Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

That's my spot

I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood where street parking is abundant. There’s no war here to preserve spots, or perform car musical chairs on street cleaning days. I don’t worry about not having a spot to park when I return from from errands. It’s a complete contrast to my previous abode (read: my parents’ house), where street parking is at a premium. Even now, when I go back to visit, I often have to park blocks away.

There’s so much street parking here - and large, useable driveways in the homes - that there’s really no “dibs” on any space. Typically, the space directly in front of a home is assumed to “belong” to that household, an unwritten rule of sorts. Neighbors know to respect that arrangement, because they wouldn’t want someone taking the spot directly in front of their home either. There’s no need for such rules in this neighborhood. Someone took the space directly in front? The space next to it is almost always open.

But, it seems one particular neighbor is surprisingly specific about where he like to park his Lexus sedan. So much as that he would move it to the prefer spot soon as it gets vacated, even though the Lexus is parked literally one spot further down. Fire up the engine simply to move the car 20 feet? I guess not everyone is as sympathetic to a car’s mechanicals as I am. Worse thing you can do to a gas engine (electric is exempt from this, obviously) is to cold start it up and then shut it off again in a very short period. The condensation from sitting for a long period never gets a chance to burn off.

This is why when I move my BMW M2 for street cleaning, I actually drive a loop around the neighborhood to get the engine up to temperature. I would never start the car only to drive to the other side of the street. Nor would I get angry that someone have taken “my” usual spot.

Ding Dong!

Drive-by ticketing

I didn’t know the technology that meter maids carry are so advanced these days! I guess gone are the days of them actually stepping out of the car, taking out a pad, and then jotting down the details onto a ticket. Nowadays they use a scanning device to take down a car’s license plate number. The same device then prints out the ticket, whereby the meter maid then puts onto the windshield. The entire process takes less than 10 seconds, like a drive-by shooting.

I witness this just yesterday. It was our side of the street’s turn for its twice-monthly street cleaning. Our neighbor failed to move their Lexus out of the way - not the first time this year. The meter maid came and ticketed the car in a blink of an eye. I honestly would have missed it if I wasn’t staring directly at it outside my room window. San Francisco State University uses the same technology to police its parking lots. Remember when tickets included a mail-in envelop? Not anymore! All you get now is a some-what waterproof piece of paper with details on how to pay online.

On behalf of San Francisco residents, I would like to thank our neighbor for contributing to the city’s funds. Thank you so much for your service! God knows with the dwindling tax base of empty downtown offices, San Francisco needs all the revenue it can get from other places. My housemate was walking the dog at the same time yesterday and saw a non-insignificant number of cars getting ticketed around the neighborhood. Thank you to those drivers as well for their service. What’s the price of a street-cleaning violation ticket these days anyways?

I can smugly say I avoid getting ticketed by inputing the street cleaning days onto my calendar. I then receive alerts for it the night before. Impossible for me to miss! Besides, unlike our neighbor, my housemate would actually warn me if I forgot to move my car for whatever reason. That’s what neighbors do - if we like you.

For the sun.

You get a parking ticket!

Today a friend shared with me this article about parking citations in San Francisco have made a comeback from the depths of the pandemic. March of this year was the first time the number of tickets breached 100,000 since the start of COVID. Last month the city took in $8.5 million in citation revenue! That seems like a lot of money to me, surely more than enough to pay for the dozens or so meter maids.

The article goes on to say that most of the tickets are from street cleaning, a fine San Francisco tradition. No other city I know of have such a rigorous cleaning schedule. If you street-park your car in San Francisco, you have move it off one side of the street every week for about two hours. The cleaning machine can then drive by and do its thing. Many times I’ve seen neighbors forget the schedule and end up with a ticket. I avoid this by entering the street cleaning days onto my calendar for the whole year, at the beginning of the year

Lucky for my neighborhood, street cleaning is only a twice-a-month affair.

I have to say it is nice to have clean streets. And I’m sure those are some good paying jobs there at the Department of Public Works operating those cleaning trucks. But let’s not kid ourselves: street cleaning is also a money generator for San Francisco. I just hope that revenue go towards something productive vis a vis the roads, like taking care of potholes in a timely manner. I think that’s a fine bargain: the forgetful parkers amongst us subsidizing the upkeep of our streets.

Oldest allies.