Archive for May 29th, 2010
Boystown Mystery: The Case of the Unticketable Car.
BMW parked at Newport and Halsted, in yellow curb zone, that never gets a ticket on Friday and Saturdays.
Who owns this car, and why are CPM agents afraid of giving this person a ticket?
Can you help us solve a mystery here in Boystown that we’re calling “The Case of the Unticketable Car”?
Mayor Daley sold the City’s parking meter collection and ticketing abilities to a private company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC, on a 75-year lease for $1.15 billion. Since then, the “meter maids”, both male and female, walking the streets of Chicago checking parking tags on cars in their chartreuse cautionary vests have been privately employed, taking their orders from CPM, LLC.
They are the most overly zealous meter maids anyone in Chicago has ever seen — often writing bogus tickets in their mad dash to ticket every car possible, even if that car’s meter is not up or parking permit is still valid. Usually this revolves around the issue of the date on a parking permit: in Boystown, for instance, because of the Cubs games and other events, residents buy parking permits from their Alderman’s office in books of $15. Each permit is good for 24 hours. The permits are little sticky slips of paper that a driver writes the date on, and the sticker is then adhered to the inside of the car window. If it’s written out for 8:21 am 5/29/10, for instance, that permit is good until 8:21 am 5/30/10. However, CPM meter maids walking Boystown are NOTORIOUS for writing a ticket on a car anytime after midnight on 5/30/10, not bothering to look at the time on the permit. Someone has until 8:21 am, in our example, to put a new ticket on the car for 5/30/10, but more likely than not if that person walked down to his or her car at 7:00 am on 5/30/10, there would be a ticket waiting on his or her car. We believe this happens far too often for it not to be deliberate on the part of CPM — the company must instruct its meter maids to do this, because some study must have shown that enough people won’t fight these bogus tickets to make the whole scam financially advantageous to CPM.
It’s the most aggressive and rapid-ticket-writing operation we’ve ever seen. Very quickly, it became known to every driver in the City that if someone parks illegally anywhere in Chicago, that person will receive a parking ticket licketysplit…even in many cases where that person is not parked illegally at all. CPM agents appear out of nowhere. They are legion.
So, considering all of this, we’ve noticed a BMW parked illegally in Boystown every Friday and Saturday night for the past several months — and it never gets ticketed for parking in a yellow curbed no parking zone.
At first, we thought it just possessed some sort of Q-designed, automatic cloaking device that concealed the car whenever CPM meter maids walked by, making it invisible to them, and thus unticketable. Perhaps instead of wickedly effective tech, this car is instead protected by powerful juju, with some dark spell cast on CPM’s employees to make them blind to the BMW’s existence. Another possibility was that this particular patch of yellow curb, located at the intersection of Newport and Halsted, across from Gerber Auto Glass Repair and diagonal from Buck’s and Halsted’s, exists in a fold in the space/time continuum and that the BMW slips out of our dimension and into a parallel one, but only when CPM agents are around. Sort of like how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the 80s, but with the intended and sole audience being those writing these parking tickets.
But, two weeks ago, we witnessed two CPM meter maids working Halsted and saw the two approach the BMW, with one of them clearly being a trainee. The lead meter maid looked directly at the BMW, so that shot down the theory CPM can’t see that car. It did not vanish before our very eyes into BizarroWorld. The trainee started to write a ticket for being parked in the no parking yellow curb zone, but the other CPM agent stopped him, and we clearly heard the woman say to her subordinate, “No, you can’t ticket THAT car, stop filling that out”.
Curious, we followed the meter maids up the block, and when the trainee was separated from his boss at one point, we ran up to him and asked why that BMW gets to park in a no-parking zone without ever getting a ticket. We told the CPM agent that we see this car parked there every single weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights, and that according to all the signage in the neighborhood, that car should have racked up tickets every time it parked there.
“I know that should get a ticket, but she won’t let me. I’m not allowed to write up that car, but I asked her, and she won’t tell me why,” is what the trainee told us. “I don’t know why I’m not allowed to write up that car, but she punched the license number into her box and it came up DO NOT WRITE”.
