There comes a time in every man's life when he needs to use whatever public forum is available to him to rant about the perceived injustices of life that have smacked him in the face. It used to be a dusty bloke in a shaggy turncoat standing on a box previously filled with soap and screaming about the coming of the devil or the taxation of the Brits or how the south had to defend its land from the carpetbaggers and emancipators of the north (Happy Emancipation Day on Monday). At another time it was made up of hip post-modernists creating their own underground 'zines about being put upon by a parental generation of false-faced WWII survivors with their pathetic housewife dresses and sad lies. Today, we have the blog. God Bless.
But this is going to be my outcry against those bastards at the LADOT Parking Enforcement Division. A hideous conglomerate of otherwise unemployable mutants devoid of feeling or hope, destined to be little more than the smegma under the foreskin of the man's ugly choadish proboscis with which he tries to fuck every single one of us. And Jesus, my friends, did he fuck me yesterday.
L.A. in general is a hideous city in which to have a car and yet, in brilliant CATCH 22 fashion it's impossible to live here without one.
The streets are pocked like Dresden post carpet-bombing, a foul pothole-filled ever-cracking infrastructure left untempered as a nod to the car manufacturers who hear a bell ring everytime an axle breaks on a jagged road left to disintegrate under the sun and the earthquakes and the pressure of 10,000,000 cars every hour on the hour.
The traffic is second in the nation only to D.C. for miserableness and even then, while D.C.'s freeways look like a used parking lot, in los Angeles even the surface streets are clogged at all times. Add to this the many ex-pats whose plates from Illinois and Iowa and North Carolina explain why they drive so slowly, looking for the street they can't find while the people behind them swear and honk on the sisyphean struggle to ever get anywhere on time and you find a daily commute foul enough to make a man into a snarling beast.
But the parking - ohh, the parking in this city must be the worst in the world. Every lot is a pay lot; you must pay to go to the mall; you must pay to go to your doctor; hell, some people even have to pay to visit their talent agent. And these private enterprises put plenty of money into the hands of their developers, the 1% who can afford large swaths of land but there is no alternative unless you want to park on the streets. And parking on the streets invites the wolf that is the LADOT to come by and try and balance their budgets with your very blood, sweat and tears. The Los Angeles GMP (Gross Metropolitan Product) is $735.7 billion as of 2010, which puts it above the GDP's of at least half the COUNTRIES in Africa and in the top 3 metropolitan GMP's in the world. And yet the city still has a $272,000,000 dollar deficit. So yes, they're trying to cut city pensions, public programs, stuff like that (god forbid they tax an extra .3% on all monies that come through the city). And like a crackhead who prefers to rob the measly earnings of the poor bastards trying to make it out of the projects instead of the substantial haul they'd get robbing a nice house in the suburbs, the city is trying to fix the problem by enforcing parking infractions with an iron fist.
A little sampling:
Even more, according to that county treasurer who said a big problem with the city is unpaid parking tickets, there are bastards out there with 20 or more citations - and yet I, who pay my tickets when my registration is due (it's just easier) get towed.
Even more, the law states a scofflaw can be booted OR towed - yet for some reason they decide it's appropriate to do both, thus costing me not only the money for the tickets but for the towing, the inconvenience of going around this miserable city to get my shit out and, as well as for what eventually amounted to me missing a day of work.
After the research I went to one of their offices, on 3333 Wilshire where they told me something the towing fuck (Office Alvarado is his name, by the way) didn't, namely that I needed my registration to pay my tickets. Which was at my car but then they finally gave me the impound lot address so another drive cross-town in the miserable L.A. heat to my car where I waited half an hour to get into my car, get my registration and back to the office and then back to the impound, totalling a missed day of work, $1100 dollars, and a chunk of my sanity I've been fighting dearly for in this mad city.
I admit, this is my fault. I shouldn't have assumed the city was together enough to assign tickets to the DMV when I got them, even up to 2 months after. I shouldn't have assumed that the violations bureau cared about the average person or could even change the wheels once they were in motion. I should've researched the little-known law where 5 late parking tickets can land one's car in impound, or the fact that they no longer boot cars.
