More or less. But we have trash pick up for three sizable bins early Friday, so they have to be out Thursday. So, we dont like people parking there when it interferes with that.
I recognize it’s a public street but our across-the-cul-de-sac neighbors were for a time consistently parking a car directly in front of our house and leaving the curb in front of their house open. In our city that’s where we put our trash and recycle bins at least once but usually twice a week. Plus, my son would park there when he visited (frequently) so as to not block our cars in the garage. So it felt a little…unneighborly…
Parking is sometimes a toxic issue in San Francisco, and there are people who will leave threatening notes on cars parked in “their” space. We’re lucky in a couple of ways – one is that our street is pretty mellow and a little out of the way, and the people who park on the block live here; another is that the block across the street has a lot of off-street parking built in between the street and the sidewalk, so that relieves the pressure.
Our house has a desirable large space in front (our driveway is on the right and the next-door house driveway is on the left) that is not big enough for 2 cars. We have two cars and a one-car garage, so we do out best to keep that spot – both cars are never out at the same time, if there is one car here, it is in that spot, and we play musical cars sometimes between the garage and the street when both cars are here. That probably sounds very selfish, and in a way it is, but since we are both retired we can do it, and we aren’t doing things like putting traffic cones or garbage cans out to “save” the spot for us. We are careful not to violate the maximum 72 hours in one spot rule. If something happened so that someone was able to park in that spot, I wouldn’t mind or get upset, because it’s a public street, and we know we’ll get it back eventually. (p.s. I would like to get us down to one car, but it’s hard to find a car that we both can drive and that fits in parking spaces in the city; still looking.)
Front of the house, no biggie, since we park in our garage. But we live on a corner with no street lights and people (I assume it’s kids) like to park in the dark on the side. And even that wouldn’t bother me, except for the bottles and trash they leave. Mowing becomes an exercise in trash pick-up.
I voted “No” but I realized after that there are some exceptions. We have friends who often leave their car at our house when traveling rather than park at the airport. During those periods we may put that car in the driveway and put our car on the street, and we don’t like to park in front of our neighbors’ houses.
The other concern is our street is narrow and we try to avoid parking in front of our house in a way that makes it hard for our neighbors across the street to get in and out of their driveway. If someone else parks in front of our house poorly, our neighbors suffer, and we don’t like that.
Our summer place is in a small cul-de-sac. There are often times when there simply are not enough spaces for the number of cars, so people will park where they can. I get it, and I don’t mind. But - there’s enough space to park two cars in front of each house, and it makes me crazy when someone parks in front of our house and takes up both spaces.
When we lived in a higher crime neighborhood, somebody kept parking their Mercedes in front of our house. I finally spotted them, they lived across the street and four doors down. They said they were worried about parking it in front of their place, as they didnt want people thinking they had stuff to steal. I set them straight. They stopped doing it.
Exactly this. It doesn’t belong to you. You have no legal right to it in any community I’ve ever lived in. There are exceptions of course like permitted neighborhood parking (even then it isn’t usually the space per se but the neighborhood). But barring those exceptions you have no grounds for annoyance. I say this despite having had to park a block or two away from my former detached house at times because all the spots were taken on the street.
This is particularly egregious in San Francisco because parking is so ridiculously tight for everyone in many neighborhoods. To get territorial over something you have no legal right to just raises my hackles.
Perhaps you do, but I drive like I do.
I voted “other” because while I normally don’t give a flying donut, tonight I came home after work to find someone parked in front of my house RIGHT where my trash bin is supposed to go.
They pick up tomorrow/today (it’s 1:30 a.m. so … ) around 7:30 or 8 a.m. so if this 
hasn’t moved their car or blocks my trash pickup, imma have angry thoughts and prayers feelings.
I put the bin as far away from the car as possible in hopes that the trash pickup folks see it, and take pity on me to do a manual grab instead of the mechanical arm, but the yards here are small, and there’s not much curbside yardage.
There are just enough spaces on my street for everyone who lives here, plus a few extras. In front of my house is room enough for 2 cars, but often one car hogs both spaces, thinking that they’re graciously leaving our driveways with 15 feet of clearance. I’d mark off the spaces, but the parking strip is gravel. So that’s annoying.
