It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning, a comparatively rare occurrence in Portland this time of year. I decided to take advantage of the weather and walk the three-quarters of a mile to the gym and then back home. Hey, it could be 40 degrees and raining sideways within 24 hours, so why not take advantage of the sunshine, right?
If it’s raining, I might drive to the gym, but it’s a walkable distance, and parking can be a hassle, so if the weather’s nice, I’ll just hoof it.
Depending on which direction I come home from, I’ll park in front of the house against or with traffic. I’ve done this since I moved in with Erin, and I’m hardly the only one on our block who does it. So you can imagine my anger when I came home from working out to find a white piece of paper under the windshield wipers on my car with WARNING ominously printed on it in bold red letters:
PARKED WRONG WAY ON CITY STREET
Your vehicle will be subject to Citation or Tow if it is not parked in the direction of traffic.
You cooperation is appreciated.
Really? We live on a lightly-traveled residential street. I can walk down our block virtually anytime, day or night, and find one or two cars parked against the direction of traffic. So what? I’m parked in front of my home…and some bureaucrat in a three-wheeled clown car is threatening me with a citation or tow? I’m sorry, but where’s the crime here? Who’s being harmed? What’s the point of harassing a citizen who’s harming no one?
There are neighborhood in Portland where parking is a legitimate issue. Go to NW Portland, for example, and the population density makes finding on-street parking a challenge during the best of times and virtually impossible otherwise. Instead, Rita the Meter Maid is puttering around a neighborhood in NE Portland where parking is never an issue?
Portland, like any other city, has serious budget issues and is looking for ways to do more with less. Hey, here’s a suggestion: How about y’all stop harassing citizens living in neighborhoods with no parking issues? That way you could devote more time and manpower to the parts of town where parking is actually a significant issue. It’s not as if there’s any lack of those neighborhoods, right? Honestly, does the direction I point my car when I park in front of my house REALLY make any difference at all? If I parked next to a fire hydrant or on the sidewalk, I’d have no argument. This is just silly.
The city of Portland’s vehicle have a slogan painted on the doors that says “The City That Works.” If they had more money in the paint budget, they really could (and probably should) have added, “Inefficiently And Poorly.”
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In an interesting aside from the “There’s Community To Be Found In Shared Suffering” Department, it seems that Portland isn’t the only major city where misguided parking Nazis have far too much time on their hands.
