Parking Scofflaw

by Mark Gardner

It's tough living outside of the law. At any moment your peaceful existence can come crashing down at the hands of the justice system. But it's the price criminals pay for flaunting society's norms. What is my crime, you ask? Running a harmless little meth lab? A tad of embezzlement here or there? Collecting other people's furniture and stereos?

It's much worse than that. I am a habitual violator of Seattle's parking laws. No, I'm not the Range Rover parked in front of your driveway, the six-hour resident of your two-hour parking zone, or the double-parked Porsche blocking your bus on a narrow street. I have committed, and continue to commit, the crime of insufficient driving.

In the City of Seattle, it is a violation of Municipal Code 11.72.440 to park a car on any city street for more than 24 hours. Translation: for those unfortunates without off-street parking, you had better drive every day unless you want to break the law. On the books since 1979, the law is an indispensable tool in the campaign to cleanse the city of riff-raff.

Importantly, it provides for the speedy removal of aesthetically-challenged jalopies that are sure to drive down property values. Since the law is violated thousands of times daily across the city, enforcement is carried out in response to specific complaints. The law in effect allows particularly diligent residents to privatize city streets by running off any cars they don't recognize. Harsh, but the price of cleanliness is eternal vigilance.

Intensifying the crackdown on various menaces to society, the city now no longer grants the courtesy of decorating your car with a yellow notice telling you that VEHICLES IN VIOLATION WILL BE CITED AND IMPOUNDED. No more niceties; insufficient driving now brings a 25 buck ticket with no prior warning. Holding a residential parking permit affords no protection.

Think of the horrors that might befall this fair city in the law's absence. Various deviant behaviors such as excessive bus-riding, perambulatory commutation, and voracious bicycling are likely to become commonplace. I've been informed that the police oppose reforming the law because they fear a potential epidemic of car-camping, or more precisely, stationary 25+ hour car camping. So, unable to resist my irresponsible addiction to walking to work, I humbly await my fate.

Seattle's Greenie City Council is considering implementing a change to the law to allow parking for three days before a violation occurs, which would implement a provision in Commissar Schell's Transportation Strategic Plan. While I continue to violate the law weekly, I cannot condone this potential slackening of the City's morals. God, guns, guts, and the frequent driving of enormous automobiles are what made this country great, and anyone who doesn't like it can move to some socialist city like London, Washington, or Paris.

Cars Run Over the Spirit of Community

We had gone by car to Mt. Rainier in August. My husband and I went in our car because we didn't think there was another way to get there. So to see the wonder of nature we had to degrade it somewhat with noise, fumes, gas and chemical runoff, not to mention using roads that destroy habitat and kill plants and wildlife. After hiking the sub-alpine, flower-filled hills, we got back into our vehicle, but we had to slow down shortly after leaving the parking lot at Paradise Inn. A woman in a huge van ahead of us was screaming and wailing in fear. She evidently felt she could not drive the winding roads down to the valley in order to exit the park. Perched high in her behemoth of a car, the sight of the straight drop down on her right was too much for her. We stared at her helplessly, and when the car in front of us found a place to zip past the woman's car, we waited for our opportunity and did the same. The horror is that we did not think of stopping to help the woman. Car etiquette demands that you keep going-never mind what is outside your window. Cars alienate the spirit and feeling of community. Looking back on the incident, it would have been easy for either my husband or me to offer to drive the woman down to the valley. We are ashamed that we did not think of doing this until later. I blame our alienation on the car, which I now no longer drive.

-Margaret M.