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January 11, 2005
A day in the life in NYC - Tourist Towing Victim or moron?
This is the true story of a an actual Manhattan towing violation from beginning to end - no details left untold. Are my friends, the Well's victim to a tourist towing scam by the nypd towing unit or did they make a rookie mistake? You decide. However, I was there every step of the way and i bring it to you the readers of shark blog! Here goes:
Background: Chris and Donna Wells are great friends and stopped in friday night for some dinner and drinks with Jeannine and friends before they head out to LI for a family party.
Friday, January 7th, 7:30PM: Wells calls from the car giving me the ETA on arrival and telling us not to wait for our dinner reservations . I tell him don't worry about it 8pm reservations means 9pm in nyc. He asks where to park. I say go by 11th ave in the 40s and look for a lot. Street parking is almost non existent in HK due to times square.
8PM - They arrive and Chris gives me no details on where he parks except that one of the lots was full. We quickly proceed to dinner.
8:30PM-10pm - We get some great drinks and chow at Momma Mexico. Donna even gets to experience a b-list star sighting of Bob the Bacheolor. Everyone is AOK!
10pm-3am - We hit several bars on the upper west side. I don't know the upper west side, but did manage to find a good dive called yogies by the beacon theatre. I lied and said blue sky by the allmans' was written there during one of their month long stints at the beacon. Next we hit other "so called" upper west side dive bars. What gives them the right to call some of these dive bars. Dive 75 is a dive bar? more like yuppie hell to me. We hit the original brother jimmies and another irish bar where there was a stalker eyeing the ladies.
3am - Chris and I go out for what else, 3 bags of chips. At this point I am in no position to make a judgement call. Chris asks if his car is ok in the parking spot. We check the sign, check the other cars and then purchase cheez doodles!
Saturday, 8th 10am - Chris goes to check car - not there and proceeds to blaim me for the judgement call i barely remember the night before. That won't hold up in court.
We first check to see the area and why we were towed? Here is the sign.
The sign states no standing m-f 8am-6pm - no violation
Chris was parked in front of the cement and orange cone? is that cone official or from a construction site?
They were doing no construction on the building that day.
Throughout the day on saturday many cars were parked in front of the orange cone with no tickets
Chris has a massachusetts license plate - ding ding ding!
Saturday 12pm - We locate the vehicle and head over to 38th and 12th or hell - semantics. When we walked over we thought he'd just get screwed and walk up and pay and get his vehicle! Here's Chris trotting in the building with a no care attitude.
but we were wrong - dead wrong. We waited in line with about 30 others and a lady took our info. Everyone sat there from 12:30 to 1:45 with no movement. THE cashier was on her break so the process stood still. This is what this hole looked like.
The best part is that everyone was from out of town. They shared war stories of being 15 minutes over the meter and being towed. One guy's wife told us that she told him not to park in the no standing zone, but he told her that wasn't for cars it was for the hookers!! One girl, travelling with 3 loser guys from philly, even exploded when her friends went outside on how out of all the restaurants in manhattan her friends picked quiznos. When you pay, you move to the next security guard who escorts you to your vehicle via a golf cart. Finally, after a license plate messup by the cashier we got out of hell at 2:45, almost 3 hours!
I must say I really enjoyed this experience and laughed along the way. Everyone who gets towed is really pretty friendly these days. No one blew a gasket and everyone will be back to nyc - hopefully they will park in a lot or try mass transit. In the end the damage is about $235 bucks. So you could have parked in a lot for 20 bucks and used the money to stay at the ritz as opposed to my shoebox studio. Victim or moron - i have no idea - i just enjoyed the ride!
Posted by Patrick at January 11, 2005 05:28 PM
Comments
that sign always confuses me... I thought "no standing except trucks loading & unloading 8am-6pm Mon thru Fri".. meant unless your a truck loading & unloading between 8am-6pm Mon thru Fri you can't "stand", "park" or otherwise... I have always avoided parking under those signs for that reason.. I have made enough parking mistakes in the city already and never challenged my semantics with the $100 fine.
Posted by: Ed Winstanley at January 11, 2005 10:40 PM
How mad is your friend at you for documenting this experience? Excellent post though. Gripping from start to finish!
Posted by: Pete Tschudy at January 12, 2005 10:17 PM
If wondering if someone else is a "moran" and yet you spell it wrong yourself in your blog, does that not, in fact, make you the moron?
Posted by: Mike at January 13, 2005 03:37 PM
thanks moron for your great spelling skills - moran is french for moron.
Posted by: patrick at January 13, 2005 06:05 PM
Ah... your friends were taken by the "No Standing" rules. Few people actually read the New York City Traffic Rules and Regulations http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/permits/traffic_rules.html. See Section 4-08.a.2-4. "No Standing" allows only "the temporarily stopping for the purpose of and while actually engaging in expeditiously receiving or discharging passengers."
Complicated language. Basically, it means, DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE TOWED. Tough luck. Next time, I'd cruise around more for some free parking, or fork over the ~$15/hr (and up) garage fee. Forget crusing around for rates unless you're looking for a "special" theatre or "early bird" "discount." It probably ain't worth the 2 cents you save. Parking in Manhattan is as pricey as buying a new giant Patrick the pup from FAO every couple of days. Outdoor and indoor garages seem to charge similar fees. Keep in mind parking fees are a deterrent for operating vehicles in this congested city. Just remember to take your claim check and always park in a garage open 24 hours. Oh yea, some places only take cash, no exceptions.
Posted by: shoespleaz at January 31, 2005 02:27 PM