WANNA BUY A HOOPTIE?

Blog number 272 **** 29 January 2009

We wonder. We want to know. Fortunately, mysteries abound. I don't know how many times - pretty often actually, I have read a news article in the paper and have been left with more questions than I got answered. Now this phenomena has migrated to reality shows on the telly.

I started watching "Parking Wars" a couple of weeks ago. I like it even better than "Cops." More action. The program starts off with a meter maid giving out tickets, then graduates to cars being "booted" for too many tickets and then to people trying to get their cars back after they've been towed.

One guy was giving out one ticket after another at the same place - a small grocery store that sold Hoagies for two dollars. In front of the store was a sign - "No Parking At Any Time." The reason for the sign was that it was on the corner where a bus comes around, and if a car is parked there, the bus is stuck and very quickly a traffic jam is created.

The customers didn't stay in the store long. I think they had the sandwiches ordered and just went in to pick them up, As soon as they drove away, another car would park there. The meter maid was trying to go on his lunch hour, but before he could get across the street, another car would pull up and he would have to go back and write another ticket.

Most of the ticketees were very put out by the unfairness of it all. They were just in the store "a few minutes."

Two dollars for a sandwich, forty-one dollars for the ticket to get that sandwich. And they came all day long and bitched about it all day long.

The "booters," they had one guy to put on the boot, the other guy would watch his back because some of the bootees would get violent.

In the office where you go to pick up your towed cars, they had no chairs for the clientele. One lady who worked there said they used to have chairs but people would throw them. So they removed them.

The mystery that started this Blog entry concerns the booters. They were booting one car and the owner of an automobile repair shop came out and said it belonged to a client and that the license plate that the booters checked didn't belong on that car. He had put it on so that he could leave it out on the street. The booters seemed to take this in stride, like it happened all the time. In fact, later on they were booting another car and the owner came out and said that was not the license plate that belonged on the car. The booters simply told him to call and explain the problem.

Does this seem odd to anyone? What was the story with the other license plate? Why did it need to be hidden from view? Isn't it illegal in every state to put the wrong plate on a car?

What the hell?