you what rats do to our streets when heavy rains or a broken water main floods their burrows. It’s the quotable “sinking ship.”
Here I think our Mayor and City Council practice the wisdom of the Frog in a Pot. Not to be confused with the Frog in a Blender, this story is if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in lukewarm water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. It’s a parable that has been used to explain everything from the Nazi rise to power to deniers of global warming and the unraveling of democracy around the world. The plan is to eradicate the rodents before they know it.
In today’s world what would people do if they were systematically denied the very food they need to survive? Say it was a group of people on a flight and the stewardess announced there would be only enough food for first class and the plane will never land. I suspect it will land with a crash. Or imagine a crowd of people waiting for Walmart to open on Black Friday were suddenly told there would be only half as many sales items this year. They’ve made movies about that one. Safe to say humans would not go quietly. Will our great aunt/uncle ancestor, the rodent, go any quieter?
A Dept. of Sanitation (DSNY) report estimates that the new extra wide trash containers will take up between 10% to 25% of curb parking on any given block. That would mean once this becomes a citywide program, it could result in the loss of up to 150,000 parking spaces. Chalk it up to the ever expanding list of citywide initiatives (too many to mention) to systematically choke off street parking and drive it (and us) to ultimate extinction.
Once again, the middle class, who can’t afford a garage, who need to park our cars on the street, are treated like rats.
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Sunday, October 16, 2011
All Time Worst Tickets #4 (Part 1 of 3) (golden oldies)
Ever had a ticket that almost got you killed? I’m not talking about the occasional shoving match and drawn weapons with the officer who tells you they’ve already started writing. Who hasn’t been there? I’m talking about an actual life and death moment where one false move (or, for us white guys, 2) will get you killed and turn you into another justifiable shooting story. This is a story of just such a ticket, a ticket that some years back literally almost killed me.
Nothing rounds out New York City's diversity tour like the Greenpoint and Williamsburg bank of the East River. In between the deserted warehouses and pier shaped brick and concrete bunkers that house factories of unlabeled obscurity a few dead end streets will take you right up to the edge of the river. In the midst of that black and white wasteland that is often used for gang film movie sets or for a lovers lane, you can view across the river spectacular views of Manhattan's skyline. From the Chrysler Building to the shining crystals of Wall Street, there is a man made beauty that causes one to forget the next door power transformer station or sugar refinery or that Joel Rifkin dumped at least one body here. The Macy’s fireworks VIP boat anchors right out there, but here on shore parking signs were as scarce as people.
So when late one hot summer evening a friend and I drove through the tar and brick isolation of these factory deserted streets, we figured the complete lack of people made the place safe. We had no sense of the cartoon silliness of this stark lunarscape just half a mile from Oz, or that the towering emerald city whose magnificent glass lights reached across the river would grab a hold of us in a clutch of coincidences that only the wicked witch could have plotted.
It begins earlier in the day when my friend's son had been playing irresponsibly with a BB gun his uncle had given him. Why his uncle had given him a BB gun in the first place is its own sad story. It seems the dog out back that barked all night keeping his uncle awake, and whose owner was as deaf to his dog's noise as he was to neighborhood complaints, had finally been trained, so he no longer needed it. So now my friend’s son was jumping out of corners search and destroying the planet with this unexpected “gift.” It was after he pointed it at his brother, my friend took it away from him and hid it behind the seat of his truck. The aiming the gun at his brother had been too close a call and my friend decided to throw it away for good, gift and all.
That night, riding in his pickup along the river in Greenpoint looking for some remote dumpster to toss the thing, we turned the corner into one of those sun softened tar streets that dead end at a heap of rocks that bank the East River. No one around. Nothing but the long buildings that line the street and they were well secured behind barred steel doors. There was not a sound of life. Across the river, the great city shimmered.
We jumped out of the pickup and walked toward the concrete fragments and bizarre collection of city debris that gathers at the river's banks. I was never allowed to have a BB gun because my parents considered it the most dangerous of guns because it was often confused with a toy, so when I spotted among the abandoned children's toys, odd shapes of lumber and a discarded motorcycle, some bottles, I couldn’t resist the idea of having some last minute fun. My friend and I set a couple of bottles up on the rocks for a friendly marksman's competition with the confiscated BB gun (intending all the time, of course, to pick up the broken glass and properly discard it along with the BB gun). First one to break their bottle wins. Well, my parents were right about one thing.
To be continued...
Nothing rounds out New York City's diversity tour like the Greenpoint and Williamsburg bank of the East River. In between the deserted warehouses and pier shaped brick and concrete bunkers that house factories of unlabeled obscurity a few dead end streets will take you right up to the edge of the river. In the midst of that black and white wasteland that is often used for gang film movie sets or for a lovers lane, you can view across the river spectacular views of Manhattan's skyline. From the Chrysler Building to the shining crystals of Wall Street, there is a man made beauty that causes one to forget the next door power transformer station or sugar refinery or that Joel Rifkin dumped at least one body here. The Macy’s fireworks VIP boat anchors right out there, but here on shore parking signs were as scarce as people.
So when late one hot summer evening a friend and I drove through the tar and brick isolation of these factory deserted streets, we figured the complete lack of people made the place safe. We had no sense of the cartoon silliness of this stark lunarscape just half a mile from Oz, or that the towering emerald city whose magnificent glass lights reached across the river would grab a hold of us in a clutch of coincidences that only the wicked witch could have plotted.
It begins earlier in the day when my friend's son had been playing irresponsibly with a BB gun his uncle had given him. Why his uncle had given him a BB gun in the first place is its own sad story. It seems the dog out back that barked all night keeping his uncle awake, and whose owner was as deaf to his dog's noise as he was to neighborhood complaints, had finally been trained, so he no longer needed it. So now my friend’s son was jumping out of corners search and destroying the planet with this unexpected “gift.” It was after he pointed it at his brother, my friend took it away from him and hid it behind the seat of his truck. The aiming the gun at his brother had been too close a call and my friend decided to throw it away for good, gift and all.
That night, riding in his pickup along the river in Greenpoint looking for some remote dumpster to toss the thing, we turned the corner into one of those sun softened tar streets that dead end at a heap of rocks that bank the East River. No one around. Nothing but the long buildings that line the street and they were well secured behind barred steel doors. There was not a sound of life. Across the river, the great city shimmered.
We jumped out of the pickup and walked toward the concrete fragments and bizarre collection of city debris that gathers at the river's banks. I was never allowed to have a BB gun because my parents considered it the most dangerous of guns because it was often confused with a toy, so when I spotted among the abandoned children's toys, odd shapes of lumber and a discarded motorcycle, some bottles, I couldn’t resist the idea of having some last minute fun. My friend and I set a couple of bottles up on the rocks for a friendly marksman's competition with the confiscated BB gun (intending all the time, of course, to pick up the broken glass and properly discard it along with the BB gun). First one to break their bottle wins. Well, my parents were right about one thing.
To be continued...
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The All time Worst Parking Tickets # 2 (golden oldies)
Another very qualified candidate for worst ticket is a little hard to believe. The police didn’t. On a scale of slightly to most extreme, this was way beyond that. One night I had been working late and I drove home to look for a space, prepared for the worst, but, by the grace of the parking gods, I found one right across from my building. Many of us in the human race have experienced an incredibly unusual event, a relative overcoming a fatal diagnosis, a solar eclipse, the immaculate conception, but, after a long hard day’s night of work, this was truly wondrous!
Late the next morning when I came out on my stoop, ready to bask in the miracle of the night before, my car was missing (have that T-shirt!). Then just as I was leaping from the strategies of theft to the strategies of tow, I saw it. It was right there in front of me only not where I had left it, but one space back. It had a ticket on it. I looked at the sign towering ominously over the hood of the car and saw that instead of the legal space in front of that sign my car was now behind the sign and in a school zone. I walked disbelievingly to the car and saw something that if the possibility had ever even occurred to me I would have been absolutely positive that it would never happen.
The vent window had been smashed! Someone broke into my car, put it in neutral, and pushed it back so that they could take my space. This was possibly the most heinous parking crime ever committed. This could only have been the work of the Dark Lord himself, but actually he was not even in office then. Now, I had a broken window and a ticket. For those of you who are shaking their heads that there must be some other explanation, I assure you one look into my car would have discouraged any common thief. Nothing was taken (from inside anyway), nothing rummaged. Why else would they go to the trouble of moving the car back? They simply took my space, probably knew my schedule, and were gone by the time I woke up.
By a lucky coincidence a police car came down my block. I flagged the two officers and told them what had happened. They didn’t believe me, thought I was trying to get out of a parking ticket, REALLY didn’t want to do any paper work. I pointed out to the driver that my window was smashed, why would I want to do that, at the very least it was my right to report a break in, but he wasn’t interested and told me to report it to the prescint, but they weren’t going to believe it either. I showed him where my broken glass was forward, where it was legal to park. He started to pull away.