But here's the problem - they're setting me up for failure. Parking lots are exorbitant across town (and one has to wonder how much collusion goes on, as most of the lots have near-similar prices - yet nothing's done.) And there are meters but often they're full. And the local neighborhoods have permit parking only, yet mine is not only poorly enforced but allows anybody to park on my street all day, like those damn music school kids (BTW, nobody can get a career in music off going to music school, I guarantee you that, waste of money) so my wife can't park her car in spite of the special permits we buy. And there are more signs every day. But to cap it off, there's no decent public transportation. As I tried to get across town I ended up waiting nearly 40 minutes for my local bus. In the murderous heat. Perhaps instead of investing all this time and money (extra patrols, extra meters, upkeep of old meters, signs) they should invest in infrastructure that would take LA from a city of drivers to a New York-esque city of riders. Parking fines make up $136,879,000 of annual city income (per last year's city budget/revenues). About $23 million was spent on updating and upkeeping these meters. $10 million or so is appropriated for processing parking citations. About $80,000 on new and temporary signs as well as $74k for towing services. But the pay for officers and their brand new Priuses and the judges to adjudicate any of these cases and other personnel costs is buried under hundreds of other budget items. All told the LADOT's budget is about $491 million so even if they only spend 30% of that on officers, processing people, towtrucks, and judges for parking citation contests that amounts to about $147,000,000 and the city is actually LOSING money on parking enforcement.
I CHALLENGE LADOT PARKING DIVISION TO PROVE ME WRONG.
So what's the solution? First off, fire these scavengers, these low-level hired parasites, schultzstaffeln with badges and inflated pride in spite of the disgusting maggots they really are. Then, take all that money budgeted for parking enforcement and invest in expanding the subway lines. Or even more, keep some of them but ENFORCE the subway lines. I ride the subway all the time. I always buy my ticket. Never has there been anybody checking my tickets and even more, the turnstiles just turn. So why pay any money for this? I'm a sucker but I do my part because I want to see more infrastructure like this. While they're wasting time enforcing parking laws, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are riding the subways free everyday. So expand the subways and enforce the requirement to pay a buck fifty to get anywhere (like every other subway system in the fucking world). Expand the bus routes. This will ease up the number of cars fucking up our streets and parking in our neighborhoods. They can say they don't get enough riders to warrant this but nearly every time I board a bus I'm packed shoulder to shoulder with people from most walks of life (maybe not equal along socioeconomic lines, but that's neither here nor there). Then disband those parking enforcement losers.Waste of money and resources. Or if you complain about putting them out of jobs, maybe rehire them to fix the roads. Or plant flowers in Compton. I love that it's communism if we go back to WPA-era projects but if we keep parking enforcement in order it's just good business WHEN IT'S NOT. Hire them if you insist, I don't care. Just put them to use doing something good for humanity instead of punishing people trying to keep their heads above water in this cracked metropole by being heartless dicks 24/7. My wife comes home to put her cat to sleep, distraught, parks where she shouldn't because she's blinded by grief, we see the woman ticketing and run out to move the car before street sweeping only to have her say she can't do anything, she's already written the ticket. What, is the meter maid a fucking robot?
Want some more reasons why this system is fucked? Check here, seriously the LADOT Parking Enforcement bastards are corrupt little weasels, the living embodiment of everything wrong with this city.
Rant done. That felt good. God bless. Fuck the man. LADOT, like the rest of LA City Government, is an exercise in wasted resources as well as a punishment for real, hard-working citizens of the city of Los Angeles.
- Ryan
But this is going to be my outcry against those bastards at the LADOT Parking Enforcement Division. A hideous conglomerate of otherwise unemployable mutants devoid of feeling or hope, destined to be little more than the smegma under the foreskin of the man's ugly choadish proboscis with which he tries to fuck every single one of us. And Jesus, my friends, did he fuck me yesterday.
L.A. in general is a hideous city in which to have a car and yet, in brilliant CATCH 22 fashion it's impossible to live here without one.
The streets are pocked like Dresden post carpet-bombing, a foul pothole-filled ever-cracking infrastructure left untempered as a nod to the car manufacturers who hear a bell ring everytime an axle breaks on a jagged road left to disintegrate under the sun and the earthquakes and the pressure of 10,000,000 cars every hour on the hour.
