There was only one real note. The second note was a prank.
Oh my God, I can talk about parking forever. I live in Manhattan. I own a modest-sized car and, until recently, a modest-sized motorcycle. I consider myself something of an armchair expert on the subject of parking because I deal with it all the time.
I’ve gotten nasty notes, and I’ve had people come up to bitch at me while I’m parking, or after I’ve parked. Well, all of them had to go f*ck themselves because I knew the rules before I parked.
But, here’s the thing: I’ve also left notes for other drivers, bitching about their parking. Am I a dick, you ask. No, siree. They, too, had to go f*ck themselves and move their car or never park in the offending spot again. Why? Again, because I knew the rules, and I was happy to quote them, chapter and verse, in cc’ed notes to the local precinct, community board and city council member.
That’s the difference between me and the twerp who left the OP his note – or the doormen who claim I can’t block the front of their building entrance (I can), or the building super who said I can’t park at the yellow-painted curb (I can), or the owner of the fancy sportscar who said I couldn’t park my bike behind his baby (I did), or the rich, old, self-entitled prick who said I could not park in front of his house (I did). I have the law on my side and they have their delusional wishful thinking and, sometimes, a convincing sounding rap that might works on the rest of the NYC driving population – but not me.
The OP should have said (or wrote) what I say to everyone who gives me a hard time about where I park. First I tell them what the law says. That, sadly, is seldom good enough to shut them up. Then I say, “Fine. Let’s call a cop right now. I’ll even make the call. How’s that? We’ll hear what the cop has to say. If you’re right they’ll give me ticket, right. Let’s call a cop. Do you want me to call a cop?” They never do, because they knew before they even approached me that they had no case. See, that’s the crucial point. They knew that I was legally parked, but they hoped I didn’t.
And that, my friends, is why I think the OP should comply with the letter of the law and tell the note-writer to go pound salt. The Note Fairy “thinks the rule is that you must 30 feet from the intersection”?
If the NF doesn’t know the rule, he/she should never have mentioned it in his/her note.
If the NF *does * know the rule, then he/she is trying to snow the OP, and the NF is a deceptive bastard like all the above-mentioned BSers I’ve had to deal with here in NYC.
(FWIW, the rule here in NYC is that – and I’m paraphrasing in layman’s terms here – you can not park in a marked crosswalk or past the building/property line of the structure adjacent to the sidewalk where you’re parked.)
Risk a confrontation? Yeah, like this is the Cold War. papaw, you’re already confronting them by writing a note, but you’re also being cowardly by not putting your name on it. If you really feel you’ll get a brick through your window for your trouble, you should just stay the hell away from the scary F-150 owner.
In Washington State, and you are right Ignatz it is state law I should have looked at.
And FYI, I am parking on the main street. The intersecting street that people are coming out of do have a stop sign. My truck is to their right on the street they are entering either turning left or right.
I am fairly certainn this regulation intends you measure your parking distance from stop signs and signals on the street you are parking, not on intersecting streets. There is no pedestrian safety zone on my side of the street intersection… There is no sidewalk either. It does have a fairly normal size wide parking zone with a white line indicating the edge of the street…
Hey stuyguy I love your response. That is exactly what bugged me about the note, very well said! But what would you have done if the note writer had only said the first part and did not try to intimidate me with the law?
But aren’t you ever worried about pissing these people off, and then basically leaving your car with them? Personally I feel that there’s no winning in a parking confrontation.
The note writer strikes me as a Junior Mod.
So, you’re saying, even if the suggestion in a note is correct or even beneficial to you and a dialogue would get you to the same place, because the note writer didn’t bow down to your way of doing things, you’ll just ignore it? I see.
Additionally, assuming what’s in the note makes sense and is beneficial, what’s the point of leaving contact information, except to provide someone who is a die-cast asshole a way of escalating their assholishness and providing a means of harassment?
I have no problem leaving contact information, I just don’t see any positives it could accomplish simply in terms of the suggestion, if the note is valid and the recipient is open to constructive, communal-minded suggestions. I see a lot of potential negativity though.
My reaction would have been based on circumstances.
I try to be a nice guy when I can. For example, the above-mentioned doormen hate it when a car blocks the entrance to their apartment building because residents of the building will have a hard time getting from cabs to the curb and vice versa. If there’s a precious parking spot in front of one of these buildings I’ll be damned if pass it up to make life easier for the fat cats; but by the same token, it’s no skin off my nose, after I’ve parked, to position my car to create a wide gap between my car’s bumper and the next one. That’s all that most of the doormen want – a decent-sized passageway from the curb to the street – and I’m happy to give it to them if I can. All that matters to me is that I’ve got a legal spot.
