I reviewed just some of the photos on the new site you mentioned regarding asshole parking, and though I see a lot of examples of people parking across some lines of paint, or not quite straight, or with a wheel on the curb, what makes this “asshole” parking?
“Asshole” refers (in my book) to a wanton and even deliberate and hurtful disregard for the needs of others. “Considerate” parking would be the obvious opposite. How can someone park like an asshole in an empty lot??
Just to confound your definition further, and perhaps the expectations of your readers, I am enclosing a photograph of six cars parking on the FIVE spaces along that first stretch of South Street right near the Lewis + Clark condo building. If you look carefully, you can see that the third and fourth car in the lineup are occupying not much more than one (painted) space. The third car (a jeep suv) has its front wheels over the line. Right behind it, the fourth car (a ford focus) has its rear wheels on/over the line. By the definition apparent from most of the posted pictures on the “asshole” site, these two drivers have parked like “assholes.” But look at the result: 20% more parking for everyone! By contrast, the last two cars are wasting space out of simple inattention to the needs of others. The last car, a subaru wagon, has left four feet of curb space unused behind it. The next to last, a BMW, has left some six or seven feet wasted between it and the Subaru. But they are model parkers - parked right in the middle of their alloted spaces (idiotically alotted by the city to be 23 feet long).
So who is the bigger asshole? The person who parks with five feet of space in front of and behind their vehicle, but within the law, or the person who refuses to waste space, crosses the line, and makes an extra space for others to use?
Why bother with the lines at all? We got along fine… no, we got along BETTER, without the lines for a hundred years!
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Downtown Mall, Parking
I say! When I and the missus are about town in our horseless carriage, we too despise these line-ed roads! I ask, where are we? In the Kaiser’s Germany? These infernal lines only obfuscate my driving, impairing my direct route down the “traveler’s brick’d walkway” as I go to the haberdasher or mutton man. Bollyrabble!
http://www.svjc.com/images/historic/Traffic%20jam%20at%207th%20&%20Broadway.gif
Help! I have been confounded! As have my expectations! Gah!
Why bother with the lines at all? Because there have to be lines because… there just have to be! I mean, if there weren’t, how would we measure, delineate, quantify and punish? Huh, bub? If you wanna go back to the lineless dark ages, where a man knew not whether he had crossed over into asholishness and had to live out his days in that sort of ignorance, well you go right ahead. Not me! I prefer the rigid structure of my keepers! Thats right! I said it! I don’t think the painted lines are enough, quite frankly. I think there should be an elaborate grid of flame shooting electrical fences! Yes! What do you think of that Mr. Six-Cars-In-Five-Spaces? Bet you’d park in the space god mapped out for you then, wouldn’t ya? You may not like it, but we are ALL in GOD’S coloring book, and boy does HE get PISSED when we color outside the lines! Do you WANT him to send down the archangelic holy meter-maids of great vengence and wrath to ticket you SOUL into the LAKE OF FIRE????? Gahh!!! I thought not!
Now enough of this anarchistic intarweb CRAZY TALK from you, you lineless heretic pagan! *pant*pant*
Umm, Martha? where are my pills…?
Jack one of those little squeaky cars in front r back of my truck and not give me space to pull out then I guess you will not mind a bit of a nudge when I am ready to roll.
Lets see, truck backing up a bit to get out with little wee blue car out of site and just a bit lower than my trailer hitch.
The unfortunate truth in Charlottesville is that, in the picture above, I only see two cars that will not be ticketed when quota time is coming around for our lovely CPD parking bitches.
My SO got a lovely little parking ticket because her bumper was extended ever so slightly over the paint in the painted line delineating the spots. Why was she over the line? Because the rest of the folks along that curb were trying to fit more people in than there were spaces.
I’m not sure what the message from the local parking enforcement is supposed to be on that. Should she have slid to within a few inches of the incorrectly parked person in front of her so she wouldn’t be over the line, thus leaving them no way out without bashing her bumper? Or perhaps they think that she should have just found another spot in our parking-starved downtown area? Maybe they’re not trying to get a message across at all, maybe they’re just trying to make more dollars for our oh-so-under-funded city government. (apply sarcasm in the appropriate places)
Heres the screw see. Three Finger Brown and I were coming back from casing this speakeasy down on the waterfront, and what do we see? Well, not much, seeing as we’s was spifflicated from all the bathtub hooch. But it looked like a dainty swell and his spiffy looking tomato, parking their Crossley 20/25 someplace it wouldn’t fit (if you catch my meaning).
I says to him, “Level with me. Are you really gonna park your hayburner there?”
And he says back: “Now you’re on the trolley! Now scram!” .
[…] Was this your parking job? (Oh, and I no-commented, but that’s me, like, every time that I park on the mall, and I make no apologies for it. If I get a ticket, I deserve it. But I think of the paint more as a guideline than a rule.) […]
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I’ve gotten a parking ticket for parking over the line, so the people in the middle of their spaces are merely obeying the law.
Another thing, I’m not endorsing the lines. I think they’re ridiculous and pointless. I’ve lived in plenty of other cities before that don’t have lines and there is no chaos. Just get in where you fit in!
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