The traffic is second in the nation only to D.C. for miserableness and even then, while D.C.'s freeways look like a used parking lot, in los Angeles even the surface streets are clogged at all times. Add to this the many ex-pats whose plates from Illinois and Iowa and North Carolina explain why they drive so slowly, looking for the street they can't find while the people behind them swear and honk on the sisyphean struggle to ever get anywhere on time and you find a daily commute foul enough to make a man into a snarling beast.
But the parking - ohh, the parking in this city must be the worst in the world. Every lot is a pay lot; you must pay to go to the mall; you must pay to go to your doctor; hell, some people even have to pay to visit their talent agent. And these private enterprises put plenty of money into the hands of their developers, the 1% who can afford large swaths of land but there is no alternative unless you want to park on the streets. And parking on the streets invites the wolf that is the LADOT to come by and try and balance their budgets with your very blood, sweat and tears. The Los Angeles GMP (Gross Metropolitan Product) is $735.7 billion as of 2010, which puts it above the GDP's of at least half the COUNTRIES in Africa and in the top 3 metropolitan GMP's in the world. And yet the city still has a $272,000,000 dollar deficit. So yes, they're trying to cut city pensions, public programs, stuff like that (god forbid they tax an extra .3% on all monies that come through the city). And like a crackhead who prefers to rob the measly earnings of the poor bastards trying to make it out of the projects instead of the substantial haul they'd get robbing a nice house in the suburbs, the city is trying to fix the problem by enforcing parking infractions with an iron fist.
A little sampling:
- Last year I got a ticket for an expired meter. I had put enough in for half an hour, then ran into the post office where the one employee was a septuagenarian with gout and coke bottle glasses. It took me exactly 31 minutes. I came out to find what could only have been a meter maid joyfully sitting next to the meter as it ticked off its final minute.
- A few months ago I got a ticket for not having a front license plate. It was true, I didn't have a front license plate. It was on the ground in front of my bumper. It was obvious to all but the most simple-minded that some bastard had hit my bumper and, to make matters worse, knocked off my plate and drove off. Yet I got a ticket.
- When I renewed my registration, I paid a hefty fee for several parking tickets, which I had believed included both of these since they occurred far before I paid my registration fees. Take note, this will come to haunt me.
- A month ago they put up temporary cardboard signs on my street. My wife and I pay an annual fee for the right to park on the street in front of our house so this was frustrating but I parked a few blocks away. Nothing happened. Signs went down. This happened again and, again, nobody parked on the street. Nothing happened. Weekend came and went. Everybody parked there Monday. Nothing happened. Then home from work since ours is a working-class neighborhood, we all parked there again. Tuesday we awoke to the sounds of heavy trucks, machinery, and a petty sonuvabitch having ticketed all the cars which had parked there the night before. When I went to confront him, he pointed to the signs, which had magically reappeared that morning. This is either negligence (because they should have checked the night before) or entrapment (if they were doing this intentionally) but either way it was their mistake. I explained to the guy that blindly following illegal orders is illegal in itself, pointing to the Nazis but he just blinked and slunk back into his Prius, no doubt already a sad, broken man. I was ticketed and am fighting it. Others were towed, missed work, all sorts of hideous occurrences.
- Finally, yesterday the unthinkable happened to me. These top tickets were not included in the $600 I paid to the DMV in August. The above, though I'm fighting it, is on my record. Which adds up to 6 unpaid tickets. Enough for some smug bastard in his little white van that he drives around, scanning license plates in working class neighborhoods like Hollywood, to call in to the station that I'm scofflaw. He booted my truck. Then towed the fucking thing as I stood on my porch, briefcase under my arm, watching it disappear. The bastard asked me if it was locked as they bent in front with the towing harness, to which I replied"Fuck you," then set off my car alarm from my keychain.
Even more, according to that county treasurer who said a big problem with the city is unpaid parking tickets, there are bastards out there with 20 or more citations - and yet I, who pay my tickets when my registration is due (it's just easier) get towed.
Even more, the law states a scofflaw can be booted OR towed - yet for some reason they decide it's appropriate to do both, thus costing me not only the money for the tickets but for the towing, the inconvenience of going around this miserable city to get my shit out and, as well as for what eventually amounted to me missing a day of work.
