NP: Beck, Guero

Ah, April in Chicago. It's warm, at least temporarily before we get another couple of days around freezing and maybe one more snowstorm. It's light later into the evening. The Cubs still haven't been mathematically eliminated.

Most importantly, it means winter parking restrictions are over. Allow me to explain.

A few weeks ago, I made the gross tactical error of driving to Mary's apartment on a Friday night. Parking in her neighborhood is tough on an off night, let alone a busy weekend. After a good fifteen or twenty minutes, I finally settled on something way the hell out on Cannon Drive. There was a "no parking if there's snow" sign, but I figured the chances of snow were nil, so I was good, right?

Wrong. There are two different winter parking signs in Chicago. I know this. One of them dictates that there's no parking if there's more than an inch of snowfall. The other adds "or from 3am to 7am from October 1 (or somewhere near there) to March 31." I thought it was the former. It was the latter.

It took me some time to figure this out, so my first instinct was that someone stole my car. Mary thought this was amusing, and I'm fortunately not one of those guys who is horribly emasculated by a repudiation of the quality of one's wheels. Anyway, once we figured out what was on the street sign, I called and confirmed that I had been towed. I took CTA to the pound at Sacramento and Superior as a sort of penance, figuring I'd save at least the drop in the bucket cab fare would be compared to the ticket and the tow.

More signs once I got there:

A long wait in line led to the discovery that there were at least three of us in a row that were tricked by the winter parking restrictions. Lots of gallows humor ensued, much of which went back to the above sign. In the long run, we felt less unlucky than one guy in front of us, who had his car stolen from the near West suburbs. The resulting joyride killed his battery, which meant he had to make multiple trips into the yard to check the condition of his vehicle, get a tow truck in, and jump through two or three other hoops, including having the mechanic spot him cash because his credit card didn't match the name on the vehicle registration.

On that note, you can save yourself a lot of time when you get towed if you've got a copy of your insurance card with you to use as proof of ownership. Otherwise you've got to trudge out to the yard and get your registration out of the car and come back to the processing window. Fortunately, I had mine with me, so after the hour and a half or so standing around, things progressed quickly. I entertained the crowd with NCAA scores from my phone.

Then, on the way out to my car, I was further entertained by this:

The sign posted in the window said something like "car doesn't start, please don't tow," which apparently went for naught. No sympathy from those city tow trucks, even for clown cars.