Selective Parking Rules

Received this note last week from a reader: I live on Grand Avenue at Lexington, and for the past nine months or so, I've been parking a car on the street. This has been a headache, of course, but certainly easier than a lot of other Brooklyn neighborhoods, despite the twice weekly street cleaning (why?!). One thing that makes it easier in the mornings for street cleaning: no one seems to mind, including the cops an metermaids, if you double park on the opposite side of the street for an hour and a half to avoid the street sweeper. Its very common to see a row of cars all double parked on Grand on any given morning. At 11:30, the owners park them again. I've seen ticketers ignore these cars while doling out tickets to street cleaning violators. Everyone seems okay with it, the neighbors and the cops.

But this morning I got a $115 ticket for being double parked! What gives? Any ideas about the arbitrariness of this system?

Since I'm at work most days, I had never heard of such a thing. Yet yesterday, when I stayed home in the morning nursing an ear infection (yes, apparently I am a 4-year-old), I noticed the same phenomenon on Waverly Ave!

Personally, I'd guess whoever ticketed said reader needed to fill a quota or was feeling particularly dickish that morning. Does anyone do this regularly, and if so, is there indeed an unspoken guarantee that you'll avoid a ticket if you double park? Also, what if someone parked at the curb gets shut in? Perhaps the cop ticketed that day because someone was inconvenienced?

And as a side note, double-parking seem to be a major problem in the 'hood. Just because you have your flashers on doesn't make it OK to double park up and down Clinton Avenue all the damn time. Now and then, OK, you need to pull over to pick someone up. But if I had a dime for every SUV double-parked on Clinton with flashers on, I could have paid off my mortgage and then some. (This is a separate issue from avoiding street cleaning tickets, and occurs mostly on weekend afternoons.)