Let me start out by saying Fuck You, City of Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau!  Anyone who lives in or around the Los Angeles area has definitely thought, if not said, these exact words.  For those of you who do not live in the Los Angeles area, allow me to give you a brief overview.  Certainly you have heard about the horrors of Los Angeles traffic, but what many people fail to connect it with is parking.  Once the clusterfuck of assholes finally gets off of the gridlocked freeway(s), where do they go?  You guessed it, it’s time to park.  You would expect that one of the most sophisticated cities in the country would be familiar with such simple concepts as “driveways” and “garages,” but you have expected too much.  With the exception of the uber-rich that live at the ends of lengthy canyon roads, the rest of the hoi polloi are stuck fending for themselves in the dangerous world of “street parking.”  I’ll make the poor assumption that anyone who reads this went to college and will in turn understand the following scenario.  We are all familiar with the process of circling a campus parking garage for tens of minutes that seem like tens of hours, hoping you’ll be able to find a spot in time to make your noon class.  The only things helping you keep your sanity are the smoking hot coeds walking around in their mini skirts and hooker boots, and the idea that your destination is in fact a college campus, better known as “the greatest place on earth.”  The best part?  Ultimately, after little success, we use this as a great excuse to skip class and instead get fall-down drunk at a neighboring apartment pool at 12:30pm on a Wednesday.  Ok, have that image?  Now, let’s replace “smoking hot coeds walking around in their mini skirts and hooker boots” with disease infested homeless people who may or may not spit hepatitis into your eyes, and “college campus, the greatest place on earth” with Los Angeles, an open sore on Satan’s cock. Welcome to LA.

To get into all of the City of Los Angeles’ parking problems would turn this into a thesis, so I’ll just address my main concern: my most recent ticket.  I’ve lived in the Westside of Los Angeles for quite some time now, and have recently moved down the street.  Now, for those of you not familiar with the area, the first thing you must learn is how to read parking signs.  I have seen single signs with up to 6 or 7 different regulations.  Some examples are No Parking 7am – 7pm except Sat and Sun, No Parking 10am – 12pm Thursdays Street Cleaning, Parking by Permit Only, and 2-Hour Parking from 8am – 12pm; for this, someone actually comes around and “chalks” your tire to see if the car has moved within the 2-hour span.  Wow, what a job!  I can only imagine the qualifications of these Parking Nazis/Professional Tire Chalkers.  These are just a few of the listings.  Anyway, in the case of my ticket, I allegedly parked “3ft from Blocking Fire hydrant access.”  This statement already contradicts itself.  There is no red paint on the curb here at all.  View Image.  As if this ticket isn’t dumb enough, the presumably highly educated “Chalkhead” checked off the Anti Gridlock violation code, which happens to be more expensive, as opposed to the Fire Hydrants one (they also said my SUV is grey.  It’s silver, dick).  View Image. I really don’t blame this person, I do however blame the community college that turned down their application.

click 2x to enlarge

click 2x to enlarge

So now what?  Well, it’s time to contest the citation.  Oh goody, I have to waste time and witty vocabulary because someone else is dumb.  The great state of California is flat broke, and the Government’s best answer is to steal money back from its citizens via traffic citations.  I’m considering moving to Canada, harsh winters and global mockery has to be better than this.  I call the first number listed on the ticket which turns out to be a TTY.  Basically what that means is that it’s for people with hearing devices enabled on their phones.  If a person of normal hearing calls that number, it rings twice and then makes that awful sounding “fax machine/modem connecting to the internet” noise.  Thanks again Parking Violations Bureau.  So next, I call the Toll-free number.  You know what used to be a good thing?  When you could call a number and talk to a real live person! I know, I know, what a thing of the past right?  After getting the run around from a fembot who didn’t even sound hot, I curse several times at the fake person before I throw my phone against the wall (thank God for the OtterBox).  The droid instructed me to try the internet, or mail in a written correspondence and wait for a reply.  Wow, considering I have 21 days from citation to fucked, I’m thinking this isn’t the best route?  I check out the City of Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau website, www.lacity-parking.org, and find a way to request an Initial Review through an online submission.  I stay professional by keeping the Citizen’s Statement section free of curse words.  I hit submit, thinking I have found a way to backdoor the system.  It turns out that I am the only one getting backdoored, and it’s by the large, veiny cock of the Parking Violations Bureau.  After I clicked submit, I received this error: “The information you entered is not yet available in our system.  Please call (866) 561-9742 to speak with a Customer Service Representative.”  Wait just a second here?  That’s the same number I just called where an automated machine told me to go fuck myself.  Weird?

I think back to my first days in LA, when I got a ticket for stopping a foot in front of the white line at a stop sign (don’t get me started).  After trying to pay this ticket through the internet and the phone (I guess it was my fault), I actually had to go to the Los Angeles DMV.  So, you think you’ve seen the craziest of the crazies that the DMV has to offer?  Really, you do?  I challenge you to spend the day at a LA DMV, you know, just for fun (yeah right).  It’s not so much the waiting in line; that’s standard.  It’s all the characters that surround you.  Everything from P. Diddy wannabes, to people talking on their cell phones as if they were in the privacy of their own homes, to the idiot who somehow thinks he’s going to cut the line without being noticed and/or killed, to the guy behind me who was wearing a bandanna, cowboy hat, and three belts.  Bottom line, it was like a bad acid trip sans the acid.  An hour later, I was at the window.  The scientist at the computer must have been rejected by the same community college as our Chalkhead, because she was not smart.  After 15 minutes of unnecessary typing, she alerts me that the ticket has not yet been processed, and it’s up to me to sporadically call in to see if I can pay yet.  Wow, that’s exciting!  Might I add that I was only at the DMV because the payment deadline for the ticket was the following day (otherwise the penalty increases).  So the plot thickens.  Do I get charged a late fee because the ticket hasn’t even been processed by that date?  The scientist says no, but I don’t believe her.  She also tells me that if the ticket hasn’t been processed within a year, it gets nullified.  Hurray, I’ll keep my fucking fingers crossed.

With only 21 days to contest a ticket, what does one do after week 3 if the ticket still hasn’t been processed?  Who knows, maybe I should just call the Parking Violations Bureau everyday until they are ready to blindly reject my contestation.  This kind of idiocracy is what causes road rage in the first place.  And who intervenes in said situations?  Well that might just be the City of Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau.  Wow, it’s a vicious fucking circle ain’t it?  I will gladly spend 10,000 of Visa’s dollars to resurrect and then hire Johnnie Cochran before I pay 1 fucking dime to the criminal’s of Los Angeles County that call themselves the Parking Violations Bureau.  So ladies and gentlemen, not that this email is going to change anything, but maybe it will put a smile on your face now knowing that you aren’t the only one who’s been cornholed by the Government.  So raise your fist high in the air and scream it with me, Fuck You, City of Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau!

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

-Arian Adams