That parking space has got my name on it

Here's a thing people like to do: get the cops to slap these stickers on the cars of people who park in "their" parking spots. This is not my car, but this has happened to me before. Someone was parked in front of my house, so I parked across the street. Now, I don't drive too often because I take the bus to work. So I left my car parked across the street for several days.

The way I look at it is, I fucking live here and I have the right to park on my own goddamn street. For that matter, it's a public street, so any member of the public has the right to park here, basically forever. But evidently the City of Alameda, and my neighbors, see it differently. When it was my turn to get one of these tickets, my neighbors made no effort to contact me as far as I know. They did not leave a note on my car themselves. They just went for the gusto, called the cops and got them to slap one of these notices on my car, which says:

Section 8-7.8 of the Alameda Municipal code provides that: it shall be unlawful for any person to park or leave unattended any vehicle on a street in the City of Alameda continuously for a period exceeding seventy-two (72) hours.

To comply with this ordinance, your vehicle must be driven at least 1/10 of a mile every three (3) days. (Incidental moving from place to place in the same area does not comply.)

So they covered their bases there, I guess. It is comical, admittedly, the part about 1/10 of a mile. Naturally, this law mysteriously does not apply when parking in front of your own house. I wonder if the cops call it the "Asshole Neighbor" law or something; obviously it was invented to get whiny neighbors to shut up. Merits further investigation. By which I mean, of course, that I should drop it and learn to live by the "community standards." The problem is, that phrase is usually cover for people behaving like idiots.

When I confronted my neighbor about the sticker on MY car, however, I was as sweet and low key and full of remorse for the inconvenience I had caused her as I have ever been in my life. I sometimes regret that life is not a movie in which the Good, by which I mean me, always triumphs over the Bad, by which I mean everyone who pisses me off. I think I may not be alone in that.

I am aware, of course, that many people (like my pal, Val, for instance) DO think that they own the street space in front of their homes, even though they do not, in any way, and HATE it when people park there.

Privatization

I work in San Francisco and often walk from my office, near AT&T Park, to the Transbay Terminal at 1st and Mission, where I catch the bus home. I've noticed that some of the buildings downtown have notices like this one embedded in the sidewalk.

You know, we citizens have given up an awful lot of what was once called the "commons," to the point where assertions of ownership such as this are the norm. We think nothing of the fact that corporations own, or claim ownership of, pretty much everything.

Meanwhile, I frequently pass this frighteningly monolithic, windowless cube owned by the aforementioned, stadium-branding telecom. It was from a secret room within this Borg box that the National Security Agency jacked into AT&T's Internet backbone. Thanks to our brave lawmakers, this corporation now has legal immunity for having helped our government spy on us. Oh, well.