Well I don’t know where spinky lives, but you’ve described something like 95% of central London, so there’s really no choice. I also have to pay, handsomely, for the “privilege” of parking my car anywhere on my street in the form of a yearly permit.
Look, I personally really don’t mind if anyone parks in front of my house at all. What I do object to though is taking shit if I ask that person politely to move if I have a valid reason to want to park outside my house occasionally (see my post above). Who’s the self-entitled one in that scenario?
When I’ve seen that happen, it’s usually for one of the following reasons.
The parking space in front of house A is across the street from the driveway apron of house C. On more than one occasion, the residents of house C backed their cars into the side of a car parked in front of house A.
The street curves in a way where, if a car is parked in front of house A, someone backing out of the driveway from house A can’t get a clear view of oncoming traffic.
Street trees in front of house A are “dirty”, dropping pollen, sap, nuts or branches onto the street. It’s a problem with silver maples in some areas; they grow fast and are tolerant of salt, but they’re brittle.
The owner is an older person. They might be the type who wouldn’t dream of entering their house through the front door, because they see it as being for guests and special occasions. They might see the on-street parking in front of their house in the same way; they’re saving it for special occasions., like if the Pope decides to visit.
But what if the Pope wants to visit me? He’ll see that the front of my house has a car in it, and he’ll go on to the next one… my neighbor’s! Clever and devious, my neighbors are.
Well is there any use of public property which is legal but you still find annoying?
For example, would you find it annoying if a homeless person stood in front of your house all day and asked your children for money every time they went out or came in?
What if you were sitting on an empty bus and a smelly person got on the bus and decided to sit in the seat right next to you. Would you find that annoying?
What if you were sitting in a public park, eating an ice cream cone and a stranger walked up to you and started questioning and criticizing your eating habits?
Well I’m glad that trivial things do not bother you. I congratulate you on your awesomeness.
They’re always in front of your house - never in front of the house on the other side or across the street?And you know not just that they parked during a time when it’s easy to park but specifically that the space in front of their house was open at that time? And you know they used the car in between, not that the car was parked on Friday and not moved until Monday? Or is it that you expect them to constantly keep looking for when the spot in front of their house opens up and then immediately move the car from the front of your house.I am almost never parked in front of my house- but it’s not by choice. Most of the time, when I get home the space in front of my house is occupied - either by parent or teacher from the school at the corner or someone from the senior center on the corner or someone visiting one of the neighbors or a neighbor who has one of the former people parked in front of their own house. I will park in front of my own house if the space is open, but I will not suspend my life to see if the space opens up later.
*If *that’s really why they’re parked in front of your house and *if *you also value having the front of your house open, then I suppose it’s inconsiderate more than rude.
Although I sort of wonder about a place where street parking is legal and 1) if your one annoying neighbor doesn’t park in front of your house, no one else will and 2)the view if no one is parked in front of your house is likely to be something other than the car parked directly across the street.
Maybe - or maybe they’re just clueless. If it bothered me I’d ask them to move it. I wouldn’t even consider that a “challenge” .
There are plenty of uses of public and private property I find annoying- but rudeness is not measured by my annoyance and there’s no point in me raising my blood pressure because my neighbor painted his house like the Partridge Family bus. (there really is a house like that, not on my block, but a few blocks away)
So if somebody did something which annoyed you; and that person should know it annoyed you but they did it anyway without any good reason, you would not necessarily see it as rude?
Well there is no point in getting annoyed at most annoying things in this world. I myself find myself regularly getting annoyed anyway at annoyances, even if it is pointless. If you have conscious control over such feelings, then I congratulate you on your awesomeness.
But if it doesn’t annoy you, why are you taking any action at all in the first place? If it’s not annoying, why not let the homeless guy stay, and stay in your seat and smell the smelly guy or let the guy harangue you for as long as he likes?
Wasn’t that the whole point of the question you were responding to - finding things that are legal, but happen to be annoying to you? I thought it was about your personal emotional reaction to it, not to your actions.
Wait, you can smell your neighbor’s car? In that case you shoudl be annoyed. I thought you just had this weird sense of entitlement to property that doesn’t belong to you.
I had a next door neighbor on a street where the houses were all fairly narrow, so there wasn’t much room in front of each and every house. You could squeeze two cars in there, but it was tight.
One time a friend of ours came over and parked in front of the neighbor’s house, and then we all left in my car, which had been parked in our driveway. We came home to find the neighbor parked in our driveway, instead of hers. I went over to find out what was what, and she yelled at me for there being a car in front of her house. Being that she was kind of on the kooky, screamy side of things anyway, I just had our friend move their car down the street, rather than deal with her.
Fortunately issues like that with her were fairly rare.
If someone did something that they knew annoyed me, for no good reason, I might see it as inconsiderate. I don’t expect people to read my mind , I might have no good reason to be annoyed and to my mind, “rude” implies breaking a rule that is more commonly accepted than this one is. Cutting in line- rude. Even the line-cutters believe its rude when they are the victims. Parking in front of someone else’s house- some people think it’s rude, inconsiderate, etc while others believe it’s a fact of life.
It’s not awesomeness , nor is it conscious control. It’s more of an attitude. Why get upset about what I can’t change? So I can be angry/annoyed all the time?
Did you read the thread? I don’t remember what others have said, but in my case it meant that I couldn’t put our trash cans out (not cool on hot S Cal summers), they sometimes blocked driveways and I don’t think I mentioned this earlier, one of them had a habit of leaving trash in one of the big flower pots on the boulevard. And in my case, they didn’t need to park in front of our house - for some reason they wouldn’t park in front of their own house.
That too! Our offending neighbors have five cars in a house that, garage and driveway, could hold three of them (tho not any more as they made the garage into a bedroom). It would help if they didn’t think they needed 2 huge SUVs and a very long classic car (which needs a muffler so it would quit setting off the alarm in our truck).
Well, if somebody decides to park in front of your house (without any other reason), presumably they do so because they perceive some value in not having a car parked in front of their house. So they are doing something to others they would prefer not to have done to themselves. Even if it’s not written in any etiquette book, common sense should tell them not to do it.
Well I congratulate you on your great attitude.
Well a lot of us lesser beings have feelings which are difficult to control. For example, if I am driving in the city and I get stuck behind a cabbie who blocks the road to drop off a customer when he could easily have pulled over, I get annoyed even if the delay is only for a minute or two. I realize it’s a fact of life in the city, but I still get annoyed about it. Probably if you measure my blood pressure, you’d find it’s slightly higher than before I got stuck behind that cab.
Perhaps I would end up living a year or two longer if I had your superior attitude.
This seems to be an overstatement. I believe it would be more correct to say that it’s widely believed and understood to be polite to prefer parking near your house instead of your neighbor’s. I’m parked in front of my neighbor’s house right now because someone was parked in front of mine when I got home the other day, and I haven’t moved my truck yet. At some point (probably today), I’ll go move my truck back to my side of the street so he can park there, since he currently can’t park directly in front of his house. I don’t consider it a big deal, but it seems like common courtesy.
