London Terrace Street Fair: Move your car! Or not, whatever ...

Yesterday was the London Terrace 14th Annual Street Fair. As in years past, the organizers did a bang up job of making sure that all the cars were moved from the street.

When I got up at about 7:30 I looked out the window and the first thing I saw was that our spot, #124, was right outside the door. Yay! I also saw that there was a huge Range Rover (will gills!) parked smack in the middle of it. Boo! I looked up the street and noticed about five more cars parked on both sides of the street. There were signs posted all week long "No Parking Saturday," but some people I guess either didn't see them or didn't care. I called the fair's organizer and left a message that she needed to have the cars towed. The neighbor I was sharing the spot with went down and talked to her in person and was told there was nothing they could do except move us to another spot. Why not call the police? I asked.

I called the police. I called 311 first and was told that whoever was organizing should have taken care of it before Saturday, (no kidding!) because there was no way to now get a tow truck out. I called the 10th Precinct and they said they would call a supervisor at the Tow Pound and see if they could send someone out with a truck with the idea that maybe the violators would see the tow truck and be scared into moving their cars. I called back a bit later and the officer said that he called but at this point, the day of the fair, a Saturday, there was nothing they could do. Meanwhile I was telling the other numerous people who had cars in their spots to not bother with the organizers, who I knew from experience wouldn't/couldn't do anything and we were trying to make the best of it by setting up our booth around of and in front of the massive car.

Around 11AM, Officers Francis and Gilligan from the 10th approached and asked us if "this was the car." They gave nice fat tickets to all the cars that hadn't been moved. Yay! I'm pretty sure they came out because of my phone calls, and I'd be willing to bet it wasn't because of the efforts of the organizers.

Here's a shot of Officer Francis, one of New York's finest, citing the Range Rover (notice the gills!)

Yay!