Just when I was starting to believe that all the negative publicity about New York is true, his partner spoke up and the driver stopped. His partner said why don’t they just write it up now and save me, the victim of a break in after all, the trouble of going into the station. (They really do take this Good Cop/Bad Cop thing seriously.) So the driver wrote it up and gave me a complaint number. The Good Cop told me to contest the ticket by using the complaint number and, as if two miracles weren’t enough, I beat the ticket. Anybody still want to claim that New York is not the toughest parking city in this country?
Late the next morning when I came out on my stoop, ready to bask in the miracle of the night before, my car was missing (have that T-shirt!). Then just as I was leaping from the strategies of theft to the strategies of tow, I saw it. It was right there in front of me only not where I had left it, but one space back. It had a ticket on it. I looked at the sign towering ominously over the hood of the car and saw that instead of the legal space in front of that sign my car was now behind the sign and in a school zone. I walked disbelievingly to the car and saw something that if the possibility had ever even occurred to me I would have been absolutely positive that it would never happen.
The vent window had been smashed! Someone broke into my car, put it in neutral, and pushed it back so that they could take my space. This was possibly the most heinous parking crime ever committed. This could only have been the work of the Dark Lord himself, but actually he was not even in office then. Now, I had a broken window and a ticket. For those of you who are shaking their heads that there must be some other explanation, I assure you one look into my car would have discouraged any common thief. Nothing was taken (from inside anyway), nothing rummaged. Why else would they go to the trouble of moving the car back? They simply took my space, probably knew my schedule, and were gone by the time I woke up.
By a lucky coincidence a police car came down my block. I flagged the two officers and told them what had happened. They didn’t believe me, thought I was trying to get out of a parking ticket, REALLY didn’t want to do any paper work. I pointed out to the driver that my window was smashed, why would I want to do that, at the very least it was my right to report a break in, but he wasn’t interested and told me to report it to the prescint, but they weren’t going to believe it either. I showed him where my broken glass was forward, where it was legal to park. He started to pull away.
Just when I was starting to believe that all the negative publicity about New York is true, his partner spoke up and the driver stopped. His partner said why don’t they just write it up now and save me, the victim of a break in after all, the trouble of going into the station. (They really do take this Good Cop/Bad Cop thing seriously.) So the driver wrote it up and gave me a complaint number. The Good Cop told me to contest the ticket by using the complaint number and, as if two miracles weren’t enough, I beat the ticket. Anybody still want to claim that New York is not the toughest parking city in this country?
Monday, July 18, 2011
The All time Worst Parking Tickets #1 (golden oldies)
The 3 Worst Tickets I have ever received and one that almost got me killed (a really long story in many parts).
When it comes to parking tickets, it is so hard to choose the worst. They are all so worthy, but since I have noticed several people showing up on my site lately with search terms like “rights when car towed for movie” and since I know that pain I’ll begin there just in case something I say will be of any use. We all know we are responsible for our car wherever it is on the street, but besides the occasional taxicab-yellow dents in the doors and the odd broken window with glove compartment contents strewn all over the floor, we do expect things to be pretty much as we left them. We certainly don’t expect to be ambushed overnight by our own city, and be hit yet again with another car tax this time in the name of that all American industry that we all so love, the movies. I don’t know what neighborhood you live in but on the Upper West Side, it happens every month, sometimes several times a month.
Yes, for the price of a permit that has been free since 1966, the city can tow you for any movie or television production location, but the good news is they do not charge you for the tow, they just move you to the “next available parking space.” Yeah right. I can’t find the exact rules for exercising your film parking permits on the MOFTB site, but a friend of mine has been in that business for a few years and this is what he says.
Film companies are not actually required to post signs on the block to alert you of their parking space permits, but the city requests that they give at least 24 hours notice before they start enforcing their reserved parking. When I told him that didn’t sound right, he told me of a time when a film he was organizing parking for had him reserve a bridge up on 158th street when they had given no notice at all. A whole lot of angry motorists woke up one morning and found their cars missing. There was mob anger and many threats but the log of where the cars had been towed was brought out and calmed things a little. One by one most went off to retrieve their cars, but the angry mob drove back to the location, complained of damage to their cars and demanded permit and company identification as they vowed to sue. Being sued was the least of my friend’s worries in the face of so many red faced New Yorkers wielding guns and machetes (practically).
In my experience film productions do give at least 24 hour notice and usually more which is fairly considerate until you are looking for a parking space and you have 3 different productions in your neighborhood at one time and one of them has reserved ten or twenty blocks or hundreds of parking spaces just for itself and most of which Brad and Angelina never even used. Then you are drowning in a sea of orange cones that look like life preservers that no one will throw to you. And before you go off on the parking guys who often eat, drink and sleep in their control car, remember they already suffer that dunce cone on their roof, and are harassed by everybody, the film crew, angry drivers and pedestrians, even the 5 a.m. drunks, and often get tickets for their control cars, usually having to pay unless they can prove their permit was properly displayed.
So we are responsible for our cars, but we don’t (can’t) always check up on them. Sometimes we are lucky enough to pass by our cars, like I was when I was walking my dog one night some years back, and see that the car is doing fine and all is well with the world. I so enjoyed that feeling of world peace that the following night I walked my dog past the same spot but this time found the whole block lit up and my car was long gone! In its place were a lot of limos and police and wherever there are limos and police there are also crowds. I worked my way through the crowd and asked after my car and I was told that it had been towed for the Seinfeld closing party. That’s right, our beloved Jerry had my car towed so that his and Kramer’s limos could park equally close to their cast party.
I protested and the NYPD officer on duty (a free NYC service offered to location sets) pointed to a paper notice taped to a tree. I told him, and the whole crowd around us, that I had walked by there last night and there was no sign. Judging by the sharpness with which the officer implied I was a liar either he was the one responsible for putting up those notices and he knew he was late or he was just sick of hearing about it. I was sent to “Jill” who was tracking what “nearest available parking space” each car was towed to, but she was having trouble reading the log and griped about inconsistencies in the tow truck drivers’ reports while she gave me several possible addresses.
Turns out my “next available space” was a bus stop and it had a ticket. So, with little or no notice, the city allowed the Seinfeld Show to tow my car to a bus stop where it could hinder or even endanger public transportation and where I had to pay a $75 fine, all for a f*#*ing party! My friend tells me that local traffic enforcement is supposed to be notified of the towing and not to write tickets on towed cars for 12 hours, but that sometimes not everybody gets the message. And he actually believes that! Then he claimed that the film production company should take responsibility for that ticket, but when I went back to complain about the ticket, Jill (you know, with the log that didn’t even have my car correctly identified and was so full of inconsistencies that it wouldn’t stand a chance of holding up in court) had apparently been misplaced or misfiled and none of the tow truck drivers could remember where they put her.
When it comes to parking tickets, it is so hard to choose the worst. They are all so worthy, but since I have noticed several people showing up on my site lately with search terms like “rights when car towed for movie” and since I know that pain I’ll begin there just in case something I say will be of any use. We all know we are responsible for our car wherever it is on the street, but besides the occasional taxicab-yellow dents in the doors and the odd broken window with glove compartment contents strewn all over the floor, we do expect things to be pretty much as we left them. We certainly don’t expect to be ambushed overnight by our own city, and be hit yet again with another car tax this time in the name of that all American industry that we all so love, the movies. I don’t know what neighborhood you live in but on the Upper West Side, it happens every month, sometimes several times a month.
Yes, for the price of a permit that has been free since 1966, the city can tow you for any movie or television production location, but the good news is they do not charge you for the tow, they just move you to the “next available parking space.” Yeah right. I can’t find the exact rules for exercising your film parking permits on the MOFTB site, but a friend of mine has been in that business for a few years and this is what he says.
Film companies are not actually required to post signs on the block to alert you of their parking space permits, but the city requests that they give at least 24 hours notice before they start enforcing their reserved parking. When I told him that didn’t sound right, he told me of a time when a film he was organizing parking for had him reserve a bridge up on 158th street when they had given no notice at all. A whole lot of angry motorists woke up one morning and found their cars missing. There was mob anger and many threats but the log of where the cars had been towed was brought out and calmed things a little. One by one most went off to retrieve their cars, but the angry mob drove back to the location, complained of damage to their cars and demanded permit and company identification as they vowed to sue. Being sued was the least of my friend’s worries in the face of so many red faced New Yorkers wielding guns and machetes (practically).
