Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

That's my spot

I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood where street parking is abundant. There’s no war here to preserve spots, or perform car musical chairs on street cleaning days. I don’t worry about not having a spot to park when I return from from errands. It’s a complete contrast to my previous abode (read: my parents’ house), where street parking is at a premium. Even now, when I go back to visit, I often have to park blocks away.

There’s so much street parking here - and large, useable driveways in the homes - that there’s really no “dibs” on any space. Typically, the space directly in front of a home is assumed to “belong” to that household, an unwritten rule of sorts. Neighbors know to respect that arrangement, because they wouldn’t want someone taking the spot directly in front of their home either. There’s no need for such rules in this neighborhood. Someone took the space directly in front? The space next to it is almost always open.

But, it seems one particular neighbor is surprisingly specific about where he like to park his Lexus sedan. So much as that he would move it to the prefer spot soon as it gets vacated, even though the Lexus is parked literally one spot further down. Fire up the engine simply to move the car 20 feet? I guess not everyone is as sympathetic to a car’s mechanicals as I am. Worse thing you can do to a gas engine (electric is exempt from this, obviously) is to cold start it up and then shut it off again in a very short period. The condensation from sitting for a long period never gets a chance to burn off.

This is why when I move my BMW M2 for street cleaning, I actually drive a loop around the neighborhood to get the engine up to temperature. I would never start the car only to drive to the other side of the street. Nor would I get angry that someone have taken “my” usual spot.

Drive-by ticketing

I didn’t know the technology that meter maids carry are so advanced these days! I guess gone are the days of them actually stepping out of the car, taking out a pad, and then jotting down the details onto a ticket. Nowadays they use a scanning device to take down a car’s license plate number. The same device then prints out the ticket, whereby the meter maid then puts onto the windshield. The entire process takes less than 10 seconds, like a drive-by shooting.

I witness this just yesterday. It was our side of the street’s turn for its twice-monthly street cleaning. Our neighbor failed to move their Lexus out of the way - not the first time this year. The meter maid came and ticketed the car in a blink of an eye. I honestly would have missed it if I wasn’t staring directly at it outside my room window. San Francisco State University uses the same technology to police its parking lots. Remember when tickets included a mail-in envelop? Not anymore! All you get now is a some-what waterproof piece of paper with details on how to pay online.

On behalf of San Francisco residents, I would like to thank our neighbor for contributing to the city’s funds. Thank you so much for your service! God knows with the dwindling tax base of empty downtown offices, San Francisco needs all the revenue it can get from other places. My housemate was walking the dog at the same time yesterday and saw a non-insignificant number of cars getting ticketed around the neighborhood. Thank you to those drivers as well for their service. What’s the price of a street-cleaning violation ticket these days anyways?

I can smugly say I avoid getting ticketed by inputing the street cleaning days onto my calendar. I then receive alerts for it the night before. Impossible for me to miss! Besides, unlike our neighbor, my housemate would actually warn me if I forgot to move my car for whatever reason. That’s what neighbors do - if we like you.

You get a parking ticket!

Today a friend shared with me this article about parking citations in San Francisco have made a comeback from the depths of the pandemic. March of this year was the first time the number of tickets breached 100,000 since the start of COVID. Last month the city took in $8.5 million in citation revenue! That seems like a lot of money to me, surely more than enough to pay for the dozens or so meter maids.

The article goes on to say that most of the tickets are from street cleaning, a fine San Francisco tradition. No other city I know of have such a rigorous cleaning schedule. If you street-park your car in San Francisco, you have move it off one side of the street every week for about two hours. The cleaning machine can then drive by and do its thing. Many times I’ve seen neighbors forget the schedule and end up with a ticket. I avoid this by entering the street cleaning days onto my calendar for the whole year, at the beginning of the year

Lucky for my neighborhood, street cleaning is only a twice-a-month affair.

I have to say it is nice to have clean streets. And I’m sure those are some good paying jobs there at the Department of Public Works operating those cleaning trucks. But let’s not kid ourselves: street cleaning is also a money generator for San Francisco. I just hope that revenue go towards something productive vis a vis the roads, like taking care of potholes in a timely manner. I think that’s a fine bargain: the forgetful parkers amongst us subsidizing the upkeep of our streets.

Down with RPP

In San Francisco, a portion of residential streets have this thing called residential parking permits. During the weekdays, there’s a time limit on how long a vehicle can be parked on such streets (usually one or two hours). To avoid this hassle, people who live there can apply for a permit. The privilege of being able to park your car in front of your house during the day costs about $150 per year.

