Parking Neighborly

The only time a parking spot can be saved with a chair or cone is after a large snowfall. It's legitimate to reserve the spot after you've worked 20 minutes digging the damn thing out of snowbank. You deserve at least to come home to a parking spot that doesn't have a nice brown snowbank blocking it from the road. This legitimacy goes away when the snow does (could be a day, could be 5).

Used to live in Boston's North End, which is filled with tiny 1-way 0-lane streets. It doesn't get much more cut-throat than Beantown. The rules are simple:First come, first get.You don't move your car for nobody, unless they're offering you cash.In cases of snow, the rules are the same. Yes, even if you spent an hour shoveling out "your" spot. If you leave it, it's open season on the space.You can leave your car there as long as you like. Providing you've got your residents sticker up-to-date as well as your registration, there's no reason you have to move. In the North End, people would leave their cars in the same spot for the entire week, then take it out for the occasional weekend trip. Such is life.The reason it's "fair and just" to leave your car there is because as long as it's sitting there, you aren't using it, but you're still paying for it. Therefor, the spot is yours.If someone else doesn't like it, tough shit. You might recommend they move somewhere less congested, like Wyoming.

...and later, I lived in Koreatown, Los Angeles, where you're lucky to find parking within three blocks of your residence. Some neighbors blocked off part of the street in preparation for some gardening(!) and my friend (from my building) and I went out there late at night and dis-assembled their whole fucking blockade, and then he parked his car there. I have to say that, in that case too, I really wish there was something more that we could have done to cause those people misery.

I lived on a street in Seattle where neighbors on both sides of my (shared) house left notes telling us not to park our cars in front of their houses. I wrote one of them back telling them that they don't own the street and that I hoped I would find opportunities to inconvencience them as much as possible.

Unless you have some idea of how nasaty the neighbour is likely to get, it may be better just to move the car and keep the peace. I once had a run-in with a neighbour in a similar way, when he told me to get my car out of "his" parking space (it was a communal space) or he would smash it up. I stayed calm with him, despite his escalating abuse and simply told him that, if any damage was done to the car at any time, I would call the police (I was aware that he was "known" to the local poilce). I then walked away and left him shouting abuse to my back. I never heard any more from him but, talking to one of the other neighbours a bit later, I found that someone living across the road was attacked with a crowbar by this guy over the same issue a few months earlier. He is no longer able to work and suffers greatly from massive headaches. Sometimes, you have to ask yourself if it is really worth it.

Let her have the spot if she agrees to name the baby after you...or a member of your family you'd like memorialized. After all...a favor is a favor.

Do not acknowledge the note. If this 'neighbor' wants the car moved, she ought to have the balls courtesy to ask face to face. I agree. If she's pregant and is hoping to arrange a parking situation, fine. I can understand where a hugely pregnant woman may seek the assistance of her neighbors, especially if she's often unassisted when she travels. However, if she can't reserve the spot when she leaves, she really has nothing to gain by asking you to move now, I suppose... Regardless, this is a pretty easy request, she shouldn't have anything to fear in speaking to you guys. I'd sit it out and see what happens. If she approaches you again, angrily, I'd say without a confrontational attitude, "I was hoping you'd introduce yourself!" and then try to work something out, as long as she's reasonable about it. I think, in the meantime, I'd sit it out. If you get another note, then engage that Kwantstar suggestion. Did she say she was indeed pregnant or just sort of elude to it or let the wording be so ambiguous that it could be read that way? I only ask because neighborhoods often have at least one passive aggressive busybody who feel like they are responsible for monitoring everyone's activity and acting upon things they deem "unjust".

Being a Cambridge, MA parker for a number of years, I am surprised by a few things: 1. That a neighbor actually knows which car belongs to which house. Cars parked on my street in Cambridge are often owned by someone who lives more than a block away. I would have no idea who owns that car. With renters coming and going each fall, who can even keep track of half the cars on the block? 2. Street cleaning once a month and a car in the way? Watch it get towed. If the owner happens to show when the car is already on the hook? Too bad. It will be towed anyway. 3. No one dares "save" a space except when the big snows fall. Even then, I never bothered: of someone is unable to shovel out a space they are more than welcome to mine. If they take a shoveled space without shoveling their own (if they are able bodied), I will see them in hell. 4. Parking restrictions can be requested at city hall. This is usually for moving vans. Perhaps Philly has something similar for pregnant ladies. I might speak to her -- ask her to clarify what she wants. That she thinks she can control one particular space on the block is pretty weak. Pregnant or not, she lives in the city and knows the routine. The handicap parking space in my Cambridge neighborhood is fixed in one space -- it does not move to suit the latest wheelchair bound person who moved in half a block away. Even then, it's only one space among hundreds. Make bed; lie in it I say.

The most hard ass thing I ever did was stand up for a parking space. A guy came up to me informing me that I was parking in "his" parking space. He said it very arrogantly. I go, "Why don't you go fuck yourself? How about that?" and he goes, "What the fuck did you just say?" and I go, "What are you deaf too?" He was easily twice my size and I was being really stupid but the point is that I did not concede and he let it go. So if you ever see the pregnant woman say something like "You want my space? Fuck you and your fucking baby, slut" and see if she writes a note again or if that space will always be available. Sometimes pretending you're Tony Soprano has its advantages.