In my experience film productions do give at least 24 hour notice and usually more which is fairly considerate until you are looking for a parking space and you have 3 different productions in your neighborhood at one time and one of them has reserved ten or twenty blocks or hundreds of parking spaces just for itself and most of which Brad and Angelina never even used. Then you are drowning in a sea of orange cones that look like life preservers that no one will throw to you. And before you go off on the parking guys who often eat, drink and sleep in their control car, remember they already suffer that dunce cone on their roof, and are harassed by everybody, the film crew, angry drivers and pedestrians, even the 5 a.m. drunks, and often get tickets for their control cars, usually having to pay unless they can prove their permit was properly displayed.
So we are responsible for our cars, but we don’t (can’t) always check up on them. Sometimes we are lucky enough to pass by our cars, like I was when I was walking my dog one night some years back, and see that the car is doing fine and all is well with the world. I so enjoyed that feeling of world peace that the following night I walked my dog past the same spot but this time found the whole block lit up and my car was long gone! In its place were a lot of limos and police and wherever there are limos and police there are also crowds. I worked my way through the crowd and asked after my car and I was told that it had been towed for the Seinfeld closing party. That’s right, our beloved Jerry had my car towed so that his and Kramer’s limos could park equally close to their cast party.
I protested and the NYPD officer on duty (a free NYC service offered to location sets) pointed to a paper notice taped to a tree. I told him, and the whole crowd around us, that I had walked by there last night and there was no sign. Judging by the sharpness with which the officer implied I was a liar either he was the one responsible for putting up those notices and he knew he was late or he was just sick of hearing about it. I was sent to “Jill” who was tracking what “nearest available parking space” each car was towed to, but she was having trouble reading the log and griped about inconsistencies in the tow truck drivers’ reports while she gave me several possible addresses.
Turns out my “next available space” was a bus stop and it had a ticket. So, with little or no notice, the city allowed the Seinfeld Show to tow my car to a bus stop where it could hinder or even endanger public transportation and where I had to pay a $75 fine, all for a f*#*ing party! My friend tells me that local traffic enforcement is supposed to be notified of the towing and not to write tickets on towed cars for 12 hours, but that sometimes not everybody gets the message. And he actually believes that! Then he claimed that the film production company should take responsibility for that ticket, but when I went back to complain about the ticket, Jill (you know, with the log that didn’t even have my car correctly identified and was so full of inconsistencies that it wouldn’t stand a chance of holding up in court) had apparently been misplaced or misfiled and none of the tow truck drivers could remember where they put her.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
New Parking Laws Go Bust (for now)
Last Wednesday, June 22nd, the Council Transportation Committee held a public hearing on a package of bills aimed at improving parking across the five boroughs. The results to date are in bold.
Proposed Int. No. 44-A: Co-sponsored by Council Members Jessica Lappin and Brad Lander, this bill would create one-day temporary parking permits. That way, for example, the next time you move into a new apartment, you'd be able to park your truck in the parking lane where parking or standing is otherwise be prohibited and not have to worry about getting a ticket.
Laid Over by Committee
Proposed Int. No. 231-A: Sponsored by Council Member James Vacca, this bill would require photographs to be included with certain notices of violation for parking violations.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 301: Sponsored by Council Member Dan Garodnick, this bill would require the NYC Department of Finance to dismiss parking violations issued for the failure to display a muni-meter receipt if the driver provides a valid receipt from the time the ticket was issued.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 372: Sponsored by Council Member Stephen Levin, this bill would suspend alternate side of the street parking rules on blocks adjacent to where film crews are shooting.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 465: Sponsored by Council Member Dan Garodnick, this bill would require parking placards to have a barcode so that traffic enforcement agents can confirm their validity.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 609: Sponsored by Council Member Joel Rivera, this bill would allow for an electronic signature for persons who contest a parking ticket online. That way, motorists who decide to contest a parking ticket online would not be required to appear in person before the Parking Violations Bureau simply to submit a signature.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 610: When a parking ticket is upheld by an Administrative Judge, the violation can begin to accumulate additional fines after seven days. Under this bill, sponsored by Council Member James Sanders, additional penalties would not accumulate until 30 days after parking ticket has been upheld by an Administrative Judge.
Laid Over by Committee
While we're at, let's add two parking improvement laws introduced last Fall:
Int. 0113-2010: A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to limiting the days that alternate side of the street parking is in effect in residentially zoned districts.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. 0375-2010: A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to allowing vehicles to park on the restricted side of a street which is subject to alternate side parking rules without being ticketed if the owner is in the vehicle and able to move it or if the street has already been cleaned.
Laid Over by Committee
Are all these reduce parking stress (and injustice) bills laid over time and again because it's
a) just city politics
b) just pandering to voters
c) just not enough community action
d) unjust
e) All of the above
Proposed Int. No. 44-A: Co-sponsored by Council Members Jessica Lappin and Brad Lander, this bill would create one-day temporary parking permits. That way, for example, the next time you move into a new apartment, you'd be able to park your truck in the parking lane where parking or standing is otherwise be prohibited and not have to worry about getting a ticket.
Laid Over by Committee
Proposed Int. No. 231-A: Sponsored by Council Member James Vacca, this bill would require photographs to be included with certain notices of violation for parking violations.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 301: Sponsored by Council Member Dan Garodnick, this bill would require the NYC Department of Finance to dismiss parking violations issued for the failure to display a muni-meter receipt if the driver provides a valid receipt from the time the ticket was issued.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 372: Sponsored by Council Member Stephen Levin, this bill would suspend alternate side of the street parking rules on blocks adjacent to where film crews are shooting.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 465: Sponsored by Council Member Dan Garodnick, this bill would require parking placards to have a barcode so that traffic enforcement agents can confirm their validity.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 609: Sponsored by Council Member Joel Rivera, this bill would allow for an electronic signature for persons who contest a parking ticket online. That way, motorists who decide to contest a parking ticket online would not be required to appear in person before the Parking Violations Bureau simply to submit a signature.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. No. 610: When a parking ticket is upheld by an Administrative Judge, the violation can begin to accumulate additional fines after seven days. Under this bill, sponsored by Council Member James Sanders, additional penalties would not accumulate until 30 days after parking ticket has been upheld by an Administrative Judge.
Laid Over by Committee
While we're at, let's add two parking improvement laws introduced last Fall:
Int. 0113-2010: A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to limiting the days that alternate side of the street parking is in effect in residentially zoned districts.
Laid Over by Committee
Int. 0375-2010: A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to allowing vehicles to park on the restricted side of a street which is subject to alternate side parking rules without being ticketed if the owner is in the vehicle and able to move it or if the street has already been cleaned.
Laid Over by Committee
Are all these reduce parking stress (and injustice) bills laid over time and again because it's
a) just city politics
b) just pandering to voters
c) just not enough community action
d) unjust
e) All of the above
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Phantom Space (or Public Advocate Helps Fight Tickets).
Angry about school closings? Even angrier about the school parking restrictions that linger on, long after the students have been shuffled elsewhere, like the wandering shade of a Schools Chancellor who couldn’t commit? Join the congregation.
Tired of passing that huge space on both sides of a rusted, hollowed out fire hydrant that hasn’t worked for years but is menacingly haunted by the ticket agents of firefighting past? You too can be saved.
Are you a victim of last year’s DOT ticket writing strategy for parking in bus stops where buses no longer exist? The bus service, those routes, were killed but the rattle of their engines could be heard at all hours of the night in the DOT front office as the tickets kept coming in and we were supposed to keep paying until the news media publicly embarrassed the DOT and their Finance Department agreed to forgive any of those tickets if you were lucky enough to have not already paid [post].
Well now, contrary to what you may have read in this blog a few weeks ago, we have another way to fight off these malicious spirits, to exorcise those parking spaces held in limbo by the DOT and ransomed by you and me, and even help your fellow New Yorkers along the way. Bill de Blasio (our public advocate for the city of New York) has created a web page to speed the update of parking signs in areas where the reasons for a parking prohibition no longer exist and to even help victims of those improperly marked parking restrictions beat those tickets (call his office at 212-669-7250 and “we'll work to get your tickets dismissed.”)
What with those agents writing tickets with their sixth sense and parking taxes as steep as they are, even the ghost of a space is important.
Tired of passing that huge space on both sides of a rusted, hollowed out fire hydrant that hasn’t worked for years but is menacingly haunted by the ticket agents of firefighting past? You too can be saved.
Are you a victim of last year’s DOT ticket writing strategy for parking in bus stops where buses no longer exist? The bus service, those routes, were killed but the rattle of their engines could be heard at all hours of the night in the DOT front office as the tickets kept coming in and we were supposed to keep paying until the news media publicly embarrassed the DOT and their Finance Department agreed to forgive any of those tickets if you were lucky enough to have not already paid [post].
