First off, let me say that all of you that weren't at the SRD meeting missed out. It was a productive, energizing meeting. Things are coming along. The website is up (with nothing on it yet) and Alice passed around some design templates that looked great. Margaux has made a pamphlet so that people can sign on and it looks good. We have a tentative date and location for the benefit, and, best of all, the architect and builder who is handling the redevelopment of the block that the old Eppie's is on (can someone help me with his name, I didn't get a card) came and talked to us about their plans and listened to our input. They are still in the very preliminary phases and are meeting with various neighborhood groups. Two good things about this project are that the block is owned by a local family (Eppy's family) and that they are going to have an courtyard for outdoor dining, which we all know Sac needs more of. So if we can just work with them to facilitate some local business getting in there, it could be a much-needed improvement to that area, and it's still early enough that we could hope to do that. We're meeting again next tuesday so hopefully more of you can come.
A guy that some of you may know made the front page of the Bee today, but probably not in a way he would like.
This arena article is better than the ones from the last couple of days. I wish they would just put it in Natomas, though. If they're fretting about the cost then why choose a more expensive site?
one quick thought that i didn't get around to posting yesterday re: the arena. who would actually "own" the place? 'cause if it's the Maloofs then it doesn't matter if the kings/monarchs only use it 80 days, they'd be collecting the rental fees, etc., for all other uses, too. sure, it would be a community asset and i'm okay with some community (taxpayer) money for part of it, but unless taxpayer money equals taxpayer profit-sharing, days of use shouldn't matter. it's not like a museum, park, community theater, or other non-profit situation.
ReplyDeleteYou can take the guy out of The Loft......
ReplyDelete-miller
The architect/contractor on the Eppie's project is Paul Menard. After the meeting last night, I am very excited about this project. Even if a few of the businesses that become tenants in the development are chain, it is great that the developers are willing to try to work independent business owners in as well.
ReplyDeleteLong live scam punks! The Grandma in the story is a professional social worker and a member of the organization I work for.
ReplyDeleteBrew
And long live Mira Loma punks grown older and no less wise. Good to see my fellow alum sticking it to the man.
ReplyDeleteHow do I love thee, Craig Usher? Let me count the ways...
ReplyDeleteEd
Yay Craig. That's great. Too bad he got caught.
ReplyDeleteHey -- anybody want to play a benefit?
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. Sort of...
luv ya all
Craig Usher
p.s. The Bee reporter (who was very nice and had a really good sense of humor) kind of missed my main point -- the city's parking policy was designed to nail people copying and selling parking passes, but the policy neglects to take into account the needs of families with kids who choose to live in or near downtown.
He also left out half the story, but that's the nature of news. When I contacted the media to cover this story (after 5 months of quietly failing to change the system from within the city's parking bureaucracy)I mainly just wanted to get some discussion about this policy going. That seems to be happening over at the Bee's article comment section where there's lots of cool name-calling going on and it's about split between folks who think I'm a complete ass who got what I deserve and folks who think the city is screwed up (very few of the commenters consider the possibility that both could be true).
I recently got a parking ticket in a sleepy east-sac neighborhood for parking my car facing against traffic.
ReplyDeleteI was parked there in the first place because I drive to a guy's house who I commute to work with.
I try to be respectful of the locals who actually live around there and who rightfully should get street parking first, but this area of town has more curbside parking than downtown to begin with. I can't park in Sean's (Sean is my carpool mate) driveway, either, because we leave for work a good hour or so earlier than his girlfriend, and she's not at work every day that we are anyway.
Even if we did, she'd have to be on the street.
In midtown, sure, you minorly mess up parking, one of those menacing 3-wheeled cart driving dipsticks will write you up. And they'll write as many tickets for as many offenses as possible. I learned this the hard way once in the past.
But my question(s) is (are) this:
A car that is parked facing against traffic takes up the exact same amount of space as a car parked facing with traffic. Why is parking in this fashion illegal? What detremental condition does making this an offence worthy of a fine? What is this fine deterring me from?
