A couple of days ago I was riding with someone to a location about 70 miles away. Since she and I don’t live very close together, it was most efficient for me to park for the day close to where she could pick me up on the way to our final destination. Here in San Francisco, most residential streets have 2 hour parking limits except for residents (who get a lettered sticker on their car if they want). But there are a few exceptions, and I found one. Lucky me.
When I got back, this hand-written note* was on my car (all spelling and punctuation reproduced exactly):
"Parking like this is just asking for your tires to be slashed. Do it again, and your request will be answered.
“Eat ass and suck a dick.”
First, I know I should just ignore it, and there is small chance I will ever park there again anyway. But I can’t seem to let it go. What parking crime did I commit? There are two choices that occur to me - 1) parking all day in a neighborhood not my own; or 2) possibly I was hogging two car spaces (I didn’t think so but I didn’t go back to check). #2 is a nearly-capital offense in this parking-shy town, while #1 has no merit at all, as far as I’m concerned.
I considered writing something rude on a photocopy of the note and posting it on the nearest light pole, ending with “p.s. I am keeping the original for the police.” But I doubt the effectiveness of such a tactic in reaching the original note-leaver. Or I could park there again, and sit in a friend’s car nearby to see if anything happens.
Would something like this affect you at all? Could you easily ignore it and let it go? Would you park there again, if the occasion warranted it? Or would you want to retaliate in some way (want to, even if no practical way is available)?
*The note is mostly printed with a little semi-cursive thrown in, and looks fairly well educated (mostly correct grammar and punctuation). I’m guessing it was an older person, based on some clues in the penmanship.
Were you too close to a driveway, or is there a chance you missed a parking restriction sign back at the beginning of the block? Locals may know that there’s a specific restriction there with poor signage; in a citation-happy city like SF, I’d assume you’d have gotten a ticket if that was the case, but maybe you got lucky.
Park in the same spot(s?) and leave one or more cleverly concealed vibration-activated dash-cams in the car to record who comes to vandalize it. If placed ideally, the cams will record the person returning to their dwelling. Then you can confront them in a violent physical way, sic the cops on them, sue their ass etc. etc.
He said he was parked on a residential street, i.e. parallel parked along a curb. I don’t know about SF (which is a very special town and may have very special rules), but no residential street I’ve ever seen delineates specific “spots” in that instance. If there is enough room to parallel park your car, it’s a “spot”, otherwise it’s not.
Inefficient spacing may lead to fewer cars being able to park along the street than otherwise. But you don’t really know who parked where when and how much room they actually had at the time (and at least to me, really tight parallel parking is a nightmare scenario - if I don’t have someone else to get out and help direct I have no way of knowing exactly where the edges of my car are, and it’s not a situation where it’s OK to find out by trial and error). So unless spots are actually marked, it can be hard to argue someone is taking more than their share.
No to both. There was plenty of room between me and the driveway. The only restriction signs were for street cleaning, which had just ended when I got there.
Parking spaces aren’t delineated in residential areas. It is possible that the area between the first driveway and the corner, which is where I parked, might have accommodated two small cars, but it was certainly not huge enough to be obvious. For my peace of mind I will probably go back and check next time I am in the area. There were no other cars there at the time, since street cleaning had just ended, so I didn’t block anyone in or anything like that.
That was me, by the way. I was quoting the note, there were no quotes on the note.
eta: I’m still curious if there is anyone who, in real life, would do anything other than ignore the note.
That’s probably it–you parked too far from the edge of the driveway, and somebody wanted to park behind you and there wasn’t room because you were taking up too much room. SF (and the Bay Area in general) have some funny parking conventions–usually you just barely leave enough room for people to get out of their driveway; if there’s any space between your bumper and the curved edge of the driveway, you’re wasting space.
That’s what I expect to go back and check. If there really were room for two cars, I would park by the corner, not by the driveway. If I find that I was at fault, then I will be able to let it go.