Now, in your case – presuming the Note Fairy made no mention of the supposed 30’ rule – I would have done one of the following:
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If spots are at a premium (as they always are here in NYC) I would have parked in the spot, complying with the letter of the law, then left a polite note of my own on my windshield saying essentially, “Sorry, but this is a legal spot (quoting the law) and because parking spaces are so rare I’m going to park here. If there is a dangerous sightline issue, please take it up with the authorities empowered to decide the parking regs (the DOT or the community board or whoever). Rest assured that if the parking regulations on that curbside are changed, I will comply fully with the new rules.”
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If parking spaces are plentiful, I would have assessed the sightline issue myself to see if the NF had a point or not. If the sightlines were as bad as the NF claimed, then sure, I’d park further from the intersection or in another spot entirely. But…
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… if the sightlines were fine, I’d leave the same note as described in #1 (maybe leaving out the claim that parking spots are rare).
Yeah, I get worried, but the stakes are a lot lower in my situation. I have a crappy, rusty old bucket of bolts I call a car. If someone keyed it, I’d laugh.
Another thing, most of the disputes I’ve had have been in affluent residential neighborhoods. The tony residents – doctors, lawyers, diplomats and their trophy spouses, mostly – may grumble and bitch a lot, but they’re not about to take an icepick to my tires.
The gruff hired maintenance staff of their buildings, on the other hand, would probably happily take an icepick to my ear if they knew they could get away with it. But they love their cushy greased-palmed jobs too much to risk a complaint to the managenent from someone like me. Also, most of the curbside disputes I’ve had with these guys are public enough to attract witnesses who live on the block. If my tires got slashed an hour after I argued with some building super, everyone on the block would know who did it and spread the word that he was a thug that maybe should not have access to rich people’s cars and property.
I will admit that I was much more fearful that someone would vandalize my motorcycle in retaliation to a parking spat. If someone secretly f*cked around with my bike, it could put me in serious danger. Fortunately, nothing like that ever happened, and I no longer own a bike.
5-4-Fighting, when I post this – " That doesn’t mean I’m so militant about it that I will cut off my nose to spite my face, by ignoring information common sense would suggest I attend to (YOUR BACK LEFT TIRE IS FLAT)." – and you respond with this:
I have to conclude that you simply cannot read. There appears to be no other explanation for you having “seen” a conclusion (that I would ignore the note) that is directly contradicted by what I actually said (that I would NOT ignore the note).
This brings us back to the question of why, if the note is ever so sensible and beneficial, there is some concern about a person being a “die-cast asshole” in response to it. You ASSUME the person you are addressing is an asshole – that’s your justification for not signing your note – but you also take issue with their equally baseless assumption that YOU are an asshole for leaving it. How does that work?
The point of leaving the contact information is chiefly to let the person know that you are NOT being the sort of asshole who just leavies anonymous notes on other people’s cars. It lets them know you are open to a dialogue if they want one, and that you are putting yourself as a person behind the things you say. It also garners more serious attention from people who think anonymous notes are shabby and generally don’t pay attention to them.
There’s nothing “communal minded” behind an anonymous note; that’s the point. There’s no “person” behind it taking responsibility for having said it. If there is “potential negativity” from leaving the note signed, then there is the same “potential negatitivy” from leaving it unsigned – you’ve just allowed yourself to avoid it be taking the coward’s way out. If the note you are leaving foreseeably causes “potential negativity,” then you are not communicating your point effectively. If you can foresee that the person will be pissed (a “die-cast asshole”) to hear what you say, then you should write a better note – one you would be willing to sign – or talk to the person yourself.
Anonymous notes are cowardly and shabby and they very frequently are met with irritation by the recipients, because they are cowardly and shabby. That’s not the justification for leaving them; it’s the reason you don’t leave them in the first place.
How can that be? Curbs are painted yellow by the city to mark where you can’t park, such as in these situations
Contrary to what most people assume, the City of New York does not paint curbs. All of the painted curbs you see in NYC are meaningless. The only thing that matters are the specifications in the rules you quoted. The curbs are painted by unauthorized neighborhood busybodies or the aforementioned deceptive bastards; as such, you can not rely on them to reflect the real rules.
Take, for example, one of the curb cuts on the block where I live. It leads to the loading dock of a giant midtown office building. Truckers have a hard time backing straight into the dock because the street is pretty narrow and usually choked with traffic. The building guys figured it would make life easier for them and the truckers if cars didn’t park right up to ends of the curb cut; trucks would have more room to approach the loading dock on a bit of an angle, as opposed to straight in. So what did the building guys do? They painted the curbs yellow about 6 feet beyond both ends of the cut, of course.
It is utterly meaningless! And when they tell me I can’t park along the yellow curb, I laugh and tell them to call a cop, pointing to old One-Seven, half a block away.
Another example I encountered was even better, because it had such a sneaky twist. Most of the curb painters, like in the above example, get overzealous – they paint more than the law allows. In this case, they purposely painted less than the law allows.
