Epic WTF

In before Amey asks if it's me.

This doesn’t piss me off, it intrigues me. A bus driver from the local depot regularly parks right outside my house. There can be space 10 meters in either direction, the bus garage is several hundred meters away and there is free parking far closer yet he parks with his drivers door lined up with my front gate. If my car is there he parks opposite lined up with my neighbours door.

Cheers fella, but it isn’t one owner…. As far as I can tell no two cars have been owned by the same person.

I suppose it could just be the right kind of street - quiet, residential but centre city (GL1) with very low crime and little parking pressure.

Still, I find it very weird. Was one car that had cloned plates that we go towed, but the others have all been legit, just not owned by anyone in the streets and left to settle on to their rims.

https://youtu.be/dVehv_LDWaE

Not ideal to look out on to.

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It’s gross. You look at photos from the 70s or earlier and there’s fuck all cars even in city centres. It looks a bit weird to our modern eyes.

Yep. Even in well-to-do areas it was so. Saw an episode of The Good Life recently, as middle-class as you could get, and their street is deserted.
Suburbia aside it really hits you when you go out to the sticks and ancient market towns like Alresford and Helmsley are wall-to-wall with motorised tin boxes that shove pedestrians onto a few inches of pavement in a main trading thoroughfare hundreds of feet wide and long. It’s ugly and tragic.
Ironic then that local councils go all out to maintain the vehicle access so it doesn’t go ‘out of town’ to shop and it’s that very access that f**s the whole shopping (and, perhaps more importantly, the browsing visitor experience) up.

it's a free for all on our street and there's one car that is very clearly a space holder but otherwise it's accepted that people park where they can.

the only kerfuffle we've had so far was on the first day we got the keys to the place a space opened up right outside just after the estate agent left and we had a car jammed full of bits to unload so I got the gf to run and get the keys to pull the car nearer (it was about 50yds away and there was about 10 trips worth of stuff to bring in, some quite heavy).

I was literally standing at the kerb to discourage any would be arrivals while my gf was getting into the car to drive across when a big 4x4 just zoomed up and very obviously trying to avoid direct eye contact with me stopped just past the space and began to back in. when they drew level I waved to get their attention and then I very politely explained we're in the process of moving in and pointed at our car and said we were just moving our car up to unload as we have a lot to get out. the woman didn't even say anything she just sighed like I'd asked her to help us move in personally, slammed the car back into drive and sped up to the end of the road (40m away) to turn around and then parked immediately around the corner and got out with her husband and 2 kids (carrying nothing) and went straight into the house next to ours (which is only the second house on the row so she was 1 house away from where she parked on the corner)

I repeated my apologies and she ignored me. so we unloaded and then moved the car and my gf went to knock to tell them they were welcome to move into the space as we were done unloading and thanks for being understaning and the husband made a big show of it not being a problem.

In the month since then we've spoken to them once and it was when i took in a package of her husbands and all she said when she knocked was "he was in so i dont know why they let YOU have it" no "how are you settling in" or "we havent been properly introduced, I'm...".

for a youngish couple around 5 years our junior, they are the most anti-social people i've lived next to ever i think and I grew up on various council estates around Basildon. I wonder if they'd be any different if we hadn't crossed paths like that first.

That is weird and does sound dodgy with the cloned plates car. It could be an actual example of the supposed broken window theory, but with cars. People notice, oh this spot seems like a good place to dump a car for a few months, someone else has clearly done it. So less co-ordinated and more opportunist.

"he was in so i dont know why they let YOU have it" no "how are you settling in" or "we havent been properly introduced, I'm...".

"He was probably wanking"

I remember using the Sony mavica cameras with the floppy disc drive at art college.

I've got one of you want it, and a pack of floppy disks?

Something I discovered last year was Alternate Side Parking in NYC. Initially discovered it through this guy on Instagram. Seems like a very stressful experience of sitting in your car hoping someone doesn't swoop in and take your space.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMknaNzArLZ/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate-side_parking

thanks for the offer - i've already got a box full of vintage camera gear (+ multiple other boxes full of stuff) that i never seem to get around to using, so i'd better decline!

So do these selfish pricks with a parking-reservation-car move it every time they arrive home.

Yeah my neighbour with one of these beater cars to save her desired spot goes through this almost daily. It’s quite an operation to watch. Pull out the desire car, rush to the beater, pull it into the reserved spot, rush back to the desire car (which is left in the middle of the road to hasten the process), then drive off.

That is batshit crazy.

Brexit mentality

The risks with relating this parking related issue will immediately be apparent but I will not be deterred.

The tennis club I play at (note - not my tennis club, it’s a small but thriving community owned club, not rowdy in the slightest) has a cul de sac that runs alongside. It is a private road. The houses on the opposite side are big, red bricked and detached, drives that would easily swallow 3 large cars. The tennis club, in one guise or another (including municipal) has been there for at least 40 years. There is a pub at the open end of the road with outdoor seating at the front.

In the past couple of years, the occupants have gone full passive-aggressive cunt - painting fake parking lines on the road, putting up fake but official looking signs etc and the local council doesn’t want to know. They’ve also doubled down by putting paper notices on windscreens and parking opposite their drives in apparently ‘allowed spaces’ despite having an empty driveway (and you could comfortably drive a large bus out of their drive with no problem). Oh, and putting large painted trunks in spaces to deter. The club want few problems so suggest we work with the neighbours i.e. go along with what they want. The clincher is when a ‘security’ spotlight was installed which seems far too high as it shines in the eyes of people playing 50m away. Fuck. That. Shit.

I do park considerately when possible but when the only space is on the fake ,no parking’ lines then I will park there. I have had home owners standing at the gate glaring at me, a cheery “nice evening” seems to infuriate (pretty much always get a note on my windscreen which quickly becomes a paper plane) but some go a bit further with “why are you parking there?”. These interactions rarely end well for either party but I find the childish satisfaction of not moving my car with some misplaced self righteous fury really enhances my competitive spirit.

I think the simple answer is passive-aggressive cunts are going to cunt so may as well ignore them

I find the childish satisfaction of not moving my car with some misplaced self righteous fury really enhances my competitive spirit.

👌🏻

Win

Years ago I had a neighbour who was very protective of the parking space outside his house. He once threatened to blow my car up if I parked in it again. Needless to say I parked in the space as often as I could, even leaving my house purely to move my car in to it if the opportunity arose. I also knew exactly who's letterbox to slip a very heavily used dildo I once found in the street through.

even leaving my house purely to move my car in to it if the opportunity arose.

:)

A while back a firm was replacing windows in one of the houses in my road and they left their van half in the driveway and half in the road, blocking the pavement, despite the driveway being big enough to take the whole van if the householder had parked their car in the road. I called the company and they said they’d speak to the driver but he parked there every day for a week. One morning I watched an elderly woman using a stroller thing having to negotiate this van and the grass verge so I got my old van and parked it right in front.
People could get past but he couldn’t get out. He had no clue where I lived as I never park anywhere near my house. About 6.30 on the Friday night I just drove it away without anyone noticing.
He came back to do some more work on the Saturday and parked properly.
Childish but satisfying.

Fuuuuuuucccckkkkk

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1480633060857192451?s=20

Probably wants to make it look like the car is owned by either you or your neighbour as it might make it a less likely target for the crims?

Someone once suggested I spray expanding foam up my neighbour's exhaust. Apparently if you extend the hose a bit the foam goes all the way to the valve gear. I don't whether this is just a theory or someone's tried it. I've used the foam in my kitchen and it dries to rock.