Street sweeper picnic

There are picnics involved? I was never told. My fondest memory of Stupid Parking Tricks was the morning I got up and rode my bike from the Back Bay part of Boston over to Cambridge, near MIT, so I could circle the block in the car a few times before finding a space around the corner from where I was.

I then mailed a check to the Proper Authorities in NYC, for I had been busted for failing to move my car during a recent trip to the Lower East Side - there were no picnics there, since we'd gone to sleep really late, and my hosts were ignorant non-drivers with not a clue about the indignities one must suffer as a Person of Drive in Manhattan.

"It was a good day," as that Cube person might say.

I hate cities.

But, then again, there's no such thing as a Murphreesboro Symphony Orchestra.

Cities can be OK, I guess. Just don't make me bring a car there.

About 10 years ago I lived in the Fort Green neighborhood of Brooklyn. At the time, the block I lived on was populated largely by artists, and shift workers. That is to say, people that had no particular interest in being awake to greet the street sweeper. No one used there car during the week and there seemed to be exactly as many cars owned by the residents of the block as there were legal spaces. This gave rise to the lazy mans version of the street sweeper picnic. When you came home from work (or wherever) at 4:00 AM on the wrong day. You simply double parked your car on the other side of the street. On the dashboard, you would leave a piece of paper with your house and apartment number, (in the unlikely event that the person that you had parked in needed their car). After the passing of the street sweeper woke you up, you would go out and move your car back to a legal space. This practice varied block to block, and no one ever explained to me why the authorities never ticketed us for double parking.