how evil are parking lot owners - scale of 1 (they ok) - 10 (flog them)

predatory towing companies are the absolute worst, especially the ones that are pure vultures

towing because the city needs to plow? ok
towing because an apartment building has someone stealing reserved spots and someone complained? sure

circling a set of parking lots and immediately grabbing any car that vaguely seems towable? mega dud

my city finally fired the most predatory tow company after citizen complaints. love to find someone loading my car on to a trailer 13 hours before the farmers market, when the parking's valid for another hour

mine was back a few years ago, I was on my way to an event and the bar's lot was full, but the cab company next door had an almost completely empty lot, with just one or two company cars. only one cab was ever on call at a time. there were no tow warning signs of any kind, surprisingly, so I parked there.

I come out of the event, car gone. Since there's no tow warning signs, I have no idea who towed it, so I had to call the non-emergency line to ask who had it, and the cops gave me their number. The tow company's inexplicable explanation was that I was obstructing the company's ability to do their business.

Now, this IS a legal reason to tow, yes. Like, if I deliberately park my car blocking the vehicular entrance to your business, no, there might not be tow warning signs, but I am preventing people from accessing your business, so you can tow. But my car wasn't obstructing shit. the entire lot was 95% empty, sans for one row which had three cars, one of them mine.

He claimed the business owner said his car "needed to get into" the space I was in. there were no marked spaces in the entire lot, but eyeball test told me there were at least ten other spaces the employee could park in. making it even more bullshit, their vehicle never used the space my car had been in at any point after I was towed.

after getting in an aggressive argument with the tow guy on the phone and in person I paid it as I was out of town, and then immediately filed a complaint with the county's commerce division, who called and made tow yard refund my money. Tow guy said he was going to "sue the city". I laughed.

In Oakland, the tow company is super quick to tow cars that are registered and appear to have an owner

The abandoned cars sit for months if not years

In Portland on a band trip a few years ago, there was a parking lot across from the club with an attendant... seemingly eastern european and wearing an orange vest

But there was also a huge sign saying to ONLY PAY THE MACHINE - LOT IS UNATTENDED

He threatened to tow us when we paid the machine instead of him, but nothing happened

I'm surprised he didn't demand a tip.

In Mexico City, you might find convenient and free street parking on your own in a residential block. But a young person may appear and helpfully guide you into the spot. You then must pay that young person to "watch your car". If you don't pay them, they fuck with your car.

That is a much fairer system

Anyway I don’t own a car and parking lots shouldn’t exist

I own my car and wish I lived in a city with better public transpo because that's 5 Gs of dead weight I could unload

my office (currently pretty much empty) is a few blocks from the SF Giants park, and the commercial lot across the street could get downright rapacious in their fees, especially if the team was doing well... they would put a sign out for $75/day and if it started filling up quickly with rich tech bro's, they would jack it up to $100 or even $125
For comparison, a non-game day would be like $20/day

In chicago, the hotel wanted to charge an outrageous parking rate. But the kind employee on the phone suggested an app on which I booked parking across the street at 30% of the hotel rate. Abolish parking lots and turn the golf courses into public parks!

last bit was my "welcome back, silby"

Public sex parks

https://archive.org/details/sexforest/Sex%20Forest%20print/

do they fuck trees

disappointed that wasn't a Los Campesinos! song imago loves

Great book that vaguely relates to the thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking (Donald Shoup is sorta the Jane Jacobs of parking)

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Hotel parking rates are the worst, just after the “resort fee”.