No more golden spots

02.25.09 | Comment?

Since FM moved to San Francisco last August, I was one of those lucky rats to ride a Vespa and park for free on the newly “remodeled” block next to work. See, when a city remodels a block, aka builds a brand new luxury apartment high-rise, it takes them a while before they figure out the street parking situation.

1) They make a nice sidewalk and don’t paint the curb, which means you can park there for an unlimited amount of time.

2) They figure when the heck they’re going to clean the street and puts up a sign. So still able to park there anytime, except when they clean the street.

3) Put parking meter polls one morning.

4) Put the actual meter on the polls the afternoon.

5) Start charging.

Luckily, they didn’t give tickets to the motorcycles and cars that were parked on that block the day they planted the meters. But we’re not always lucky like that. The night before they put the street cleaning sign up, Justin decided to leave his scooter overnight. And guess what? The next morning, the street cleaning sign was up (unannounced), the street got cleaned that morning and a ticket was tucked into his scooter glove compartment.

Anyways, I will look back nostalgically at the times when I could just show up and park for free. Now I have to fit my little blue Vespa hiney in a specially designed motorcycle metered spot and pay $2.50/day. Ok, that’s not a lot, but it’s more than $0. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise and it will motivate me to walk more often. Hmm.

«
»

Comments are closed.