As we prepare our move to the metropolis that is New York City, I am faced with some new cultural rules that I need to learn and adapt to. These would be all the parking rules in the city, both de jure and de facto (I love throwing in my brief legal training vocabulary around).
I will have to park our car on the street, but there is a sidestreet along our building that seems to have a lot of parking. The problem will be making sure that I move the car because they have "street sweeping" on alternate sides for an hour and half. So Monday and Thursday one side has no parking from 9-10:30 and Tuesday and Friday the other side has no parking at the same times. Not that they actually sweep the streets, rather it gives the city an opportunity to dole out expensive parking tickets.
We actually got one when we went into the office to officially apply for the apartment. This was in the Upper West Side, which is infamous for its lack of available parking. We parked at 10:40 in a spot that prohibitted parking for street cleaning from 11 to 12:30. There were a ton of cars parked on the same side of the street, so we thought that it really was not enforced and we hoped to be done by 11 anyway. We actually finished about 11:10. When we got out, most of the cars were gone and we had already gotten a ticket: $65 (plus a $2 "convinience fee" to pay online). Most of the cars that had been parked on our side, we then noticed, were just double parked on the other side of the street sans tickets. So in New York it seem like you can double park, but not park by the kerb during "street sweeping".
It's a new culture we are moving into and we need to figure out the new rules. Ah, culture shock!
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