The permit system serves two functions. One, the city gets the obvious racketeering-like revenue. Two, it prevents an overcrowding of cars parked on the street. Outsiders can’t take up spaces all day, and each additional car owned by residents would cost extra to park. I now live in an area with residential parking limits, and it’s rather nice to have ample parking available at all times. Because of this, I don’t have to dread coming home (or leaving in the first place) and worry about where to park.

It’s as close to having a private garage space as I can get.

Contrast that to my parents house, where it’s no-limit parking in the neighborhood at all times. Finding a spot is always a challenge, because each household have many cars (we have three ourselves). It seems half of them are always parked on the street, unmoved and unused during the work week. On late nights returning home, you’re almost guaranteed to have to park many blocks away. It’s a hassle and a battle. Soon as you leave your spot, another car is sure to fill it in no time.

February marks the start of a new annual on the parking permit in my neighborhood, which means I am finally able to get one for the M2. I waited this long - I moved here back in November of last year - because the city only prorates the cost for half a year. I did not want to pay the $75 for only three months. In the meantime, I’ve been parking the car at work during the weekdays, which thankfully is just a 10-minute walk away. It’s going to be great to be able to park in front of where I live (easily) once again.

The RV life of San Francisco

In the surrounding area near the university where I work are a few long boulevards where usually students park their cars. In recent years, a tiny armada of RVs have popped up, establishing semi-permanent residence on those same streets, only moving during days of street cleaning on a particular side. Personally I take the bus to work so I’m not antagonistic towards these RVs folks taking up precious parking space with their overly lengthy vehicles; though I’m slightly curious what students have to say about these people setting up de-facto homes on the side of the road.

That said, I’m definitely not amongst the camp of people wishing these RV campers to go away and find home in appropriate trailer lots, rather than squatting on public streets. I’m innately familiar with how batshit insane housing costs are in the San Francisco Bay Area; if I didn’t live at home with my parents (thank god for being Asian so this isn’t frowned upon culturally), there’d be no freaking possibility I can reasonably afford to rent a quaint place, much less buying a house here. The people in the RVs face the same difficulties, and these essentially mobile homes costing magnitudes less are their only option to continue on living and working in the city.

The present housing situation is such that either you have to already own a home for years ago, or make enough (read: a lot) money to comfortable rent or buy. The rest of us have to get by some way somehow.

Honestly, as long as these people in the RVs are not disturbing the public or making a mess (and I haven’t noticed or read anything that they were), I don’t see any issues with them setting up shop on these long boulevards. These behemoths can’t fit in a typical residential street parking space anyways, so the RVs are relatively separated and contained. It is all a bit unsightly? Yes, but the situation in San Francisco is that desperate. Sadly, the city is clamping down on these so called vagrants: most long streets with ample length already have signage forbidding large vehicle parking from midnight to 6 AM. I’m afraid the two near our university will see the same fate sooner or later.

And it would indeed be a tragedy; this entire housing situation is. San Francisco is turning into Monte Carlo, a place for the rich and already have. Starting a family here with a middle-class income is at the moment not a reality. I remain positive for the future, though that’s likely just stubbornness in holding on to the slim hope that I will be able to remain living in the city I grew up in for decades to come.

That could've been easily avoided

Last week my neighbor's brand new car had the misfortune of a hit-and-run. While it was parked on street in front of the house, another car bashed into its rear quarter-panel on the driver side, leaving a sizable dent on it and the lower bumper. It isn't pretty, and sadly yet another casualty of street parking in San Francisco.

A major part of why I sold the ND Miata was the peace of mind from not having to deal with this kind of bullshit anymore. It ups my anxiety anytime I had to leave the car on the street due to fear of another driver bumping into it during parallel parking maneuvers. Or more commonly use my bumpers as feeler guides to know when to stop - we all know and have the battle scars. The Bumper Bully was invented because of cities like San Francisco.

So part of me sympathizes with my neighbor, yet another part is full of disapproval. That's because my neighbor's house has a fully functioning garage, yet for whatever reason his family never park cars in it. Wouldn't it be smart to store the new car in there knowing full well the hazards of parking outside? Had his RAV-4 been in the garage my neighbor wouldn't be staring at an expensive claim on his insurance right now.

Why don't people use their garages to park cars?

I am not lucky to have a garage in our apartment complex, but if I were to have one you can bet it'd be used for its intended purpose.

Remember, kids, don't take photographs on live train tracks, no matter how awesome it looked on instagram or tumblr.