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And so we come to that point in the winter where people respond to each other's parking notes
By adamg on Wed, 02/15/2017 - 9:43pm
Amanda happened upon this Cambridge space-saver note-on-a-stick tonight that was obviously in response to an earlier note posted on a car parked in a space.
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Comments
These winter windshield notes
These winter windshield notes are really becoming a literary genre of their own!
This is just the tip of the
This is just the tip of the iceberg. It won't be until Wahlberg makes a space saver movie that we know it's gone too far.
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moved to new thread
Dear God Already
Just let the air out of every tire in the city and everyone can guard their sacred spots with their immobile cars until Opening Day at Fenway.
Or save up and get a place with a driveway.
Response note: "I went to
Response note: "I went to the biggest funeral. So many people came, it was a landslide mourning. I know hardship. I have the best hardships. Any negative notes are fake notes. Next time, I'm gonna build a yuge chair...you'll see."
In Cambridge, it was the DPW, not your scheming neighbor
I get extra riled up about space saver nonsense in Cambridge, because if you've been here through a few storms, you've seen the DPW guys driving around in pickup trucks, grabbing the savers. It takes an extra special kind of ***** to get mad at your neighbors when it was most likely DPW that trashed your chair.
" It takes an extra special kind of ***** to"
It takes a special kind of derangement to blame Trump for taking someone's spot.
I think I saw fifteen guys in MAGA hats stealing space savers.
Maybe I just live in an old fashioned world where we help shovel each other out. No space savers needed.
PLUS: The note writer is an a**hole. He knows he didn't shovel out that space...
they've lived in Boston.....
the note writer has lived in Boston their entire lives; uh, yeah, but not Cambridge (one of my fave things: not differentiating Cambridge from Boston). Space-saving, except perhaps in the case of that historic winter, is not the same in Cambridge as it is in Boston. Word is, the DPW will be doing another round of sweeps around Cambs on Friday and Saturday in an attempt to eliminate any persistent space savers.
I liked it before I didn't like it
The note-writer was doing great until s/he had to go all Trumpy. Unless the first note brought it up, it's really bad for society if every petty complaint is then mysteriously circled back to blaming the president. (No I'm not a Trump fan, but I didn't like it either when everything was, "It's Obama's fault.")
And here we see the fatal
And here we see the fatal flaw in space saving harassment exposed: Multiple people can theoretically park in a parking space over the course of a day!
This is ludicrous!
Why doesn't the city step up to the plate and enforce the "No Parking During a Snow Emergency" policy so they can do a better job of snow removal. This space-saving business is ludicrously out of bounds.
Yes, just have cars circling during the snow emergency
...welcome to NO OVERNIGHT PARKING, ever Brookline where you can expect a lot of tickets if you can't get your car off the street. Sounds worse than NYC with even and odd side rotation as cars are double parked during street cleaning.
Garages don't exist
Or private lots?
Why is the city ever responsible for providing any space for your private property?
You choose where you live and choose to have a car. You need to reconcile those choices with your options and resources and the rules, not demand that the public create more subsidies for them.
Not how it works
I want to get a boat this summer and I'm taking the city of Boston to court to DEMAND a slip in the harbor for free. Who wants to sign on?
What about folks on residential streets?
Streets, even one-ways are often big enough for homeowners and apartment dwellers to park on both sides. Why is that a bad thing?
Do you wish we lived in a world without cars?
She doesn't
She wants to live in a world where car ownership isn't subsidized by everyone else. Which is what free street parking in a city is.
(n.b. I am also a filthy car-owning scumbag. But I have my own parking spot, so the only mooching I'm doing is on the roads themselves)
Fun fact: ALL modes of transportation are subsidized
in one way or another. And that includes the infrastructure for Swirrly's bicycles.
Are you willing to have a system that requires drivers to demonstrate that they have paid a toll before you allow them to drive down a street? Well, demanding direct payment for on-street parking is the exact same thing.
We already have such a system
Before I drive down the street, I need to attach to my car a metal plate with numbers on it and a sticker. One condition for obtaining that plate is that I pay excise tax on my car. Not exactly a toll, but close enough.
As the technology improves I'd be very much in favor of usage based taxes on cars, and particularly, premium congestion pricing for bringing cars into crowded areas during busy times. I have concerns because I don't want to make it even easier to compile a master database of who was where when, but, aside from that, I'm all for tolls to use the roads.
Pay by the mile
I don't see why I have to pay insurance at the rates that I and subsidize lousy drivers all because I only drive 5,000 mile a year.
It would be easy enough to assess taxes and fees based on mileage at inspection. Maybe they can also start failing cars with unreadable 20 year old plates and illegal tint, too.
I also have my own parking space because I'm responsible like that.
That isn't the real problem.
There are parts of Boston and Cambridge where the streets were built for horse and buggy. If you look the population of metro-Boston over the years you can see that the population is currently increasing. If you look back at the last time the population was this high, it was the 50's. And while people did own cars back then, it wasn't 1 car for every 2 adults. If you add in that much of the individual vehicle storage is now ultra chic condos in a carriage houses you might realize that the amount of cars in Boston is too much and needs to be reduced. At the same time, you can lease a parking spot in Boston or Cambridge for $100 per month. That's pretty cheap. If you can't afford the $ or effort to park your car without imposing on others, then you can't afford a car.
Cambridge (where this note
Cambridge (where this note was found) certainly does enforce their snow emergency policy. They tow everyone from snow emergency streets.
But they didn't plow to the curb. People started parking again after the ban was lifted. Then on at least one street I saw, a truck must have gotten stuck behind a badly parked car or something, because the next morning Cambridge towed all the cars with no warning, and put out cones so people wouldn't park again. Then for several hours in the middle of the night they brought in a bulldozer to clear the snow (which must have been fun for people trying to sleep).
Cambridge does enforce snow emergencies
The snow emergency side of my street was cleared of parked cars by tow trucks within minutes of the snow emerg. going into effect. I heard the trucks and had a moment of panic that I hadn't gotten it right, so ran out in my slippers and pj's to double check :)
Cambridge is not in Boston.
FYI, Cambridge is not part of Boston.
Well ...
Maybe stick-note writer grew up on the mean streets of Boston, then moved across the river - where she thought she'd be safer.
my guess...
is the letter writer may not really from the city of Boston; but definitely not from Cambridge. The Camb DPW is consistent about removing space savers, lagged during the historic winter we had, but other than that, they conduct frequent sweeps to pick up any savers. They'll be out again tomorrow and Saturday in force to try to clear up the last of them.