It's not against the law to park in the area I parked, permit or no permit. There are no posted parking limitations.
Why is parking your car facing against traffic illegal? Why? Because enough people will do it and get "caught" doing it for the city to make money off of it.
Secondly, several of Sean's neighbors came out to apologize for it happening and all said the same thing; the parking cops do not regularly patrol that area; somebody must have called it in.
One guy even said that he saw it happen. The cart pulled up, stopped only at my car, wrote a ticket and drove off. They were on a mission. Some grump with nothing better to do ratted on me just to be a jerk. Anyway, though, that's a separate issue.
The main issue is yes, Sacramento is an area with enough cars in a small enough space that there should be parking regulation, and fines and rules help deter people from hogging space. However, a lot of these fines and regulations are created and enforced in a way that isn't sympathetic to that original ideal. They're just there to make money, and I can't help but wonder if most of the tickets that do get written and paid are in principle really frivolous and petty, and end up pretty much paying for the vermin that are parking cops and their immediate "bosses."
I hate those guys, I've had so many evil run-ins with them from living in midtown. This shouldn't be said, but I hope they end up buying a shipment of faulty helmets for those guys. I have no love for them at all.
I got a ticket for the same thing last winter. I was moving and was only parked that way for about five minutes, but the cop was already writing the ticket as I came out my house. Anyways, he told me that it's a hazard to oncoming cars. I guess if you're stupid enough you might think a car parked that way was coming towards you? I don't know, but I agree that it's a shitty ticket to get. The neighbor who made the call on you probably was crazy OCD and couildn't stand the sight of car facing the opposite direction.
ReplyDeleteBrew
We actually guessed that it was the lady whose house I was parked in front of. Ironically, she will sometimes park on the sidewalk to deter people from parking in front of her house. That's also illegal, and is actually a car.
ReplyDeleteI don't get the "hazard to drivers" thing. Like, if you saw a car in front of you facing the same way as you, you should be any less careful around it? Is that it?
"...is actually a car."
ReplyDeleteI'm not running on very much steam today. I meant it's actually an obstruction.
Craig, if you're actually going to do a benefit, it would be my pleasure to assist you in any way I can.
ReplyDeleteTangentially, what the hell is wrong with the Bee? Sure, it was cool to see Craig get in the news, but the front page? Wasn't there some sort of train wreck in India recently? War? Moidah? Sheee-it!
Ed
my guess is the thinking behind the "can't park facing the wrong way" rule is that you couldn't get a car into or out of that position without driving on the wrong side of the street at least briefly, and if the cops can't catch you in the act, at least the parking police can ticket you. eh.
ReplyDeleteActually, you can get into that position without driving the wrong way; by backing out of a driveway. Your car might be facing the wrong way, but it's moving the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI Yell "parasites" when driving past the cart enforcement people.
ReplyDeleteParasitism is an interaction between two organisms, in which one organism (the parasite) benefits and the other (the host) is harmed, though usually without killing the host. Parasitism can be considered a special case of predation since in both interactions one species acquires biomass directly from another. In parasitism, the relationship between the two organisms is particularly close (the parasite typically lives within or upon the host), making it a form of symbiosis.
Parking Enforcement is a new thing in japan(just started last month).It`s ran by private companies quasi police men in lime green uniforms.So far a man bit a parking guy in okayama and another got his shins kicked cause the japanese said it disturbed the wa(harmony).Cars like to be triple deep park in the street which has one lane..Bikes now get tickets and the yakuza mobiles seem to be paper free.It was funny when i first saw the ticket folks as a mob followed them and watched what they we`re doing.Craig,you should argue a unfair balance of harmony(wa)or get grandma a crazy gangstar car with single digit plates,tinted glass..No cop will touch those over here.I converted my bike into the melon bike and been disturbin` the wa selling home grown melons for $2.00 usually melons in japan are $10.00 or more..alot of the big/pricy stores give me frown.But i`m giving it to the man and getting free mapo tofu and chu hi`s,listenin` to Crusaders for selling my melons hecka cheap .Given`it to the man/zaibatsu melon style..