After the research I went to one of their offices, on 3333 Wilshire where they told me something the towing fuck (Office Alvarado is his name, by the way) didn't, namely that I needed my registration to pay my tickets. Which was at my car but then they finally gave me the impound lot address so another drive cross-town in the miserable L.A. heat to my car where I waited half an hour to get into my car, get my registration and back to the office and then back to the impound, totalling a missed day of work, $1100 dollars, and a chunk of my sanity I've been fighting dearly for in this mad city.
I admit, this is my fault. I shouldn't have assumed the city was together enough to assign tickets to the DMV when I got them, even up to 2 months after. I shouldn't have assumed that the violations bureau cared about the average person or could even change the wheels once they were in motion. I should've researched the little-known law where 5 late parking tickets can land one's car in impound, or the fact that they no longer boot cars.
But here's the problem - they're setting me up for failure. Parking lots are exorbitant across town (and one has to wonder how much collusion goes on, as most of the lots have near-similar prices - yet nothing's done.) And there are meters but often they're full. And the local neighborhoods have permit parking only, yet mine is not only poorly enforced but allows anybody to park on my street all day, like those damn music school kids (BTW, nobody can get a career in music off going to music school, I guarantee you that, waste of money) so my wife can't park her car in spite of the special permits we buy. And there are more signs every day. But to cap it off, there's no decent public transportation. As I tried to get across town I ended up waiting nearly 40 minutes for my local bus. In the murderous heat. Perhaps instead of investing all this time and money (extra patrols, extra meters, upkeep of old meters, signs) they should invest in infrastructure that would take LA from a city of drivers to a New York-esque city of riders. Parking fines make up $136,879,000 of annual city income (per last year's city budget/revenues). About $23 million was spent on updating and upkeeping these meters. $10 million or so is appropriated for processing parking citations. About $80,000 on new and temporary signs as well as $74k for towing services. But the pay for officers and their brand new Priuses and the judges to adjudicate any of these cases and other personnel costs is buried under hundreds of other budget items. All told the LADOT's budget is about $491 million so even if they only spend 30% of that on officers, processing people, towtrucks, and judges for parking citation contests that amounts to about $147,000,000 and the city is actually LOSING money on parking enforcement.
I CHALLENGE LADOT PARKING DIVISION TO PROVE ME WRONG.
So what's the solution? First off, fire these scavengers, these low-level hired parasites, schultzstaffeln with badges and inflated pride in spite of the disgusting maggots they really are. Then, take all that money budgeted for parking enforcement and invest in expanding the subway lines. Or even more, keep some of them but ENFORCE the subway lines. I ride the subway all the time. I always buy my ticket. Never has there been anybody checking my tickets and even more, the turnstiles just turn. So why pay any money for this? I'm a sucker but I do my part because I want to see more infrastructure like this. While they're wasting time enforcing parking laws, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are riding the subways free everyday. So expand the subways and enforce the requirement to pay a buck fifty to get anywhere (like every other subway system in the fucking world). Expand the bus routes. This will ease up the number of cars fucking up our streets and parking in our neighborhoods. They can say they don't get enough riders to warrant this but nearly every time I board a bus I'm packed shoulder to shoulder with people from most walks of life (maybe not equal along socioeconomic lines, but that's neither here nor there). Then disband those parking enforcement losers.Waste of money and resources. Or if you complain about putting them out of jobs, maybe rehire them to fix the roads. Or plant flowers in Compton. I love that it's communism if we go back to WPA-era projects but if we keep parking enforcement in order it's just good business WHEN IT'S NOT. Hire them if you insist, I don't care. Just put them to use doing something good for humanity instead of punishing people trying to keep their heads above water in this cracked metropole by being heartless dicks 24/7. My wife comes home to put her cat to sleep, distraught, parks where she shouldn't because she's blinded by grief, we see the woman ticketing and run out to move the car before street sweeping only to have her say she can't do anything, she's already written the ticket. What, is the meter maid a fucking robot?
Want some more reasons why this system is fucked? Check here, seriously the LADOT Parking Enforcement bastards are corrupt little weasels, the living embodiment of everything wrong with this city.
Rant done. That felt good. God bless. Fuck the man. LADOT, like the rest of LA City Government, is an exercise in wasted resources as well as a punishment for real, hard-working citizens of the city of Los Angeles.
- Ryan
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