The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

If you don't live and/or drive in New York City then the words "alternate side parking" have little or no meaning to you. The basic idea is this: The New York street cleaning trucks go around the city and clean the streets every day on a schedule. This picture is for a street where the truck comes every Monday and Thursday between 9am and 10:30am. Most likely on the other side of whetever street this is is a similar sign that says you can't park there on Tuesday and Friday between the same hours. Every street is different and almost every street in New York has some sort of street cleaning schedule. What this means for people who live in New York is that your car is not allowed to be on that side of the street during the time the cleaning truck is scheduled to come. There are signs posted on the street telling you when you can park and when you can't as shown on the right and they have a little broom doubling as the slash through the P to indicate that you can't park because of street cleaning. If you don't understand, then don't worry. No one gets it until they get their first alternate side ticket. After that, they learn quickly.

Today I was going to work and I didn't have to teach any classes, meaning I had some flexibility as to when I could take a break. I parked at a spot where I would have had to move my car by 11:30 to comply with the rule and I fully intended to do so when I parked. The problem is that I forgot to move the car. I was caught up in grading these Regents exams that had to be finished by today and I didn't go downstairs until 12:30. I expected a ticket, but I got much more than that.

Some fucking clown in the city thought it would be a good idea to shame people into not parking on the wrong side of the street by allowing ticket writers or sanitation people or somebody to put big fucking neon yellow stickers on the window of your car that says something to the effect of, "This car is illegally parked. Since this driver does not comply with parking rules, this street could not be properly cleaned." So when I went to get in my car today, not only did I have a ticket, which doesn't necessarily bother me, but I also had one of those big yellow stickers. I tried to find a picture of that sticker on a car, but to no avail.

I would not have cared if I could have just taken the sticker off the window and thrown it out somewhere, but that's not how it works. They are impossible to simply peel off with your fingers so I had to drive around with the yellow sticker in my window to the grocery store, which is across from the Staples, which I was going to stop at anyway. At the grocery store I bought razor blades and then spent 20 minutes in the parking lot scraping this sticker off my window. The razor blades they had were really cheap and that did not help matters. It would have been better for me to go to a hardware store and get a real razor blade or even better one of those scraping tools, but seeing as how I was at the grocery store anyway, I figured the regular razors would do.

So, the idea is that I'm so ashamed now that I won't ever park on the wrong side anymore. That must be the idea because there's no monetary loss from the sticker. I already got a ticket, that should be enough of a deterrent. My question is how much does the city spend every year to buy and stick these stickers on cars? It seems like a big ass waste of money to me. You're already giving tickets, let that be enough. I don't need to be shamed out of parking on the wrong side. I didn't leave my car in the spot with malice aforethought. I just forgot to move it. I got my ticket. I'll pay it. Don't waste my fucking time by making me scrape this sticker off my car. Now the glue residue is all over the place. What ridiculousness.

Clearly it's legal for the city to stick stickers on cars, or else they wouldn't do it. I wonder if anyone has ever challenged the city's right in court. It's probably not worth the time or money you'd have to spend. If the city can go around sticking stickers on people's windows I wonder if I'm allowed to do it too. I mean, the city is essentially saying that it's ok to be intrusive in one's life and vandalize their property at the same time. I'm fairly certain that the police in New York would not look kindly on anyone else sticking stickers on people's cars, yet they are doing it themselves. At it's basest level this is really just vandalism on the city's part and they're also espousing the idea that two wrongs somehow make a right.