We assume the meter maid was talking some kind of computer his supervisor carries when he mentioned this “box”, because otherwise that could read anywhere between ridiculous and vulgar depending on what this “box” is. But, whatever it is, it’s assigned that particular BMW as “DO NOT TICKET” and we’re wondering WHY.
In Chicago, the first thing we think of is that this car belongs to someone Daley is protecting for some reason, but the car could also belong to someone who works for CPM, which is a private company, so perhaps CPM grants some sort of parking immunity to certain people, for whatever reason.
Maybe there’s a lottery for parking ticket immunity, in fact, that we just don’t know about, and the prize is a lifetime (or maybe just a year, like the reign of Miss America or something) ability to park wherever the Hell you damn well please in Chicago, with no consequences for yellow-curb parking.
Maybe this particular make and model of car is assigned “DO NOT TICKET”, just because someone, or “the box” itself, thinks it’s just a really pretty car.
We’re stumped.
But, we walk down this street every single day, multiple times a day. We’re out every Friday and Saturday night and pass the corner of Newport and Halsted many times in the course of those nights, and that BMW is there every Friday and Saturday, never getting a ticket. We saw, with our own eyes, meter maids talking about giving this car a ticket, but one of them using “a box” to determine the car is unticketable.
We want to know WHY.
Can you help figure this out?
The car’s license plate is: X55 0474
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UPDATE: This BMW disappeared really early in the morning on Saturday 5/29/10, where we assume the owner ran errands or something, and then the car was parked at the same exact spot again — in that yellow curb section at the corner of Newport and Halsted — at 11am 5/29/10 when we walked by on our way to meet our friend Althea for breakfast at Nookie’s Tree. Then, throughout the day, we kept finding reasons to walk up and down Halsted, and that BMW was in that same space every time we passed it. Althea thinks this person parks there because no other drivers will park in the yellow curb zone, so this person always has a reserved spot waiting — if it’s true the city won’t ticket this car because it’s a Daley or other VIP. Althea drives regularly here in Illinois, and she told us she’s been ticketed — almost immediately — for parking in that yellow curb zone by a corner. In fact, the last Saturday she met us for lunch in Boystown, SHE parked in a spot similar to this, and she got a ticket not 30 minutes later. And she only parked there for a few minutes to run over to Buzzquarters to drop something off before driving down the street to park in a garage and meet us for lunch.
Here are more shots of this car in the day time:
This is the tag that is on the car.
This is where Althea parked once and got a ticket. It's the OTHER corner of Newport and Halsted, in front of the hair salon that's there. Althea is black, and she said she's willing to stand up and scream RAAACISM! over all of this if she got a ticket for parking in that yellow curb zone at Newport and Halsted but the owner of the BMW isn't allowed to get tickets. Why did Althea get one and not that person, for doing the same thing?
Another shot, from the side, clearly showing that car in the yellow curb zone, which Althea assures us is no parking.
Another shot of this car, around 4pm or so 5/29/10, still parked there. You can see in the distance, near where the man in the white shirt is walking, the spot where Althea once parked and got a ticket. That's the other Newport/Halsted corner that is in front of the hair salon.
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Thanks to Second City Cop for doing a write-up on this mystery. All of us do this when we see cops in person, but thank you for all that you do for the city. It’s the most corrupt and mismanaged city in the country, but we are sincerely thankful, every day we live here, that we are lucky enough to have one of the best police forces in the world doing all that it can to hold things together. Everyone on the job that we’ve ever met has been stellar…and even the crime problems in Boystown as of late are clearly not the cops’ fault, but the bureaucrats high above them who are behind the policies that make all these bad things happen. If you wear a uniform, or ever wore one, we can’t ever thank you enough for doing all you can to keep us all safe.
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UPDATE #3: Our friend Justin, who teaches in Chicago Public Schools, says that Ron Huberman, the openly gay head of CPS, and Daley darling, has a leased BMW paid for by the City that looks suspiciously like the car in the photo above. Justin’s seen him drive it in Boystown, but never got the license number.