ReplyDeleteHey Ed --
ReplyDeleteYou don't think my personal parking problems are worthy of front page news? Come on man, my struggles on the streets of Sac are really just a metaphor for that whole thing that is going on you know over there in that other part of the world (Can't remember the name of the place, and I can't find it cuz the Bee buried it in the back pages somewhere).
I almost refused to be interviewed unless they guaranteed placement ABOVE THE FOLD, but my agent told me I should do it anyway, so I went ahead with it.
Thanks for the benefit offer, but I've still got one more layer of appeal to go that should put off a final verdict for at least another month or so.
I get to go to traffic court and plead my case to a real judge. I'm planning on bringing in a big model of my neighborhood with match box cars and have the judge try to figure out how to have my kids grandma, grandpa, and uncle park in front of the house during the week. I expect that will go over really well.
After I get kicked out of court and found guilty I've been told we can arrange a payment plan to pay back the city for what we owe them for having grandma park in front of our house. Everyone over at the parking department who doesn't really want to talk about my case with me has made a point of telling me that City Revenue is really flexible and nice.
Since we don't have that kind of money lying around, I'm hoping they'll go for my plan of $2 a month for the next 250 months (but don't tell them I'm willing go go that high, because my first offer will be 50 cents a month for the next 1000 months).
Take care
Craig
Good Job Craig! Our street recently got turned into "No Parking Anytime" with out a permit. Had it been that way before we bought the house, we wouldn't have bought it.
ReplyDeleteOne visitor permit per house is ridiculous. I like how the Bee article makes it seem like it's easy to run down to the city office and get a temporary permit. Are they open on Sunday or after 5 pm? Because they ticket my street as late as 10pm. Also, we have gone to the city when one of our kids is having a birthday party. Since we request so many permits for a single day, they opt to not enforce the "no parking" for the day instead of writing out a bunch of permits. Great, except the last time we did this, after checking the date with them TWICE, they had the meter maid out there ticketing. Luckily our neighbor let us know and someone went out and told them to knock it off and they actually did.
We've also got a ticket on one of our permitted cars (fought it and won) and a ticket at a meter that was way too fast (fought it and won).
Good luck and I like your $2/month payment plan.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteThe carol miller injustice system doesn't use judges. They use commissionaires. Odds are they won't let you say much. It's pretty much like a line at taco bell, except the cashier can tell you to fuck off.
Read Cockeyed crap on it
http://www.cockeyed.com/lessons/court/traffic_court.html
Hey Lisa - - thanks for your story and support. Your post has started me thinking about possible new ways the city could address this. They already have a structure for selective enforcement (ex. your kids BD party) I wonder if that could be expanded.
ReplyDeleteToday, I had a pretty funny exchange with a couple of parking office workers when I went into the temporary visitor permits office and tried to convince them to give me 15 different passes to cover all the times I thought I would have more than one visitor over the next month. They didn't go for my plan, but ended up being very supportive when I explained my predicament. Of course, they are not the parking managers who seem to have difficulty returning my calls (a problem that started before the article ran).
The $500 ticket for Grandma is crazy, but my real interest is in a policy that works for families who want to live downtown. This will continue to be a very real issue for my family for years to come -- in part because we are homeschooling so we will be around during the day and would like to have more than one person at a time come over to our house.
And Cockeyed folk -- thanks for the Carol Miller story -- I'm not sure how my citation will be handled by them -- I have already paid a $25 filing fee just to have it heard, so I don't know if it will take the same route as a traffic violation. If it did one wonders how much longer this would get strung out and whether or not the parking copper who wrote the ticket back in February would be required to attend? I haven't heard back from the court regarding a date and how it is supposed to work.
Thanks
Craig
Ha ha Jay, your posts are the highlight of my day. You unbalance my Wa in a good way. I am following your Melon Revolution closely.
ReplyDeleteI only realised that mad three rhymes when reading over before posting. I am subconciously poetic I guess.
I only realized that I made...
ReplyDeleteI didn't read over that part before posting.