The following is a complaint that was published in the New York Times on Christmas Day. Do you feel the same way? (Added onto that could be a gripe about cars simply not leaving enough space for another car to park. Sure, parking is not as bad as is Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights, but do your neighbor a solid and check to make sure that you haven’t put the kibosh on a spot besides the ones you took.)
Cobble Hill is a neighborhood of old brownstones and narrow streets. It also has a hospital and nursing home whose employees often wait in their cars and save spaces for friends on the next shift – an annoying but not illegal practice.
What must be illegal, though, is cramming one’s car into too small a space. Having witnessed this one too many times, I could not stay silent when I saw the beneficiary of a saved space try to fit an enormous S.U.V. into a spot appropriate for a Smart Car. I forced a smile and suggested that perhaps his car did not fit. In fact I urged him to get out of his tank and take a look at the havoc he had wreaked on the bumpers of two cars!
He simply left his vehicle (partly parked on the sidewalk) wedged between the two dented cars and went to work. No doubt returning eight hours later to sit in his S.U.V. and save a space for his friend – you know, the one driving the 18-wheeler.
MELISSA GLASS, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
That’s what your house keys in your pocket are for – key the guy’s SUV and he’ll think twice about doing it the next time. If you’re less of an a-hole, leave a note on the two dented cars informing them of the perpetrator and their license place number along with your phone number for an eyewitness.
nevermind the fact that most of the hospital/nursing home employees have no clue how to parallel park. while walking to work listening to the line of backed up traffic honking their horns at one of these neanderthals on a daily basis, i’ve taken it upon myself several times to “volunteer” to park it for them….usually to the applause of the masses. why the hospital parking garage doesn’t allow them to park for free is beyond me.
the people coming to our neighborhood for shopping/work have no clue how to park or even leave their parking spot for that matter.. ive seen some atrocious driving outside my front door. spot wise though… i think we have it pretty good all things considered.
i work at the hospital, but also live in carroll gardens. the employee parking for the hospital was lost many years ago when the port authority did not renew the hospitals lease at the pier on columbia st . the problem being that the PA granted a very low lease rate to the hospital on the premise that the property was being used for no fee employee parking. unfortunately, the hosp. was charging employees, PA found out, lease came up and was increased, hosp didnt want to pay, parking gone. Now the garage is charging over $2500 a year for employees, whom they do not even want in the garage. good luck if you live in that area. maybe if the area residents supported the hospital it would have the money to make parking available. this is a cry baby neighborhood. get over it, if you want to live in the boroughs, expect your bumpers to be destroyed. if you park in the hosp. garage, expect your whole car to be destroyed. the only thing that drives me crazy is the two spotters.
as far as the nursing home, my god! dont drive down Henry at a shift change.