SF and the Bay Area also have a disproportionate number of people who are complete selfish assholes about parking. I’ve seen the attitude described by the OP before.
There are people in San Francisco who believe that (public) parking spaces on their street are, in fact, private parking spaces, and that anyone who doesn’t live on the street has no right to park there. Fuck those people. A public street is exactly that.
And some seem to believe that the spot in front of their house is their own private space. My mother-in-law lives in the city, and she has one of these assholes on her street. The guy owns a car and a little moped. He parks the car on the street in front of his house, and the moped on the sidewalk near his front door. When he needs to go somewhere in his car, he has a little transportation dance, where he moves the car forward about 6 or 8 feet, puts the moped directly behind the car, and then drives off in the car.
This leaves the moped right in the middle of the spot where his car was, meaning that no-one else can park there while he’s out. When he gets home, the dance is done in reverse, and the moped goes back on the sidewalk. This procedure means that the public parking spot in front of his house is effectively NEVER free for anyone but him.
I have a little fantasy where, one day, i will team up with someone else to park two more mopeds in his spot while he’s out.
Of course this isn’t unique to San Francisco; people everywhere think the public parking spots on the street in front of their homes are theirs exclusively.
I’d probably be pretty annoyed initially. It’s one of those situations where i can get disproportionately upset: when i haven’t done anything wrong, where someone has been an asshole to me, and where i have no opportunity to respond.
But then, after about five minutes, i’d get over it and move on with my life.
I don’t know. I’ve never seen him ride it away, but i’m only in SF for two to four weeks a year, and i’m not always paying attention to what he’s doing.
When we go to SF, we usually fly and use public transit while we’re in the city. My mother-in-law, who we stay with, has her own garage. All of this means that his parking selfishness has no direct effect on me. I’ve just happened to notice it on a number of occasions.
But it means he has a place to park when he gets home. I’m curious: for people who don’t do this, what do they do if they get home and there’s no place to park?
In a busy city like San Francisco, you sometimes have to park two or three or four blocks from your house. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
If there’s a school or a church or a park or some other institution nearby, there are often extra parking spaces that are not in front of houses, and that become available when people go home after work.
I would probably assume that there was a sign I missed, a local rule I didn’t know, or I parked like an asshole and didn’t realize it. I’d try to let it go, and certainly wouldn’t retaliate out of concern that I really had been at fault for something. Going back and looking wouldn’t necessarily convince me I was in the right because it could have been something situational that had changed.
Yes, some people are overly sensitive and possessive about parking spaces. But just as many other people suck at parking and either lack the self-awareness to realize it or don’t care. I’ve taken pictures before with my cell phone of cars parked really badly next to me because I figured if they thought that was an acceptable parking job, there was a decent chance they’d ding my car on the way out. But I’m sure they would have seen nothing wrong with how they’d parked. So let’s just say when someone says, “My parking was fine!” I’m often skeptical.
You got a written equivalent of someone being a POS at you; in that instance you’d have slightly more context about the person flipping their nut than you do here. In order to get past it (the only thing you can expect to do at this point that has any value) decide the writer of it is wrong, or worse, wrote it in order to watch you get upset about it and found that sight entertaining. They wasted enough of your time being a jerkface, don’t let them waste any more. Decide to move on.
Step 1 Destroy the note or throw it away in a place you can’t retrieve it.
Step 2 Say out loud that you’re moving on to a more important task.
Step 3 Move on to a more important task.
When the thought of the note intrudes on your mind in the next few days, repeat steps 2 and 3 no matter if it takes a week or more.
It is simple and it will work if you want it to. When the person you rode w/ brings it up, tell them you’ve moved and and don’t need to talk about it. Find something funny to talk about and laugh over - I recommend baby goat videos.
And that’s worthy of getting your tires slashed?! :eek:
I left a note for someone once - “Thanks for parking so close to me. I had fun climbing through the passenger side.” I almost immediately felt bad and was glad it was still there in the morning for me to retrieve. :o