First, what the hell is the problem the Islamic Center people are trying to solve by installing the PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING signs on their property?
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By Wednesday afternoon, 2 days ago, less than 36 hours after the MINI on South Front Street had been BOOTed by HPD, the orange BOOT was no longer secured to the driver's side front wheel. In fact, it was nowhere in sight. As was the bright orange warning ticket that every BOOTed vehicle gets, telling drivers not to try to move their car and to pay their fines to get the BOOT removed. Typically, that means that the owner has paid all their overdue parking tickets and the $150 BOOT administrative fee ticket that comes with the BOOT. That appears not to be the case with the black MINI that seems to have been parked unmoved for a few months. That's because the two WRONG SIDE PARKING tickets -- with three weeks between them -- and the $150 BOOT ADMIN FEE ticket were still on the windshield.
A day or two ago, three large, 3-color, 51-word signs appeared in and alongside the County-owned parking lot at 6th & Columbia. The one facing the sidewalk is obscene. Who is its target audience? Could it be drivers stopped in the street with a pair of binoculars when no parked car is in the way of the view of the sign? Could it be drivers stopped on the sidewalk? Pedestrians? Nearby residents? Local Italians?
It's no coincidence that less than 48 hours after HUDseen pointed out the long-term parked black Mini Cooper on South Front Street with just one three-week-old ticket on it that it was BOOTed by HPD. They had obviously let this one slip through one of the many cracks that are prevalent in HPD's enforcement of overnight parking.
Had this car instead originally been parked, say, on January 1st in the 500 block of State Street, it would have been ticketed every other night so often and so regularly that it would have been considered abandoned by Captain David Miller and likely towed and impounded within two or three weeks. Probably in January! But because it was parked on Front Street, it evaded the grasp and eyes of HPD. It didn't look like an abandoned vehicle (so new and shiny!), so they ignored it. For months. That is, until HUDseen pointed out the flaw and inconsistency that car represented. And the general incoherence and mess that overnight parking enforcement clearly is.
** I couldn't pass up using the title -- ripping off Gil Scott-Heron's wonderful poem Whitey On The Moon -- even though it isn't 100% accurate. Victor Glover, a Black astronaut, is up there on Artemis II along with three White astronauts zipping around the moon. And why exactly are they up there, and why do we care? To forget our troubles down here?
The ugly house at 251 Columbia Street was demolished several years ago, likely in 2018 or 2019. What has followed is a prime example of what we're up against with City Hall's lack of attention to important matters and details. Yet again, HUDseen must state the obvious: NO ONE AT CITY HALL IS PAYING ATTENTION!
For the past 5 years or more, the "vacant" property has been an eyesore of its own, covered in black plastic sheeting weighted down by cinder blocks and "protected" by orange plastic netting. Actually, calling it an eyesore is being charitable. The plastic cover was the owner's idea of weed control, which worked pretty well. It also kept Code Enforcement at bay.
The three lovely NO TRESPASSING signs that recently appeared along the edges of the long vacant property at 3rd & Columbia raise a few q...
