Indeed, I do disagree that you’d be a “jerk”. I agree that being a good neighbor, or polite would require that you discontinue. But there is a middle ground between being a “polite/good neighbor” and being a “jerk”.
At my apartment in NYC, of course, it would be weird to care whether or not someone parked out in front. But at my place in Long Island, if someone parks in front of the house who isn’t visiting the house, we would be concerned, as would any of our neighbors.
I know no one owns the street, but it’s out-and-out inconsiderate to park in front of someone’s house if you have room in front of your own.
I’d suggest frequent games of baseball in your front yard. Be sure their cars are in the outfield, well within range of a tanked ball. That’d be enough to make them nervous. Alternatively, you could set their car alarms off (if they have them) every so often.
If you wanna go apeshit, though, chain one of their cars to the closest immovable object a couple minutes before the 2 AM curfew and watch hilarity ensue.
I was just about to make that point in response to delphica’s comment. As it turns out, we do live on a cul-de-sac, so when the neighbors come home, they are always driving on our side of the street. But, as Dinsdale stated, they’re going to have to turn around at some point anyway, so why not just do that in the first place?
I’m not big on vengeful tactics (although I love Finagle’s idea, especially since the truck in question is a bright yellow), but there are a couple of exceptionally annoying things that happen from time-to-time that make the mere parking in front of our house more of a pisser than perhaps is normal.
The first is that one of their friends is almost always parked in front of our house (grey Toyota Celica – I’m surprised I haven’t memorized the license plate yet). On occasion, said friend will be parked there on Monday night, which happens to be the night I normally put the trash out for collection on Tuesday. Being there causes me to have to put the trash cans a lot closer to our driveway than I would normally (enough that one has to take a little time to avoid hitting the cans when backing out of the driveways).
The second is that sometimes they will pull one car up behind another so that the second vehicle is just on the border of our driveway. Again, this causes us to have to exercise more caution than should be necessary when backing out to make sure we don’t actually hit one of their vehicles.
I’ll have to see what Jakeline’s take is, but I’ve had the impression that there’s been some reduction in the occurrence of vehicles in front of our place this week since she had her recent discussion with them. We’ll see if that sticks.
I, too, get mildly annoyed by others parking in front of my house. Esp when they don’t pull up enough to not block the driveway. I also think that people who have too many cars to park considerately are assholes. Why exactly do two people need six cars? I don’t even hesitate anymore on calling the abandoned car line. Are they gonna sweep/pick up trash/fix the curb when they’re done? No. Pretty much assuredly, no. Ugly old cars that don’t move have no chance of survival around here.
It pisses me off to no end if said parkers leave cig butts/empty packs and especially empty beer bottles (Bottles!) in front of my home. Big stupid jerks, IMO.