CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE THROUGH CAR PARKING

So due to somebody else's vandalism, I have to pay an extra 50 cents
per park? That can't be legal, can it?

I am not a typical user of Auckland car parks. In fact, I am not a typical car parker fullstop. I don't necessarily mean this because I'm so useless at it, although I am, easily, the worst parallel parker since Al Pacino went driving in Scent of a Woman. His character was blind though, quite a good excuse. I'm just useless. Not as good an excuse.

Why there can't be more angle parks and less parallel parks is not my issue today, although I think it's a fair question. My issue today is the fascist regime running Auckland City car parking and my call to all of you to rise up against it.

Let me give you a bit of background, some history of the parking situation around our building if you will. The Radio Network does have some of its own car parks in the basement. Unfortunately, I've never achieved the status required to occupy one. Instead, they seem to be reserved for CEO's, Newstalk ZB hosts and the guy who tells the people who fix the computers to fix the computers.

Some people share their parks. Larry Williams parks his Vespa in Hosking's space for instance, given they work at opposite ends of the day. In spite of this double-bunking arrangement, it still leaves us about 150 parks short.

In the good old days, way back before I even worked at Newstalk ZB and was a humble copywriter in the Creative Department, nearby street parking was more plentiful and less diligently policed. I recall a time when you could park right across the road for free! Yes, FREE! Admittedly, it was theoretically 60 minutes only, but this just meant a fun game of cat and mouse triggered by the occasional appearance of a parking warden brandishing a piece of chalk. An announcement would immediately be broadcast over the building's intercom, "Parking Warden on Nelson Street."

We'd all give it a few minutes, then pop outside, drive our cars around the block and park them in more less the same place again - or, if we were pushed for time, we'd just wipe the chalk off our tyres and hope for the best. If you missed the PA announcement, you might have to suffer a $12 ticket, or $15 in the unlikely event the warden came back twice.

Helcyon Days indeed.

Even then though, I felt stirrings of unrest brewing in my breast. Why, I asked myself, should anyone ever be fined for exceeding a completely arbitrary parking time restriction when there are still plenty of spaces available? It's not like you're depriving anyone else of the park. That would be like Hosking staying too late for Larry to get his moped in, and that just never happens. Jesus, just imagine the standoff if it did... Larry would start shouting at things, Mike might hit him with his handbag, it could be the end of Newstalk ZB as we know it.

Sadly, times sure have changed. Those free parks on Nelson Street no longer exist at all and now it's pay and display everywhere else. The going rate is $2 an hour, which isn't too bad if you're working day is only 2 hours long, like mine. However, if for some strange reason you have to work a bit longer, parking expenses can really stack up. And yet, the same underlying frustration is still there; there are still heaps of empty carparks so why are they charging so much?

One reason I have heard is they're discouraging people from driving into the city at all. That's fine, if I could just get everyone round to my house to broadcast the show. It's actually an idea I've been floating for some time, but for some reason, haven't managed to push it through yet.

Who are these people who become parking wardens anyway? What sort of person voluntarily spreads that kind of misery on such a mass scale? They're like those soldiers in Nazi Germany who manned concentration camps. They didn't have to, but oh no, they were "just following orders."

I've had my small victories over the years. There was the time I got back to my car just as lady-parking-nazi was printing me off a ticket. I snuck up behind her and said, "You're not seriously going to give me a ticket when there's no pay-and-display machine there are you?"

"What do you mean?" she demanded, turning to indicate the position of the nearest machine... which had obviously been crashed into the day before and was no longer there. Oh yeah, that was a delicious moment.

Other parking windfalls have included the times when the stupid ticket machine simply won't accept your coins. Everybody then just writes "Machine out of order" on a piece of paper and displays that instead. I'm not sure what the legal ramifications are when the council then goes to the trouble of producing a sticker like the one pictured above, but dammit, I'm chancing it. (I also don't quite understand the economic logic behind producing a sticker like the one pictured above instead of just fixing the dumb machine, but since when do councils ever follow any kind of sound, economic practice?)

So it's come to this. I'm calling for peaceful, but positive protest. Rise up citizens! Demand cheaper parking! Don't pay our oppressors! If none of us pay, they'll be forced to change. Car parkers of the city unite!

You first though. I don't want a ticket.

Hey council! Just because I haven't paid your exorbitant parking fees,
that's no reason to maliciously mow your grass onto my bumper!