Join the Police, Park Where you Like

I work right across the street from a Starbucks which is always full of people. Every morning there are double-parkers, people parked in driveways, people waiting in the car while their passengers run in for coffee, and then there are people who work for the city: Garbage trucks, utility vehicles, and police - they park in the bus stops.

That drives me nuts. Nobody else parks in the bus stop because you'll get a ticket faster than you can say grande out of order no whip extra foam luke warm iced water. And it will cost you $250. (The ticket, ice water is free.)

Now, in the mornings I can almost see this making sense. Somebody stopping off real quick to get coffee is going to have a hard time finding someplace to easily and legally stow their garbage truck. And ok, lets just, for argument's sake, say that the cops need to be able to jump in the car and drive away quickly if a call comes in, so easing out of a parallel parking spot is going to be too slow. But when it's shortly after 5pm on New Years Eve and there's free parking allllll they way down the block



there's no need to park in the bus stop. Especially not if you are going to sit down inside and sip your coffees.



Sorry for the blurry shot, but you can clearly see the blurry red curb. Car 2012 was pulling away as I was taking the picture and my phone has a sucky camera, especially when the sun is going down. Also, I didn't want to be super obvious about snapping pictures of cop cars. Next time I'll take pictures of the cop car first, then the available parking.