If you speak the words green box within Chicago's City limits, you're bound to be met with a disgusted rant. They are universally detested. During the end of the Daley era, Da Mare sold off Chicago's parking rights and the beaches and huge stretches of previously free street parking are now a cash cow for some fat cat private investors.
The meters can't be topped off, often end at 2 hours, even near theatres where movies and plays often exceed that time limit, and they're often far down the block, making parking & paying tough on the elderly, injured and families with young kids. Even short errands end up adding up to big bucks in parking payments over time. And woe to the citizen whose meter expires, even by a few measly minutes. That'll be $50, thank you very much.
A few months back, my 9 year old daughter, Sagezilla, was demonstrating Chinese Pole for a circus open house, and after two years of doing circus arts safely and injury free, she did a face plant into the pole and broke her permanent front tooth. She was screaming in pain and I was tending to her with a paper towel soaked in milk so the air didn't kill her tooth so much, while I called the dentist to squeeze us in for an emergency visit. Amid all this chaos, our meter expired (by just THREE minutes) and we got a $50 parking ticket.
I appealed it, including the photo above, with the poor kid missing a quarter of her permanent tooth, and an explanation of why were were a minuscule few minutes late to the car. But we got the bright orange harbinger of bad news back in the mail with our appeal rejected and our ominous sounding final determination made. We didn't have a legally accepted alibi, IE: our car was not stolen and the meter was not broken, so we were SOL. Thanks LAZ. Thanks city parking peon judge. You suck.
Who thinks there should be a compassion clause and/or 15 minute grace period in addition to the meager accepted get outta ticket free reasons?
P is for PIRATES
One of Chicago's infamous parking fiasco green boxes that has been "Yarn Bombed", decked out in colorful knitting.
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