No. Not a plane ticket. No.
Not even a dry-cleaning ticket.
No. A parking ticket.
It may be a terrifyingly warm, sunny, beautiful February day, but some Charlottesville police officer wanted to make it a little less happy for me. How? By giving me a ticket. Now, everyone gets tickets in their life. Everyone also feels they are bogus in the first place. I know I do! But this, THIS, ticket is ridiculous.
Let me explain why:
Reason 1: It is a parking ticket and everyone knows parking tickets are lame. Really, unless you are parked in front of a fire station or the Emergency Room doors or the exit ramp of Interstate, you really can't hurt anyone. Sure, maybe your car will be damaged, but that's your own fault!
Reason 2: I was barely in a "No Parking" zone. By that, I mean about 24 inches. Think I am falling prey to exaggeration? Take a look at the picture below.
Reason 3: IT WAS IN FRONT OF MY OWN HOUSE!!!!!! With 6 drivers living in one home, there just isn’t enough room for everyone to park in one driveway. So, we utilize the street. No problem as long as you park in the designated area, just big enough for four cars to snuggle together. Seeing how parallel parking is a dying art form, it is not surprising that people are dumb and leave over 1 foot, sometimes 2, in between their cars. When this happens, the space that could easily hold four normal sized cars, and 5 if they are compact vehicles, is not conducive to holding four or five cars without the last one covering a few inches of our side driveway. When it comes to random people parking there, it can be an issue for whoever is parked in our driveway. However, housemates are fine because they live here, we know how to contact them, and it is no problem to have them move.
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| Maybe this diagram will help...? |
I am also curious as to how I can get a ticket for blocking not even 12 inches of a driveway used to hold an illegal car. This car has expired tags, a city inspection from 2005, and a state inspection from 2008 and who gets the ticket??
Welcome, citizens, to a money-hungry municipality.
Well, if that wasn't enough for you... here's why I am even more angry.
As I began typing this blog, a young woman pulls up and parks where? In front of my house, where it is actually illegal to park. Well, I'm a nice guy... so I gave her about 30 minutes... before I called the police... at 3:04pm (EST). Twenty-three minutes later, at 3:27pm, a police officer was parked in my driveway inspecting the scene of "an illegally parked silver SUV at the intersection of Nalle Street and 7 1/2 Street SW" as reported by yours truly. Luckily, to prove my point of how inconvenient this parking job was, a school bus and two vehicles were at a gridlock and couldn't move, as both streets are single-lane, one-way streets. Welp, that's all the proof I needed! Write 'er up, officer! Hm! Silly me expecting a police officer to do his job. About ten minutes later, at 3:38pm, the young woman walks out to her car, not knowing it had been inspected by a police officer, and drives away. Drives away.... WITHOUT A TICKET! Yes, folks, you read that correctly. The police officer left and did not write her a ticket! The woman was parked in a clearly illegal manner and still he refused to ticket her. My theory is that he saw her bogus handicap sticker hanging in the mirror and assumed that the vehicle belonged to a handicapped person. Well, if stupidity and unfair luck are handicaps, she deserved that sticker. Take a look at the evidence I am taking with me tomorrow when I file a complaint with the city:
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| Here is the officer in my driveway, about to leave after inspecting the scene of the crime |
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| This may look familiar. My jeep was parked behind that dark red car. |
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| Yes, my other driveway and the clear sign saying not to park there. |
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| See that sign? It says "No Parking -->" |
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| Hmmm it would seem as though she parked in between two "No Parking" signs, no? |
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| Another angle |
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| The woman pulling away... without a parking ticket |
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