This afternoon, I noticed a note on the windshield of my neighbor’s car parked on the street. I was flabbergasted (I am rarely flabbergasted so I’m taking the opportunity to use the word) when I read the note.
The text is as follows:
Neighbor –
Your car is continually improperly parked on 12th Ave. E. Also you have a parking spot in the ally [sic]. Please respect your neighbors by using it.
Thank you,
A neighbor
Here’s the deal. Not only is the note unsigned (the ultimate passive aggressive touch) but the dude who wrote this note is obviously clueless. Notice in the photo: there is a disabled parking permit hanging from the mirror. The woman who drives this car is elderly and has lived in her home for over 60 years. She enters her home from the front door instead of dealing with all of the stairs in the alley. And by the way, since when is it disrespectful to park on your own street.
I just don’t get the logic of this dude and his note.
Hmmm, if the note-writer had taken the time to meet the driver and be nice, perhaps the driver would have let said neighbor use (the apparently) unused alley parking spot. Everybody wins in that wishful-thinking scenario, yes?
I hope you took the note away. No author, no reader.
Also note, that you are allowed to park your car on any city street (barring no parking signs, fire hydrants, etc.), regardless of whether you live on that street or not. So whether or not the lady is old, young, lives on the street or around the corner. She can park there. She is not required to use the alley/off-street parking.
I get it, sometimes street parking is tight on capitol hill. And with the various schools and businesses, it gets even tighter. But that’s life on the hill. Suck it up & build your own garage, or just deal.
The only general rule I know of is about moving your car once every 72 hours – to give police a way to legally tow abandoned cars and prevent people from parking RVs in residential neighborhoods and camping out.
with the obvious aside…i can’t believe that the author of the note wrote it knowing that the driver was an elderly woman! (S)He had to have known at least that much to know that the driver did have a parking spot in the alley.
Really? I somehow thought that street parking was first-come-first-park. I don’t think you have the right to tell your neighbor where to park, even if you’d prefer that they park off street. Sure it is somewhat rude for able-bodied people to park on the street when they have off-street parking, but that’s their prerogative.
I think this note wasn’t very appropriate.
In general though, if you call leaving a note passive aggressive then what do you call the person who violates the parking ordinance in the first place?
In zone 4, people routinely ignore the 72 hour notice and use their guest pass as a permanent extra parking pass. I not only leave notes on those cars, I report them to the abandoned vehicle hotline.
m – if you’re leaving a note to someone who’s actually violating a parking ordinance (e.g. parked wrong way, up on your lawn, in a handicapped spot, in front of hydrant) instead of calling the police, that’s just being civic minded (imho).
If you’re leaving a note because you want the primo spot in front of your house and are annoyed your neighbors park their cars out front instead of in their garage – you’re SOL and passive-aggressive for leaving a note claiming they are improperly parked.
You all make good points for better ways of handling parking problems. Part of my reasoning for posting this note was my annoyance with the note-writer for presuming to instruct someone/anyone not to park on a public street – regardless of other parking options available.
Just to clarify a couple of the parking issues that have come up here:
I live on a street that has no zoning (one of the few around here surrounded by zoned streets). It is a popular place to park for people who don’t live on the street because of this. For people on my street who don’t have alley parking (those who rent rooms in houses primarily) they must compete for street parking with people who seem to live/work/whatever further off my street. That’s the way it goes unless or until someone leads a charge for zoning the street.
When we go for walks we sometimes notice cars that haven’t moved for several days. Once in awhile they are ticketed. We have only ever reported a car once because it was leaking strange fluid – that got enforcement out very quickly (and that one was reported to a city toxic chemicals dept webpage). Otherwise, street parking isn’t a huge issue for us (pedestrian & crosswalk safety rate way higher – a post for another day).
My neighbor’s car seems to move on a pretty regular basis so I don’t think this a case of over-staying in the same spot. I’m not totally up on disabled parking permits but I don’t know if this 72 hour rule applies when using these permits anyway.