Archive for March 7th, 2007
I officially hate the City of Berkeley
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
That’s the “entity” City of Berkeley, not the place. The place is alright, in general. The place would be really great if the parking tickets didn’t cost two arms and a leg. Take Alameda, for example, where I also got a parking ticket a few months ago while taking the GRE — it was only $17! I was like “wow!” and scrounged under the couch for some change with which to pay it. I happily sent them a check (after depositing the change in my checking account, thinking better of sending it in that little envelope they give you) including a little note: “I love your city and you’re not trying to rip me off! Thank you, I’m happy to send you this check for $17. Don’t spend it all in one place!”
Someone at the City of Berkeley must have been like, “hmm, how expensive can we make parking tickets and still make people pay them? What’s that you say? They legally have to anyway? Reeeeeeaaallly…. even if they’re…. [evil music] Thirty-Five Dollars!?!?!?” Yes. Thirty-Five Dollars. It’s such an exorbitant fee that you have to spell it out: Thirty-Five Dollars. Yes. Hyphenated even.
More importantly, it’s so high that it makes me dislike the authority of the very city I live in, all the way to the point where I’m thinking of living in (dun dun duhhhhh) Oakland. Or, at least, I’ll never live in one house with four cars and a tiny driveway with two hour parking and street sweeping on the first Wednesday and Thursday of every month. That’s my own fault. It’s my penance, my punishment, our bad karma for having too many kars. Er, cars. It’s Berkeley’s way of saying “STOP driving, you’re part of the world’s problems!” while using the Thirty-Five Dollars to pay for gas and parking attendants in all the Interceptor parking enforcers that hover around the city like flies around a dump, picking off anything of value they can still find in their dirty heap of a city, even its own residents.
All I ask is for $17 tickets, not Thirty-Five Dollars… or, perhaps, tickets prorated for the city’s biggest supporters, like me! When you think of it that way, it makes me feel a little better, but shouldn’t they include that in the cost of living? I’m just thinking, if I move, and get an apartment where I have to (heaven forbid) pay for parking, even if it’s $70 a month, it’d still be cheaper than parking tickets. Wow.
Okay, I’m done. It’s just money. This probably feeds the homeless or something, right? Or at least it feeds the flies…