There’s an Airbnb down the street, and occasionally the visitor will park an RV in front of my house for a week while they drive a 2nd vehicle. Or a contractor from the other end of the block will pick my home to park in front of during a long project. If I happen to see them, I ask them if they can share the love with some of the other neighbors as well.
Several years ago, for some stupid reason, my across-the-street neighbors kept parking right at the bottom of my driveway. It was hard to get out on a good day. This was not a good day. I thought for sure they wouldn’t park there knowing we were expecting ice and snow but nope. They were idiots. (I did use it as an excuse not to go to work - can’t get down my driveway.)
I voted “it depends”. Actually, I don’t like it but it happens so often that I’ve resigned myself to it, and reserve my annoyance for those who park so close to my driveway entrance that it makes getting out more difficult. There’s lots of room to pull up more but some idiots just don’t see the need. One time some moron actually had the rear end of the car hanging well into my driveway entrance. I was sufficiently annoyed that I left a note on their windshield.
I also get annoyed when some particular vehicle repeatedly parks there, as if it’s their own personal parking spot. The exception is my next door neighbour, who has two cars but only a single-car driveway. He’s always careful to park courteously well away from my driveway entrance so I don’t really get annoyed when it’s him.
Garbage and recycling pickup is another issue. There’s no specific place the bins are supposed to go – they can be at the curb, or at the end of the driveway. They’re picked up by trucks equipped with long mechanical arms that seize the bin, dump it, and put it back. But I can’t put my bins on the grass at the curb beside my driveway because even if there’s no car there, some jerk is bound to park there just as the garbage truck comes by. So once a week, every pickup day, I have to put the bins at the end of the driveway. Then I can’t get out until they’ve been picked up, or else I have to move them out of the way, back out of the driveway, leave the car in the middle of the road, and put them back.
As did I. The neighbour has a basement suite, that a previous neighbour used for rental income from students at the local university. A few words, and the students learned to park on the street in the middle of my property, nowhere near my driveway. The most recent neighbours have used it as an AirB&B, and every now and then, I find a car right against the edge of my driveway. “What, you can’t walk the extra ten feet to your AirB&B? You already trespass on my driveway, why must you make it difficult for me to back out?” I’ve had to knock on the door and ask if the AirB&Bers could move their car, because if they don’t, and there is a car parked across the street, my car cannot get out at all. It’s a narrow street.
A couple of times, there has been no response to my knocks, and I have to fall back on calling my client, telling them that I will be late for our meeting, and calling a taxi. Because with everybody so close to my driveway, and across the street, I cannot get my car out of the driveway.
We live round the corner from a large school, so in the afternoon especially there are a lot of cars parked everywhere including in front of our house. I only mind if they actually block the driveway, we have enough parking inside for all our cars.
This thread got me to thinking about my childhood home. We lived in a neighborhood of row houses built in the early 50s. Hardly any family had more than one car, and for the most part, everyone parked in front of their house, with overflows going around corners. But as years went by and people got second cars or even campers, parking became a challenge. There were times if we came home late in the evening that we’d have to park up to 2 blocks away. I don’t recall major issues, but then I didn’t drive back in those days. I do know that now some people have put parking pads in their back yards, accessed via the alleys. My parents sold the house in 1979, so it was no longer an issue for any of us.
My neighbor across the street - his son stops by for coffee four or so nights per week after work. Even though there’s plenty of room in Mike’s driveway, his son chooses to park in front of our house. I don’t get it, but I’m not upset by it in the slightest. The street belongs to the town, not to me.
This is what my yard is like. There is no distinct curb, just the edge of the street, then my front yard. I don’t really mind people parking there if the wheels are entirely on the pavement. But sometimes their wheels will be onto the grass, and I end up with wheel ruts in the yard. That’s a bit annoying.
In addition to the “blocking the trash bins” issue that some people have mentioned, there is also the mailbox. Once when one of the neighbors was having a garage sale, there were cars parked all over the street. Including one parked directly in front of our mailbox, making it impossible for the mail truck to get in there that day. That’s just rude behavior.
In my town, parking so that you block a driveway is a ticketable offense. Enforcement is haphazard, but if you call the non-emergency police number, they will happily send parking enforcement to issue a citation.
I’ve never called one in, but my daughter once got a ticket in a different neighborhood for partially blocking a driveway.