parking ticket

So last year, a cop was going down the street in Belltown giving tickets. Right in front of him, I popped up on the curb and prepared to go inside. He pulled up and said, hey, you gotta be on the street, you can't park there. (BTW, he was nice.)

I said okay, I just saw how limited the parking situation was and I didn't want to use up a public space when I didn't have to. He said no worries, just pop it down to the street. So I said, I was nervous about a parking ticket because I've heard other people who need parking will just pull the parking permit off my headlight and then I've got a ticket, what am I supposed to do about that?

He was quiet for a minute - he didn't want to answer me - and then he said, well, the truth is, we won't ticket you. We don't ticket motorcycles, 'causa that reason. I said, oh! And he raised his eyebrows and looked at me over his shades, like, hey you don't need to blab this all over town. Which I didn't, until now.

So for a year I've been parking downtown a couple times a week with no problems.

Today, up on Capitol Hill, however, I'm watching from a taco shop while a woman parking cop with long red hair gave me a ticket. I went out to tell her, hey, I had a parking permit on there, but it's gone! Dang! How do we resolve this?

She said, in the future, I could write my license plate on there, along with the word MOTORCYCLE. I said, shoot, so now I need to bring a pen along with me? She said she was sorry - and in fact, if she could have cancelled the ticket right then she would but it was already in the system, blah, blah, so sorry, it's done. She said if I had to time to take off work and explain it the magistrate, he'd probably throw it out.

Anyhoo, that's what I'll probably do. And the ticket's only for $44 - I'm sort of curious about just seeing where this goes, more than just dodging the ticket.

And I want to be clear there was no drama, no raised voices, I'm not mad about anything, both cops were super nice and super professional, that's not the point of my story. This isn't a rant against cops, I like cops. I just wish the second cop had gotten the memo the first cop told me about! Obviously, it's unwritten and it's not something I can really bring up to the magistrate. But the first cop's approach does seem like a perfectly reasonable solution to this for the city.

So that got me thinking, now I have to start carrying around a pen, which other motorists don't have to do. And then just because I wrote my license plate on there, and the word MOTORCYCLE, that other drivers and scooters and motorcyclists will just magically leave it alone? That's what I should have said: yeah, I wrote all that, and it's STILL GONE. Now what?

And what about days I ride in the rain? And what about how slick that writing surface is anyway, I probably need a special $15 space pen to even write on those things.

Also, final point: she was right, I actually didn't put a parking permit on there. That was a lie, so technically, yeah, I do deserve the ticket or whatever. But this burden of proof does seem like a real issue, and I wanted to see how they plan on handling on it.

OKAY final FINAL point: as I pulled away, I saw an area where about 15 motorcycles were parked. Had I seen it, I would have parked there. None of them had parking permits, even though they should have. This cop MUST have seen that area, but she didn't mention it to me. It just seemed like the kind of area that we all agree motorcyclists can use and nobody's gonna bust our butts about it. But you can be damn sure no parking cop is going to go down that line ticketing, people would come out of the woodwork hassling her.

final final FINAL point: this was all at the corner of Pike and 10th, by the Oddfellows Hall.

 

Ha! Okay. Thanks guys.

 

Yeah, Apex, thanks!

Thanks, all - gonna pay the ticket - no worries. $44 is no big deal, I just wondered if it was interesting to anyone but me.

And the length of the post really bothered some of you, I'm really sorry and didn't mean to waste your time and next time it'll be brief, or more likely nothing at all. Bye!