Imagine the following set-up on a Manhattan sidewalk. About 15 feet from the corner is a fire hydrant. About 30 feet from the hydrant is the entrance to a swanky apartment building manned by a Nazish doorman. The doormen and the building management do not want the entrance to the building blocked by a parked car – see my above post for their reasoning – so, it is in their best interest for cars to park as close to the hydrant as possible. So what did they do? They painted the curb in front of the hydrant yellow, of course. But they did not paint it 15 feet out from the hydrant – the legal no-parking distance. No, they painted it only about *11 feet * out from the hydrant!
When people try to park in front of the entrance the doorman rushes out and firmly “asks” them to pull up to the yellow edge. Most people comply, thinking they’re legally parked anyway – but they’re not. When I encountered this little trick, I paced off the 15 feet, parked my car the legal distance, and told the doorman as I strolled away, “By the way, your yellow stripe is about 4 feet short – but you knew that already, didn’t you?”
Like I said, I can talk about parking all day!
Agree. And also agree “I think the law is 30 feet” is not a threat, veiled or otherwise.
Because you’re not ASSUMING the person is an asshole.
You’re taking a precaution against the CHANCE that he is.
Does that help?
Anyway, I’d still rather get an anonymous note than have this happen.
THAT’S an asshole move. Although. . .32 year old kid, living at home with mom with a $38,000 Hummer he had “lifted”? I’ve only got so many tears to shed.
That is not true. Because, at one point the curbs in my neighborhood (Crown Heights) were not painted and people were getting tickets when they thought they were in the clear, we requested the City to paint the curb near hydrants and other restricted areas. It took a while but they did it.
They also changed a “no parking permitted” sign where there had been a volunteer ambulance corps taking those spaces, but which had closed, to “parking permitted here” sign, because of our request.
I used to get really irked about what your anonymous note-writer is obviously irked about. I felt vulnerable and threatened pulling so far out into the intersection to see around pickups, vans and SUVs. Then I talked to the guy in charge of the street department, and he told me two things that were very interesting.
First, people tend to have that feeling MOSTLY where there is a wide grassy strip (a parking, most places) between the street and the sidewalk. That’s because they have to over-run the crosswalk area to see traffic in the street.
Second, people tend to feel more vulnerable than they really are at intersections.
In fact, drivers trying to see around your pickup have PLENTY of room to look for oncoming traffic and not run the risk of being hit. Rest assured that your pickup, as long as you stay within the 8-foot limit, is not just parked legally, but safely.
You really don’t get it, do you? The entire place this conversation STARTED was with you questioning the motivations that would lead me to move my vehicle even if I thought the notes were crap. That, you asserted, was indefensible, because I was assumign the guy leaving the note was an asshole – the type of guy who might then key my car. But I wasn’t ASSUMING the person is an asshole, I was taking a precaution against the CHANCE that he was.
Sound familiar?
You don’t get to assert that the note-leaver must be “timid and civic” (Post 42) while the recipient is “vengeful and uncaring” (Post 48), and that it is reasonable and justifiable to “take precautions against the CHANCE” that the recipient is an asshole, and simultaneously tell me that I can’t take the same sort of precautions if in my judgment the roles are reversed and it is likely the driver who is “timid and civic” (minding his own business) and the note-leaver who is the potential asshole.
Your judgment is no better in this regard than mine. You admit that precautions against potential assholish behavior are warranted. You just want to tell me who the asshole must be. You don’t get to do that, sorry.
It’s a difficult situation. Yeah the note maker got a little snotty with you, but… it’s difficult to communicate in an extremely neutral tone when you are upset about something.
Anecdotally, I live on a residential block, and the cross street parking as I’m making a left is used by the local auto mechanic. Unfortunately, maybe simply because large vehicles like SUVs are popular in my area, it tends to be larger vehicles that are parked on that block, making it very difficult to see oncoming traffic as I attempt to make a left off of my street. It’s especially difficult when a larger vehicle is in the closest space to my street, but ideally it’d be nice to have only “normal” sized cars for the first two or three spots.
Are you violating the law? Probably not. Is the guy writing the notes not communicating in a totally neutral and friendly way? Probably not. Does your truck being parked where it is make it dangerous for cars making a left hand turn? Absolutely. What you choose to do about it is up to you to a certain extent, and depending on the nature of the parking availability, there may be an extent to which you don’t have much control. But if you do have some control over where you park, and in addition the note has annoyed you enough to no longer care, you should be aware that yes, vehicles larger than cars do create a pretty drastic sight impairment for vehicles attemptign to make a left turn.
I can read quite well, I appeciate your being concerned.
I phrased my response the way I did because I was hoping *you *would shed some light on the dichotomy between your posts where you said, in response to any polite, communal-minded note, you would ignore or throw the note away if it had no contact information and others where you said you would take heed of them (your flat tire), not requiring they contain contact information.
Your own words that you quoted above were quite illuminating in regards to your criteria for choosing which to consider.
Thank you.