Well now, contrary to what you may have read in this blog a few weeks ago, we have another way to fight off these malicious spirits, to exorcise those parking spaces held in limbo by the DOT and ransomed by you and me, and even help your fellow New Yorkers along the way. Bill de Blasio (our public advocate for the city of New York) has created a web page to speed the update of parking signs in areas where the reasons for a parking prohibition no longer exist and to even help victims of those improperly marked parking restrictions beat those tickets (call his office at 212-669-7250 and “we'll work to get your tickets dismissed.”)
What with those agents writing tickets with their sixth sense and parking taxes as steep as they are, even the ghost of a space is important.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Alternate Side Parking Suspended Again (and again)
It’s that favorite time of year again. The time when the empire of Winter falls, and even the school chancellorship is resurrected. When ticket agents pass over cars on both sides of the street. Men and women’s fancies turn away from traffic and gas prices, and parking takes on a whole new meaning. It’s a ritual of Spring in New York, but it’s more than just the power of love of two people.
It is the harmonic convergence of Jewish and Christian holidays that suspends alternate side like there’s no moving your car tomorrow. How good is it? In a nutshell, you can park your car for Monday (4/18) and you don’t have to move it for 11 days or Fri (the 29th).
Sunday, April 10, 2011
School Zone Parking?
As anyone familiar with the parallelspaces.com Parking Map knows, the symbol above shows parking is prohibited Mon – Fri from 7 am to 4pm. This next is the clock that shows school zone parking restrictions.
Now the question has been asked how are they different? [Answer: They’re not.] So why doesn’t the map distinguish between year round and school year parking restrictions?
School parking restrictions are tricky. An averagely frustrated driver, like myself, looking for a space on a hot July night might reasonably assume school is out of session the following day and therefore the “school days” parking restrictions are temporarily not in effect. But there is Summer School and as one ticket agent explained to me, any function (meeting, planning board, fundraiser, etc.) taking place in the school during otherwise normal school days keeps the parking restrictions in effect. So if you are confident in your knowledge of a school’s off-year schedule where you want to remain parked the following day and are willing to defend that knowledge against a ticket that a lazy or inept ticket agent snuck under your windshield wiper, you can park there.
In our parallelspaces.com parking map it was thought that the chances that the average driver would have this kind of information was slim, and in the desert haze that thirsts to be done with parking for the night, such information could too easily be imagined. So it was decided to err on the side of caution and school parking restrictions were not singled out by month or school year.
If you think this was too drastic, consider the following very scientifically controlled study:
Ticket agents have the senses of a shark and the minds of an attorney. No, they really are two separate things. If you are parked in a school zone when school is not in session, but you get a ticket, you have to fight the ticket. Many won’t. (Ticket 20% effective) You may not even know about the other uses an empty school building can be put to which, if you don’t cover them, will probably doom your defense (Ticket 50% effective). If you do, you will still have to prove that there was no other function taking place at the school on that day which could be very time consuming, even complicated to prove (Ticket 70% effective), or you could get a bad judge to hear your case (Ticket 80% effective). How many ticket agents would not write a ticket with an 80% chance of success?* [Answer: a very honest one.]
* Percentages of ticket effectiveness are rounded off and may be approximate.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Bike Lanes Again.
The bike lanes are in the news again. This week two groups of residents filed suit against the Bloomberg administration over the Park Slope bike lane. Today the Times contrasts this legal action with Park Slope’s supposedly liberal leaning reputation and offers some professional psychology as to why the beloved Park Slope liberals are playing against character. After all, bike lanes are green, aren’t they? But not everybody rides a bike, not all of us has the strength and reflexes needed to ride a bike in NYC, and how many of us can ride a bike to work, or take one to pick up a case of dog food?
We keep hearing about the glorious bike lanes of Europe and how we could be that civilized, but, as many have said before me, and I have said here the automobile is a part of our national identity and we’re not giving that up for the sake of just any “Green.” Cars were a keystone in our country’s history and are still essential to our economy today. From the manufacture of cars and a hundred other related industries (It is estimated that 1 out 10 jobs are automobile related.) to the connections cars and roads made to the most obscure corners of this country, nothing since the pony express had so united and defined America. The mass production of cars launched an economic boon that lasted for a century. Roads were as important and powerful as rivers and they could go anywhere. Automobiles connected and enriched this country. Car became image. Just like cell phones are now.
Nothing the Times has reported is likely to be wrong, including last weeks’ article on DOT Commissioner Jada Khan’s “I know what’s good for you” approach to dealing with a city council and residents who are used to having a say in how it’s city will operate. The story just may go further than that. It’s not that we won’t change. It’s that we want more than a handful of elected (and not so elected) officials making decisions about our character. Where was the community discussion and debate about bicycle lanes? Why not open up the debate to the public and let’s hear what other green ideas are put on the table. For instance, someone might propose that instead of bike lanes, we install bus lanes (and not just on a few avenues with camera ticketing revenue possibilities). As someone who has raised a child in this city on a budget, I can say that nothing is more New York than a bunch of grown people talking baby talk to an infant on a bus, something I’ve never seen in a sunless, noisy, occasionally hostile subway tunnel. Bike lanes are slowing buses down and some city plazas are eliminating routes altogether.
Whether you like this idea or prefer your own, the simple psychology here might be that the backlash created by force feeding these changes into our neighborhoods over and above their impact on businesses or residents or transportation could sour the whole concept of a more green city before it get’s started.
We keep hearing about the glorious bike lanes of Europe and how we could be that civilized, but, as many have said before me, and I have said here the automobile is a part of our national identity and we’re not giving that up for the sake of just any “Green.” Cars were a keystone in our country’s history and are still essential to our economy today. From the manufacture of cars and a hundred other related industries (It is estimated that 1 out 10 jobs are automobile related.) to the connections cars and roads made to the most obscure corners of this country, nothing since the pony express had so united and defined America. The mass production of cars launched an economic boon that lasted for a century. Roads were as important and powerful as rivers and they could go anywhere. Automobiles connected and enriched this country. Car became image. Just like cell phones are now.
Nothing the Times has reported is likely to be wrong, including last weeks’ article on DOT Commissioner Jada Khan’s “I know what’s good for you” approach to dealing with a city council and residents who are used to having a say in how it’s city will operate. The story just may go further than that. It’s not that we won’t change. It’s that we want more than a handful of elected (and not so elected) officials making decisions about our character. Where was the community discussion and debate about bicycle lanes? Why not open up the debate to the public and let’s hear what other green ideas are put on the table. For instance, someone might propose that instead of bike lanes, we install bus lanes (and not just on a few avenues with camera ticketing revenue possibilities). As someone who has raised a child in this city on a budget, I can say that nothing is more New York than a bunch of grown people talking baby talk to an infant on a bus, something I’ve never seen in a sunless, noisy, occasionally hostile subway tunnel. Bike lanes are slowing buses down and some city plazas are eliminating routes altogether.
Whether you like this idea or prefer your own, the simple psychology here might be that the backlash created by force feeding these changes into our neighborhoods over and above their impact on businesses or residents or transportation could sour the whole concept of a more green city before it get’s started.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Streetparker's Oscar picks
You may want to hold off on that Oscar pool. parallespaces has the most likely winners, in the most important categories, right here. So, with no more delay:
For Best Acting Bernie Madoff edges out Mayor Bloomberg in this one although hizzoner’s artful gesturing with a few snow plows almost made his harsh restoring of Alt Side rules in the impossible Winter conditions believeable. But Bloomberg only reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars and some of it probably went to good use.
Best Supporting Actress Jada Khan handily defeats all comers for her Transportation department’s “I want to be left alone.” When asked by the NY Times where the next traffic pattern change and reduction of parking spaces was going to occur, they refused to answer. She is a public official and her public works/tax supported department managed to get the Times to accept her silence. Very convincing.
Best Actress goes to Anne Hathaway. I know she’s not up for an Oscar but, let’s face it, she’s hot and is rumored to have mad parking skills,
Best Supporting Actor goes to the second major Winter storm of this season. The first storm gave us weeks of suspended alternate side parking, but the second really carried the story to a blissful 6 weeks of virtually never having to move your car. Very poignant.
Best Directing goes to Mayor Bloomberg for directing the most orchestrated revenge drama against the car owners of this great city who a few years back, along with torrid media coverage, forced him to back down when he called them whiners. Since that fateful, day, he has attempted a disorganized (and failed) congestion pricing tax for drivers, forced through numerous bike lanes that reduce parking, congest traffic, and probably deal a decisive blow against our already traffic slowed bus system.
Best Film goes to those so believable Red Light snapshots that the city likes to boast are from state of the art cameras placed at the most dangerous intersections around the city. Those pictures are worth a thousand words and they can’t lie, right? Actually, they have been proven to lie in many cities across the country and have been outlawed in some states for that reason. The most effective technique is the shortening of Yellow lights. Unfortunately, a study of the duration of Yellow lights where these cameras are placed is not possible. When these “most dangerous” locations for these cameras was requested in a Freedom of Information request, the DOT refused citing the legal exception that they were part of an “ongoing investigation.”
