Posts Tagged ‘curb’

How Should You Curb Your Wheels in San Francisco? Just Use the Water Test

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

When parking  in San Francisco, you should always curb your wheels. If you can’t tell whether you’re pointing uphill or down, just pour out a little water from your bottle into the gutter.

The way the water goes tells you which way the hill goes. Or just look at what all the other drivers on the block did. Easy peasy, right?

The driver of this VW Cabrio made the wrong choice, so a ticket from SFMTA was the result. Parking Control Officers will spot this infraction from a block away and then make a special trip just for you.

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Oh well.

Know Your Wacky S.F. Homeowners: #1 – Would Rather Call for a Tow than Learn to Drive

Monday, July 6th, 2009

You would think that a car that could fit into a garage could also pass through the sidewalk cut-out made for said garage. Of course you say, it’s axiomatic ‘n stuff.  But some people don’t believe that. These homeowners pester the City for official DPT sidewalk curb red paint to keep encroaching street parkers at bay.

As if that’s not enough, said homeowners then proceed to add in their own menacing, hysterical “TOW” lines in red paint, paint  that never quite matches the official colour. Thusly, as seen in Ashbury Heights:

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Is the owner of this Toyota RAV4 playing a dangerous game? Click to expand.

Is it true that huge WW II-era battleships had less room to play with, width-wise, going through the Panama Canal than what some complaining San Francisco homeowners demand for their little cars? Yes. For example, the 34,000-tonne U.S.S. North Carolina battleship had just 12 inches clearance on either side, back in the day.

But you give a San Francisco homeowner just a foot on either side and it’s TOW, TOW, TOW.

Driving lessons cheerfully given for free. NB: Try not to steer too much. NNB: Try backing her in when you garage it in the first place.

Here’s an idea. After you actually learn how to drive, then take the sandblaster you’ve got somewhere in your garage (you know, right next to the unexploded ordnance you all seem to store) to eliminate evidence of your unneighborlyness.  

Good on you, mate.

How Not to Park Your Mercedez Benz on the Streets of San Francisco

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Whether or not you get a ticket for parking the rear of your Mercedesin traffic on Gough Street, you probably shouldn’t do it anyway.  

Did the driver even try here?

Click to expand:

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Doesn’t look that way.

Using a San Francisco Examiner to See How Far You Parked from the Curb

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

We’re living in a society here, people. So even though the Man gives allows you a foot and a half spacing from your tires to the curb, you can do better than that. Check out this Mercedes SUV – see how far it is from the curb? Why not use one of the many San Francisco Examiner newspapers that some billionaire from Colorado has seen fit to have strewn about the place?

If a ‘Xam can fit betwixt the curb and your wheel, then you gots to try again. Two Xams away is way too much. PARKING FAIL. Bikes belong in traffic, as they say - you want to make things easier for everybody else, right? With practice, you should be able to get it down to a quarter Xam or less.

Click to expand.

Lots of room for improvement here on Fell Street. (In mitigation, the Mercedes ML driver did manage to retract the outside rear view mirrors. Ten points for Gryffindor.)

If you can’t handle this simple task, maybe you shouldn’t be driving.

Just saying.