Park and Pray

When your car has been converted into a toll booth...

So it happened: you got a parking ticket. There are stages for this… first comes confusion. “Is that something on my windshield? Did someone spill neon-orange paint…” Next, realization “oh god wait it’s a, no… not a ticket!!!” Then, anger, “What the _ is wrong with this spot?? No one else has a ticket! I’m going to–” and eventually we all take the ticket off our windows, throw it in the seat next to us in a fit of anger and despair, and drive away while the paper mocks us from the passenger seat until finally, at a stoplight, we open it again to take a closer look and read the full citation, only to enter the final stage, disbelief “expired registration? Come ON!  By ONE DAY!!!”

So how can you get out of it? We’ve come up with a few solutions that seem effective in Boston for avoiding or escaping the scarlet letter of the automotive world that is the parking ticket: Continue reading…

At least we're not getting double-parked by diplomats... yet

There are few subjects that city drivers hold such a love-hate relationship with as double-parking. The don’t ask, don’t tell of the urban army, double parking is often cited as the reason for clogged main streets, accidents, and road rage in our fair city.

The question of what we can do is not easily answered either, considering the few options left to drivers who need to run their groceries into their apartments on packed streets before taking off to troll for empty spaces, or delivery drivers who need to pick up or drop off where the loading spaces have been overcrowded by competing trucks and illegal visitors.

So what can we do? Certainly some cities have taken aggressive Continue reading…

Sleeping beneath the snow...

As winter grinds into February, and with it the weekly snowfalls that are starting to make me think that maybe asphault has always been brown and white and I just never noticed, one thing that every car owner in the city dreads is the inevitable moment of decision: do I move the car today?  Sure, you’re running out of toilet paper (stockpiled from an early december Costco run), the local pizza delivery guy knows you by name because you’ve tried every ridiculous page-filler combination on their menu (banana peppers, squash, bacon, and anchovies? PILE THEM ON!), and you keep telling yourself that you can make it to spring on the trash bags you’ve got if you melt everything down in oven first… but when the alternative is digging your beloved vehicle from weeks of snow and possibly giving up that great space that you can see from your bedside window, the decision always presents as a deeper question than “should I take the car out?” might let on.

While my car hibernates, I visit it about twice a week on my walk to the T to brush off the resident sticker and make sure the windows are still there.  Once every two weeks, I pry open the door, start it up, and let it run for about 30 minutes, before giving it a quick dust-off, locking up the doors, and heading on my way.  For a while, I thought my system was brilliant, but no… I am merely an amateur to this northeastern winter city car storage paradigm.  The following are some of the other approaches I’ve seen lately: Continue reading…