Screenplay: Those bright orange winter storm assessments on your windscreen take this one, although the arch villain who closed bus stops but masterminded the writing of tickets for parking in those closed stops was some pretty good villainy and does get honorable mention.
Best Documentary goes to Inception for its fearless investigative journalism into the dream within a dream within a nightmare reality that perfectly captures the experience of parking in this city.
For Best Acting Bernie Madoff edges out Mayor Bloomberg in this one although hizzoner’s artful gesturing with a few snow plows almost made his harsh restoring of Alt Side rules in the impossible Winter conditions believeable. But Bloomberg only reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars and some of it probably went to good use.
Best Supporting Actress Jada Khan handily defeats all comers for her Transportation department’s “I want to be left alone.” When asked by the NY Times where the next traffic pattern change and reduction of parking spaces was going to occur, they refused to answer. She is a public official and her public works/tax supported department managed to get the Times to accept her silence. Very convincing.
Best Actress goes to Anne Hathaway. I know she’s not up for an Oscar but, let’s face it, she’s hot and is rumored to have mad parking skills,
Best Supporting Actor goes to the second major Winter storm of this season. The first storm gave us weeks of suspended alternate side parking, but the second really carried the story to a blissful 6 weeks of virtually never having to move your car. Very poignant.
Best Directing goes to Mayor Bloomberg for directing the most orchestrated revenge drama against the car owners of this great city who a few years back, along with torrid media coverage, forced him to back down when he called them whiners. Since that fateful, day, he has attempted a disorganized (and failed) congestion pricing tax for drivers, forced through numerous bike lanes that reduce parking, congest traffic, and probably deal a decisive blow against our already traffic slowed bus system.
Best Film goes to those so believable Red Light snapshots that the city likes to boast are from state of the art cameras placed at the most dangerous intersections around the city. Those pictures are worth a thousand words and they can’t lie, right? Actually, they have been proven to lie in many cities across the country and have been outlawed in some states for that reason. The most effective technique is the shortening of Yellow lights. Unfortunately, a study of the duration of Yellow lights where these cameras are placed is not possible. When these “most dangerous” locations for these cameras was requested in a Freedom of Information request, the DOT refused citing the legal exception that they were part of an “ongoing investigation.”
Screenplay: Those bright orange winter storm assessments on your windscreen take this one, although the arch villain who closed bus stops but masterminded the writing of tickets for parking in those closed stops was some pretty good villainy and does get honorable mention.
Best Documentary goes to Inception for its fearless investigative journalism into the dream within a dream within a nightmare reality that perfectly captures the experience of parking in this city.
Monday, January 10, 2011
City takes visitor’s cars off streets - more spaces for us.
As of September 13, 2010, the city announced that the unpaid fines from a red light camera can get your car towed. To anyone unfamiliar with the red light camera program, it is a growing network of traffic light cameras stationed around the city. A camera, timed to the turning of a red light, photographs your license plate. A ticket for $50 is mailed to the vehicle's registration address. Resistance is futile. You can contest the ticket, but don’t stand much of a chance as cameras don’t lie, right?
Red light cameras are a bone of contention in many cities around the country. In DC, the AAA withdrew its support for these cameras when the Mayor admitted he looked at them as a source of revenue. Cities as large as Dallas have been found to shorten yellow lights on camera traffic lights to increase revenue from the increased volume of tickets. Some states have begun to outlaw them. Studies have shown right angle accidents are fewer at camera intersections but rear end collisions are up almost as much.
In addition to the fact that all of NYC is legally a tow-away zone, the city really prefers to tow people who have been ticketed and already owe outstanding fines and penalties of more than $101.00 or anyone who has outstanding tickets and late fees in excess of $350. Now that the city has decided to include fines from these camera violations, a person, especially a long-term visitor to this city, could have their car towed for tickets that they didn’t even know they had. It happened to a friend of mine from Florida who works as a distributor and comes to the city on sales trips. He never even knew he had received 2 red light camera tickets that had been mailed to his home in Florida. And once you’re towed, you’re no position to protest your innocence or demand your right to face your accuser, which is, after all, a piece of machinery. $500 in fees and surcharges later, and climbing, he was just glad to get his car back
So I decided to make a Freedom of Information Law request to the Dept of Transportation for the locations of the red light cameras in the city. The locations would be offered on this blog or added to the parking map. City representatives like to boast that these cameras are only placed at our most dangerous intersections, so a map of these intersections could be a great service to all of us who drive in the city. That kind of public information will only slow down the rate of red light running at these most dangerous intersections and will give anyone who even suspects that he or she (or someone who borrowed their car) may have run a light the chance to look up the intersection and look up any tickets online.
"Request denied... pursuant to FOIL § 87(2)(e). This section states, in part, that an agency may deny access to records or portions thereof that, are compiled for law enforcement purposes.” This is one of the few legitimate reasons that a FOIL request can be denied, but I was having trouble understanding to what kind of compilation for law enforcement purposes they referred. That section of the FOIL law states an agency may deny access to records or portions thereof that:
Still investigating I guess. But it’s not like you get a ticket or points on your license for these alleged investigations and the fines are less than if you are stopped by a police officer. Besides, what is the traffic enforcement advantage of keeping the information of dangerous intersections or camera locations that could deny us our basic right of due process a secret?
What are they really investigating? On the DOT’s web site we are told:
Red light cameras are a bone of contention in many cities around the country. In DC, the AAA withdrew its support for these cameras when the Mayor admitted he looked at them as a source of revenue. Cities as large as Dallas have been found to shorten yellow lights on camera traffic lights to increase revenue from the increased volume of tickets. Some states have begun to outlaw them. Studies have shown right angle accidents are fewer at camera intersections but rear end collisions are up almost as much.
In addition to the fact that all of NYC is legally a tow-away zone, the city really prefers to tow people who have been ticketed and already owe outstanding fines and penalties of more than $101.00 or anyone who has outstanding tickets and late fees in excess of $350. Now that the city has decided to include fines from these camera violations, a person, especially a long-term visitor to this city, could have their car towed for tickets that they didn’t even know they had. It happened to a friend of mine from Florida who works as a distributor and comes to the city on sales trips. He never even knew he had received 2 red light camera tickets that had been mailed to his home in Florida. And once you’re towed, you’re no position to protest your innocence or demand your right to face your accuser, which is, after all, a piece of machinery. $500 in fees and surcharges later, and climbing, he was just glad to get his car back
So I decided to make a Freedom of Information Law request to the Dept of Transportation for the locations of the red light cameras in the city. The locations would be offered on this blog or added to the parking map. City representatives like to boast that these cameras are only placed at our most dangerous intersections, so a map of these intersections could be a great service to all of us who drive in the city. That kind of public information will only slow down the rate of red light running at these most dangerous intersections and will give anyone who even suspects that he or she (or someone who borrowed their car) may have run a light the chance to look up the intersection and look up any tickets online.
"Request denied... pursuant to FOIL § 87(2)(e). This section states, in part, that an agency may deny access to records or portions thereof that, are compiled for law enforcement purposes.” This is one of the few legitimate reasons that a FOIL request can be denied, but I was having trouble understanding to what kind of compilation for law enforcement purposes they referred. That section of the FOIL law states an agency may deny access to records or portions thereof that:
(e) are compiled for law enforcement purposes and which, if disclosed, would:This was no case of a fair or unfair trial and everything else (i, iii, iv) in FOIL § 87(2)(e) related to some kind of investigation, but what kind of investigation were they talking about. Investigation implies some kind of police activity, fact gathering, finally getting their man (or woman), but a beginning and an end, right? Red light cameras have been in NYC since 1993 so this must be one of those cold cases or what at news conferences are called an “ongoing investigation” which is usually just spin for we don’t know anything yet. So when does this investigation end? I decided to appeal their rejection. I cited the city’s new tow policy as a loophole to deny visitors or someone who’s ticket got “lost in the mail” their constitutional rights to protect and defend themselves; pointed out that this information was already public at web sites like photoenforced.com and Red Light Camera Locations; and asked expressly that if they were to deny this appeal to give a specific reason like an i, ii, iii, or iv. Denied – no additional wording.
i. interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings;
ii. deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or impartial adjudication;
iii. identify a confidential source or disclose confidential information relating to a criminal investigation; or
iv. reveal criminal investigative techniques or procedures, except routine techniques and procedures;
Still investigating I guess. But it’s not like you get a ticket or points on your license for these alleged investigations and the fines are less than if you are stopped by a police officer. Besides, what is the traffic enforcement advantage of keeping the information of dangerous intersections or camera locations that could deny us our basic right of due process a secret?
