Saturday, June 14, 2008

There's no room for mis-steps

I feel that way about many areas of my life. It's certainly true for most folks in poverty. But this particular time I'm referring to why I don't like driving into Baltimore City anymore. Years ago, I got a 32 dollar ticket because I arrived 10 minutes late back to my parked car, and I had exceeded the 2 hour time limit. I didn't have the 32 dollars and now the fine has gone up to 800. That's one example.

I got a rental car yesterday, and I decided to have lunch at One World Vegetarian Restaurant today. But the parking situation in Balto. city is ridiculous. And the police are pretty fascist, so for example, even though it is perfectly safe to park in particular places, you still can't because the parking ticket person might still give you a ticket anyway. It's a visual thing that's tough for me to describe on my blogsite. For example, (and if you know the Charles Village area you might be able to visualize this) there are horseshoe like entrances to certain apt. bldgs. Adjacent to those horseshoe entrances, is parallel parking. There are prohibitive red arrow signs that are attempting to communicate that you should not block those horseshoe entrances. However, the red arrowed signs are badly placed, and appear to be also prohibiting you from parking in the parralel spots nearby. So they are perfectly good spots, not dangerous to park in, but you can't because these parking ticket people are vicious. No room for imperfection. I think really controlling type people take these kinds of jobs not because they are trying to help anyone, but because they simply enjoy telling people what to do and enjoy giving people tickets. If the above explanation wasn't clear to you, I apologize, i would have drawn a picture if it was an option.

Secondly, I had to re-park to go to hopkins university library, and although there were no prohibitive signs at all, again, it came into question if it is safe for me to park in "x" spot, since it was fairly close to an intersection , but again, safe. Also, the trunk is broken I can't put anything in it, and don't want to carry a heavy load into the library. I consider leaving sunglasses and a baseball cap on the seat (since I have no trunk) but can't since Baltimore is so bloody dangerous. People brake into cars all the time for belongings that we don't think of as valuable. One shouldn't have to think so hard all the time, trying to be "perfect"

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