What are they really investigating? On the DOT’s web site we are told:
The NYC Department of Finance is responsible for collecting and processing payments of these violations as well as holding hearings for drivers who wish to dispute the Notices of Liability they receive.The collection and hearings are handled by the Dept of Finance. Hmm. These cameras cost about $60,000 each and are a huge profit for their manufacturers (who, in some municipalities, actually operate the ticketing process). The city anticipates bringing in over $170 million from these cameras this year. Could it be that this top secret investigation of theirs is for that most elusive of criminals… revenue?
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Parking Trends or Why We Need Alternate Side Parking
Late at night, in their Draconian castle, that is only visible when the fog lifts on the East River, the Master Magicians of the DOT are at work apparating time and space, mixing memory and desire, creating and destroying matter to determine those times where and when people can legally park. Those other times and places (we will not speak their name in this post) are better discussed with a therapist or an exorcist. Blessed as I am with the enviable task of poring over DOT Tables and Table entries of Parking regulations for Manhattan, occasionally I awake to catch an early glimpse of their dark deeds. But this latest is the most eye opening yet.
Somewhere in the southern hemisphere of the East Side, Alternate Side Parking Regulations are being partially lifted. Huh? Yes, On at least First Avenue, a number of blocks that were formerly Mon – Fri a half hour of No Parking For Street Sweeping followed by 10 or so hours of Metered Parking are losing their Street Sweeping Rules, so that only the Metered Parking is left. That’s good news, right? Now we can park on those block for longer stretches. No longer do we have to clear out for a measly half hour of sometimes ON, sometimes OFF street cleaning. Hurray! Yahoo! (Google?)
That’s it then. It’s good news and we can all wander off to some other Blog for a while or step outside for some of those last rays of summer. Or is it? Not so fast DOT! What are you up to? I hate to be that suspicious New Yorker, always looking for the ambush, the sweet tasting poison, the other shoe (parking sign) to drop, but parking in this city has sharpened my animal instincts and I have both preyed upon the slower moving and been swallowed whole by this whale of a city along with hundreds of others in one bite. So when that raspy, dark magic voice on my left shoulder says to me “It’s a trap! “Why would they lift street sweeping parking hours that are already well established in the neighborhood?” “Did anyone announce they were cutting back street sweeping?” “Or a new bike path?” “Just what are they up to now?” I tend to listen.
How can they sweep if there is not a time that all cars are required to vacate? Do the Einsteinian and Bloombergian quantum relativity theory of probabilities prove conclusively that those sections on the West Side of First Avenue will be free often enough for sweeping anyway? Do the forces of gravity and erosion cause rainfall to naturally scrub this avenue on its way to supplying the city’s most magnificent fountains, not to mention forging nearby mountain streams and lakes? Is there a secret and ancient feud between the East and West Sides of First Avenue and this the latest and most insidious assault yet? But hey, what do we care about having clean streets or the cool cats who after 60 or so years of litter laws (or 40 years of Earth Days) still throw their garbage at your and my feet. This means relaxed parking restrictions and the Hell with the rest! Right?
“Be careful what you wish for.” says the brainy siren’s voice on my right shoulder. “WhatsHisName on the other side of this pointy rock you call a head likes to complain about constant Alternate Side shifting and ticket agents stalking, but the truth is we who have the privilege to park on this great city’s streets need Sanitation Restricted Parking. If we didn’t have it, there would not be enough movement and enough freeing up of parking spaces for those of us who dared to take our cars anywhere.”
She’s right (and pretty too!). A whole lot of us would be happy to leave our cars where they are until a really worthy night out or inner city happening comes up. (If you are commuting in your car, my sympathies.) The necessity of moving our cars every day makes the use of our cars at least a reasonable throw of the dice, actually increases the chances that we will use our car. Just consider last week’s string of suspended Alt Side Days. Did you decide against taking your car just once because it was good for tomorrow? If you still don’t believe me ask yourself this: have you ever uttered the phrase, “I have to move my car anyway, so I can… drop you off, pick you up, stop in at, or [your phrase here]? “
If we never had to move our cars for Street Sweeping, competition would be more fierce. There would be Squatters and Street Parking Barons, Haves and Have Nots. Prime spaces would become more prime because we would stay in them longer. We would have to curry favor with the local Parking Bosses before we set off on that weekend getaway. And we would have dirtier streets. So let’s all give a moment of thanks for Alternate Side Parking.Hip Hip Hooray! Yahoo! (Google!)
Somewhere in the southern hemisphere of the East Side, Alternate Side Parking Regulations are being partially lifted. Huh? Yes, On at least First Avenue, a number of blocks that were formerly Mon – Fri a half hour of No Parking For Street Sweeping followed by 10 or so hours of Metered Parking are losing their Street Sweeping Rules, so that only the Metered Parking is left. That’s good news, right? Now we can park on those block for longer stretches. No longer do we have to clear out for a measly half hour of sometimes ON, sometimes OFF street cleaning. Hurray! Yahoo! (Google?)
That’s it then. It’s good news and we can all wander off to some other Blog for a while or step outside for some of those last rays of summer. Or is it? Not so fast DOT! What are you up to? I hate to be that suspicious New Yorker, always looking for the ambush, the sweet tasting poison, the other shoe (parking sign) to drop, but parking in this city has sharpened my animal instincts and I have both preyed upon the slower moving and been swallowed whole by this whale of a city along with hundreds of others in one bite. So when that raspy, dark magic voice on my left shoulder says to me “It’s a trap! “Why would they lift street sweeping parking hours that are already well established in the neighborhood?” “Did anyone announce they were cutting back street sweeping?” “Or a new bike path?” “Just what are they up to now?” I tend to listen.
How can they sweep if there is not a time that all cars are required to vacate? Do the Einsteinian and Bloombergian quantum relativity theory of probabilities prove conclusively that those sections on the West Side of First Avenue will be free often enough for sweeping anyway? Do the forces of gravity and erosion cause rainfall to naturally scrub this avenue on its way to supplying the city’s most magnificent fountains, not to mention forging nearby mountain streams and lakes? Is there a secret and ancient feud between the East and West Sides of First Avenue and this the latest and most insidious assault yet? But hey, what do we care about having clean streets or the cool cats who after 60 or so years of litter laws (or 40 years of Earth Days) still throw their garbage at your and my feet. This means relaxed parking restrictions and the Hell with the rest! Right?
“Be careful what you wish for.” says the brainy siren’s voice on my right shoulder. “WhatsHisName on the other side of this pointy rock you call a head likes to complain about constant Alternate Side shifting and ticket agents stalking, but the truth is we who have the privilege to park on this great city’s streets need Sanitation Restricted Parking. If we didn’t have it, there would not be enough movement and enough freeing up of parking spaces for those of us who dared to take our cars anywhere.”
She’s right (and pretty too!). A whole lot of us would be happy to leave our cars where they are until a really worthy night out or inner city happening comes up. (If you are commuting in your car, my sympathies.) The necessity of moving our cars every day makes the use of our cars at least a reasonable throw of the dice, actually increases the chances that we will use our car. Just consider last week’s string of suspended Alt Side Days. Did you decide against taking your car just once because it was good for tomorrow? If you still don’t believe me ask yourself this: have you ever uttered the phrase, “I have to move my car anyway, so I can… drop you off, pick you up, stop in at, or [your phrase here]? “
If we never had to move our cars for Street Sweeping, competition would be more fierce. There would be Squatters and Street Parking Barons, Haves and Have Nots. Prime spaces would become more prime because we would stay in them longer. We would have to curry favor with the local Parking Bosses before we set off on that weekend getaway. And we would have dirtier streets. So let’s all give a moment of thanks for Alternate Side Parking.Hip Hip Hooray! Yahoo! (Google!)
Monday, July 5, 2010
All Time Worst Tickets #4 (Part 1 of 3)
Ever had a ticket that almost got you killed? I’m not talking about the occasional shoving match and drawn weapons with the officer who tells you they’ve already started writing. Who hasn’t been there? I’m talking about an actual life and death moment where one false move (or, for us white guys, 2) will get you killed and turn you into another justifiable shooting story. This is a story of just such a ticket, a ticket that some years back literally almost killed me.
Nothing rounds out New York City's diversity tour like the Greenpoint and Williamsburg bank of the East River. In between the deserted warehouses and pier shaped brick and concrete bunkers that house factories of unlabeled obscurity a few dead end streets will take you right up to the edge of the river. In the midst of that black and white wasteland that is often used for gang film movie sets or for a lovers lane, you can view across the river spectacular views of Manhattan's skyline. From the Chrysler Building to the shining crystals of Wall Street, there is a man made beauty that causes one to forget the next door power transformer station or sugar refinery or that Joel Rifkin dumped at least one body here. The Macy’s fireworks VIP boat anchors right out there, but here on shore parking signs were as scarce as people.
So when late one hot summer evening a friend and I drove through the tar and brick isolation of these factory deserted streets, we figured the complete lack of people made the place safe. We had no sense of the cartoon silliness of this stark lunarscape just half a mile from Oz, or that the towering emerald city whose magnificent glass lights reached across the river would grab a hold of us in a clutch of coincidences that only the wicked witch could have plotted.
It begins earlier in the day when my friend's son had been playing irresponsibly with a BB gun his uncle had given him. Why his uncle had given him a BB gun in the first place is its own sad story. It seems the dog out back that barked all night keeping his uncle awake, and whose owner was as deaf to his dog's noise as he was to neighborhood complaints, had finally been trained, so he no longer needed it. So now my friend’s son was jumping out of corners search and destroying the planet with this unexpected “gift.” It was after he pointed it at his brother, my friend took it away from him and hid it behind the seat of his truck. The aiming the gun at his brother had been too close a call and my friend decided to throw it away for good, gift and all.
That night, riding in his pickup along the river in Greenpoint looking for some remote dumpster to toss the thing, we turned the corner into one of those sun softened tar streets that dead end at a heap of rocks that bank the East River. No one around. Nothing but the long buildings that line the street and they were well secured behind barred steel doors. There was not a sound of life. Across the river, the great city shimmered.
We jumped out of the pickup and walked toward the concrete fragments and bizarre collection of city debris that gathers at the river's banks. I was never allowed to have a BB gun because my parents considered it the most dangerous of guns because it was often confused with a toy, so when I spotted among the abandoned children's toys, odd shapes of lumber and a discarded motorcycle, some bottles, I couldn’t resist the idea of having some last minute fun. My friend and I set a couple of bottles up on the rocks for a friendly marksman's competition with the confiscated BB gun (intending all the time, of course, to pick up the broken glass and properly discard it along with the BB gun). First one to break their bottle wins. Well, my parents were right about one thing.
To be continued...
Nothing rounds out New York City's diversity tour like the Greenpoint and Williamsburg bank of the East River. In between the deserted warehouses and pier shaped brick and concrete bunkers that house factories of unlabeled obscurity a few dead end streets will take you right up to the edge of the river. In the midst of that black and white wasteland that is often used for gang film movie sets or for a lovers lane, you can view across the river spectacular views of Manhattan's skyline. From the Chrysler Building to the shining crystals of Wall Street, there is a man made beauty that causes one to forget the next door power transformer station or sugar refinery or that Joel Rifkin dumped at least one body here. The Macy’s fireworks VIP boat anchors right out there, but here on shore parking signs were as scarce as people.
So when late one hot summer evening a friend and I drove through the tar and brick isolation of these factory deserted streets, we figured the complete lack of people made the place safe. We had no sense of the cartoon silliness of this stark lunarscape just half a mile from Oz, or that the towering emerald city whose magnificent glass lights reached across the river would grab a hold of us in a clutch of coincidences that only the wicked witch could have plotted.
It begins earlier in the day when my friend's son had been playing irresponsibly with a BB gun his uncle had given him. Why his uncle had given him a BB gun in the first place is its own sad story. It seems the dog out back that barked all night keeping his uncle awake, and whose owner was as deaf to his dog's noise as he was to neighborhood complaints, had finally been trained, so he no longer needed it. So now my friend’s son was jumping out of corners search and destroying the planet with this unexpected “gift.” It was after he pointed it at his brother, my friend took it away from him and hid it behind the seat of his truck. The aiming the gun at his brother had been too close a call and my friend decided to throw it away for good, gift and all.
That night, riding in his pickup along the river in Greenpoint looking for some remote dumpster to toss the thing, we turned the corner into one of those sun softened tar streets that dead end at a heap of rocks that bank the East River. No one around. Nothing but the long buildings that line the street and they were well secured behind barred steel doors. There was not a sound of life. Across the river, the great city shimmered.
We jumped out of the pickup and walked toward the concrete fragments and bizarre collection of city debris that gathers at the river's banks. I was never allowed to have a BB gun because my parents considered it the most dangerous of guns because it was often confused with a toy, so when I spotted among the abandoned children's toys, odd shapes of lumber and a discarded motorcycle, some bottles, I couldn’t resist the idea of having some last minute fun. My friend and I set a couple of bottles up on the rocks for a friendly marksman's competition with the confiscated BB gun (intending all the time, of course, to pick up the broken glass and properly discard it along with the BB gun). First one to break their bottle wins. Well, my parents were right about one thing.
To be continued...
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The All time Worst Parking Tickets # 2
Another very qualified candidate for worst ticket is a little hard to believe. The police didn’t. On a scale of slightly to most extreme, this was way beyond that. One night I had been working late and I drove home to look for a space, prepared for the worst, but, by the grace of the parking gods, I found one right across from my building. Many of us in the human race have experienced an incredibly unusual event, a relative overcoming a fatal diagnosis, a solar eclipse, the immaculate conception, but, after a long hard day’s night of work, this was truly wondrous!
Late the next morning when I came out on my stoop, ready to bask in the miracle of the night before, my car was missing (have that T-shirt!). Then just as I was leaping from the strategies of theft to the strategies of tow, I saw it. It was right there in front of me only not where I had left it, but one space back. It had a ticket on it. I looked at the sign towering ominously over the hood of the car and saw that instead of the legal space in front of that sign my car was now behind the sign and in a school zone. I walked disbelievingly to the car and saw something that if the possibility had ever even occurred to me I would have been absolutely positive that it would never happen.
The vent window had been smashed! Someone broke into my car, put it in neutral, and pushed it back so that they could take my space. This was possibly the most heinous parking crime ever committed. This could only have been the work of the Dark Lord himself, but actually he was not even in office then. Now, I had a broken window and a ticket. For those of you who are shaking their heads that there must be some other explanation, I assure you one look into my car would have discouraged any common thief. Nothing was taken (from inside anyway), nothing rummaged. Why else would they go to the trouble of moving the car back? They simply took my space, probably knew my schedule, and were gone by the time I woke up.
By a lucky coincidence a police car came down my block. I flagged the two officers and told them what had happened. They didn’t believe me, thought I was trying to get out of a parking ticket, REALLY didn’t want to do any paper work. I pointed out to the driver that my window was smashed, why would I want to do that, at the very least it was my right to report a break in, but he wasn’t interested and told me to report it to the prescint, but they weren’t going to believe it either. I showed him where my broken glass was forward, where it was legal to park. He started to pull away.
Just when I was starting to believe that all the negative publicity about New York is true, his partner spoke up and the driver stopped. His partner said why don’t they just write it up now and save me, the victim of a break in after all, the trouble of going into the station. (They really do take this Good Cop/Bad Cop thing seriously.) So the driver wrote it up and gave me a complaint number. The Good Cop told me to contest the ticket by using the complaint number and, as if two miracles weren’t enough, I beat the ticket. Anybody still want to claim that New York is not the toughest parking city in this country?
Late the next morning when I came out on my stoop, ready to bask in the miracle of the night before, my car was missing (have that T-shirt!). Then just as I was leaping from the strategies of theft to the strategies of tow, I saw it. It was right there in front of me only not where I had left it, but one space back. It had a ticket on it. I looked at the sign towering ominously over the hood of the car and saw that instead of the legal space in front of that sign my car was now behind the sign and in a school zone. I walked disbelievingly to the car and saw something that if the possibility had ever even occurred to me I would have been absolutely positive that it would never happen.
The vent window had been smashed! Someone broke into my car, put it in neutral, and pushed it back so that they could take my space. This was possibly the most heinous parking crime ever committed. This could only have been the work of the Dark Lord himself, but actually he was not even in office then. Now, I had a broken window and a ticket. For those of you who are shaking their heads that there must be some other explanation, I assure you one look into my car would have discouraged any common thief. Nothing was taken (from inside anyway), nothing rummaged. Why else would they go to the trouble of moving the car back? They simply took my space, probably knew my schedule, and were gone by the time I woke up.
By a lucky coincidence a police car came down my block. I flagged the two officers and told them what had happened. They didn’t believe me, thought I was trying to get out of a parking ticket, REALLY didn’t want to do any paper work. I pointed out to the driver that my window was smashed, why would I want to do that, at the very least it was my right to report a break in, but he wasn’t interested and told me to report it to the prescint, but they weren’t going to believe it either. I showed him where my broken glass was forward, where it was legal to park. He started to pull away.
Just when I was starting to believe that all the negative publicity about New York is true, his partner spoke up and the driver stopped. His partner said why don’t they just write it up now and save me, the victim of a break in after all, the trouble of going into the station. (They really do take this Good Cop/Bad Cop thing seriously.) So the driver wrote it up and gave me a complaint number. The Good Cop told me to contest the ticket by using the complaint number and, as if two miracles weren’t enough, I beat the ticket. Anybody still want to claim that New York is not the toughest parking city in this country?
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The All time Worst Parking Tickets #1
The 3 Worst Tickets I have ever received and one that almost got me killed (a really long story in many parts).
When it comes to parking tickets, it is so hard to choose the worst. They are all so worthy, but since I have noticed several people showing up on my site lately with search terms like “rights when car towed for movie” and since I know that pain I’ll begin there just in case something I say will be of any use. We all know we are responsible for our car wherever it is on the street, but besides the occasional taxicab-yellow dents in the doors and the odd broken window with glove compartment contents strewn all over the floor, we do expect things to be pretty much as we left them. We certainly don’t expect to be ambushed overnight by our own city, and be hit yet again with another car tax this time in the name of that all American industry that we all so love, the movies. I don’t know what neighborhood you live in but on the Upper West Side, it happens every month, sometimes several times a month.
Yes, for the price of a permit that has been free since 1966, the city can tow you for any movie or television production location, but the good news is they do not charge you for the tow, they just move you to the “next available parking space.” Yeah right. I can’t find the exact rules for exercising your film parking permits on the MOFTB site, but a friend of mine has been in that business for a few years and this is what he says.
Film companies are not actually required to post signs on the block to alert you of their parking space permits, but the city requests that they give at least 24 hours notice before they start enforcing their reserved parking. When I told him that didn’t sound right, he told me of a time when a film he was organizing parking for had him reserve a bridge up on 158th street when they had given no notice at all. A whole lot of angry motorists woke up one morning and found their cars missing. There was mob anger and many threats but the log of where the cars had been towed was brought out and calmed things a little. One by one most went off to retrieve their cars, but the angry mob drove back to the location, complained of damage to their cars and demanded permit and company identification as they vowed to sue. Being sued was the least of my friend’s worries in the face of so many red faced New Yorkers wielding guns and machetes (practically).
In my experience film productions do give at least 24 hour notice and usually more which is fairly considerate until you are looking for a parking space and you have 3 different productions in your neighborhood at one time and one of them has reserved ten or twenty blocks or hundreds of parking spaces just for itself and most of which Brad and Angelina never even used. Then you are drowning in a sea of orange cones that look like life preservers that no one will throw to you. And before you go off on the parking guys who often eat, drink and sleep in their control car, remember they already suffer that dunce cone on their roof, and are harassed by everybody, the film crew, angry drivers and pedestrians, even the 5 a.m. drunks, and often get tickets for their control cars, usually having to pay unless they can prove their permit was properly displayed.
So we are responsible for our cars, but we don’t (can’t) always check up on them. Sometimes we are lucky enough to pass by our cars, like I was when I was walking my dog one night some years back, and see that the car is doing fine and all is well with the world. I so enjoyed that feeling of world peace that the following night I walked my dog past the same spot but this time found the whole block lit up and my car was long gone! In its place were a lot of limos and police and wherever there are limos and police there are also crowds. I worked my way through the crowd and asked after my car and I was told that it had been towed for the Seinfeld closing party. That’s right, our beloved Jerry had my car towed so that his and Kramer’s limos could park equally close to their cast party.
I protested and the NYPD officer on duty (a free NYC service offered to location sets) pointed to a paper notice taped to a tree. I told him, and the whole crowd around us, that I had walked by there last night and there was no sign. Judging by the sharpness with which the officer implied I was a liar either he was the one responsible for putting up those notices and he knew he was late or he was just sick of hearing about it. I was sent to “Jill” who was tracking what “nearest available parking space” each car was towed to, but she was having trouble reading the log and griped about inconsistencies in the tow truck drivers’ reports while she gave me several possible addresses.
Turns out my “next available space” was a bus stop and it had a ticket. So, with little or no notice, the city allowed the Seinfeld Show to tow my car to a bus stop where it could hinder or even endanger public transportation and where I had to pay a $75 fine, all for a f*#*ing party! My friend tells me that local traffic enforcement is supposed to be notified of the towing and not to write tickets on towed cars for 12 hours, but that sometimes not everybody gets the message. And he actually believes that! Then he claimed that the film production company should take responsibility for that ticket, but when I went back to complain about the ticket, Jill (you know, with the log that didn’t even have my car correctly identified and was so full of inconsistencies that it wouldn’t stand a chance of holding up in court) had apparently been misplaced or misfiled and none of the tow truck drivers could remember where they put her.
When it comes to parking tickets, it is so hard to choose the worst. They are all so worthy, but since I have noticed several people showing up on my site lately with search terms like “rights when car towed for movie” and since I know that pain I’ll begin there just in case something I say will be of any use. We all know we are responsible for our car wherever it is on the street, but besides the occasional taxicab-yellow dents in the doors and the odd broken window with glove compartment contents strewn all over the floor, we do expect things to be pretty much as we left them. We certainly don’t expect to be ambushed overnight by our own city, and be hit yet again with another car tax this time in the name of that all American industry that we all so love, the movies. I don’t know what neighborhood you live in but on the Upper West Side, it happens every month, sometimes several times a month.
Yes, for the price of a permit that has been free since 1966, the city can tow you for any movie or television production location, but the good news is they do not charge you for the tow, they just move you to the “next available parking space.” Yeah right. I can’t find the exact rules for exercising your film parking permits on the MOFTB site, but a friend of mine has been in that business for a few years and this is what he says.
Film companies are not actually required to post signs on the block to alert you of their parking space permits, but the city requests that they give at least 24 hours notice before they start enforcing their reserved parking. When I told him that didn’t sound right, he told me of a time when a film he was organizing parking for had him reserve a bridge up on 158th street when they had given no notice at all. A whole lot of angry motorists woke up one morning and found their cars missing. There was mob anger and many threats but the log of where the cars had been towed was brought out and calmed things a little. One by one most went off to retrieve their cars, but the angry mob drove back to the location, complained of damage to their cars and demanded permit and company identification as they vowed to sue. Being sued was the least of my friend’s worries in the face of so many red faced New Yorkers wielding guns and machetes (practically).
In my experience film productions do give at least 24 hour notice and usually more which is fairly considerate until you are looking for a parking space and you have 3 different productions in your neighborhood at one time and one of them has reserved ten or twenty blocks or hundreds of parking spaces just for itself and most of which Brad and Angelina never even used. Then you are drowning in a sea of orange cones that look like life preservers that no one will throw to you. And before you go off on the parking guys who often eat, drink and sleep in their control car, remember they already suffer that dunce cone on their roof, and are harassed by everybody, the film crew, angry drivers and pedestrians, even the 5 a.m. drunks, and often get tickets for their control cars, usually having to pay unless they can prove their permit was properly displayed.
So we are responsible for our cars, but we don’t (can’t) always check up on them. Sometimes we are lucky enough to pass by our cars, like I was when I was walking my dog one night some years back, and see that the car is doing fine and all is well with the world. I so enjoyed that feeling of world peace that the following night I walked my dog past the same spot but this time found the whole block lit up and my car was long gone! In its place were a lot of limos and police and wherever there are limos and police there are also crowds. I worked my way through the crowd and asked after my car and I was told that it had been towed for the Seinfeld closing party. That’s right, our beloved Jerry had my car towed so that his and Kramer’s limos could park equally close to their cast party.
I protested and the NYPD officer on duty (a free NYC service offered to location sets) pointed to a paper notice taped to a tree. I told him, and the whole crowd around us, that I had walked by there last night and there was no sign. Judging by the sharpness with which the officer implied I was a liar either he was the one responsible for putting up those notices and he knew he was late or he was just sick of hearing about it. I was sent to “Jill” who was tracking what “nearest available parking space” each car was towed to, but she was having trouble reading the log and griped about inconsistencies in the tow truck drivers’ reports while she gave me several possible addresses.
Turns out my “next available space” was a bus stop and it had a ticket. So, with little or no notice, the city allowed the Seinfeld Show to tow my car to a bus stop where it could hinder or even endanger public transportation and where I had to pay a $75 fine, all for a f*#*ing party! My friend tells me that local traffic enforcement is supposed to be notified of the towing and not to write tickets on towed cars for 12 hours, but that sometimes not everybody gets the message. And he actually believes that! Then he claimed that the film production company should take responsibility for that ticket, but when I went back to complain about the ticket, Jill (you know, with the log that didn’t even have my car correctly identified and was so full of inconsistencies that it wouldn’t stand a chance of holding up in court) had apparently been misplaced or misfiled and none of the tow truck drivers could remember where they put her.
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