This COULD be Ron Huberman’s car, and the reason it doesn’t get a ticket is because it’s RON HUBERMAN’S car. It would make sense for this car to be in Boystown on Fridays and Saturdays, if it indeed is Huberman’s, because he’d be going out in Boystown to have fun…and he’d be parking far enough away from Sidetracks, MiniBar, Scarlet, and other bars he’s frequently spotted in so that there would never be any cell phone snaps of him getting into his car after having too much fun — or possibly too many drinks. That would not be good PR for the head of the school system.
This is speculative, but it sure makes a lot of sense.
The other idea that was floated in the Second City Cop thread was that the car belongs to someone like Alderman Tom Tunney, and that’s the reason it’s on the “Do Not Ticket” list.
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UPDATE #4: Here are the comments from that Second City Cop thread…maybe they will give some of you ideas on who this car could belong to. It’s sure been an eye-opening and revealing bit of insight for us:
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UPDATE: 5/30/10
Car parked in yellow curb zone again, starting at about 630pm, and still parked there at 400am 5/31/10.
No tickets on the car. Yet, meter maids had ticketed other cars on Halsted in that duration.
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UPDATE: 5/31/10
In comments someone posted that:
The plate is registered to
Edward Davis
923 W Margate Terrace
Chicago 60640
2002 BMW
Who is Edward Davis and why is he allowed to park in a yellow curb zone without getting a ticket?
And if Davis is the owner of the car, look how far he lives from where this car is being parked:
At the bottom is the corner of Newport and Halsted where this car is being parked. At the top, is 923 Margate Terrace where Edward Davis apparently lives. Why is he parking his car so far from home?
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Thanks to TheExpiredMeter site for picking this issue up as well.
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5/31/10 — What we need now:
(1) Verify that Edward Davis of Margate Terrace is the owner of this car
(2) Research who Davis is and why he is exempt from parking tickets at the juncture of Newport and Halsted
(3) Figure out who else, besides Davis, has this immunity from tickets
(4) Determine how EVERY Chicagoan can get on this “No Ticket List” with Davis
Can you add to this thread and help…or, if you don’t want to post, you can email us anonymously at HillBuzz@gmail.com
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UPDATE: 5/31/10
The BMW was parked at the corner of Newport/Halsted again for most of the day on Memorial Day. It was finally moved at around 745pm and two of our friends, who were having drinks in Buck’s bar across the street, caught a glimpse of the driver.
Edward Davis appears to be in his mid-40s, and was described as “looking like Martin Short, but taller and with darker hair, but his hair sticks up like Martin Short’s does”.
Also according to our friends, the car WAS ticketed yesterday, because they observed Davis pull a ticket off his driver’s side windshield, crumple it up, and toss it onto the floor of the passenger side of the vehicle.
According to the parking ticket records, Davis had a consistent, regular string of parking tickets between 2007 and December 2009…and then he hasn’t had a single one since then. That seems statistically anomalous for him — why did he suddenly stop getting parking tickets, when he’d had an established proclivity for acquiring them before then? What changed…and why has he gone six months without a ticket now?
"What you talkin' bout, Nancy Reagan?" RIP Gary Coleman
Sad news from Hollywood, with yesterday’s passing of Gary Coleman, a very troubled man whose childhood was taken from him, so we could all be entertained by the TV show Diff’rent Strokes.
Panda met Coleman once, during his surreal campaign for Governor of California in the recall election against Gray Davis that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor’s mansion. He said Coleman was kind, soft-spoken, and incredibly friendly — and he knew he didn’t have a chance in Hell of being Governor, so he wasn’t insane, just someone goofing on a ridiculous situation. He knew he’d become a running joke, so he leant that ridiculous persona to an absurd and ridiculous process.
As a child, Coleman was adorable playing Arnold on his TV show — watch the clip above from the episode guest-starring Nancy Reagan and try to come up with a child actor with comedic timing, line delivery, and talent as strong as Coleman’s.
We remember when this episode aired originally. It prompted discussions about drugs in all of our grade schools. Some people lampoon Mrs. Reagan for her “Just Say No Campaign”, but you know what — not a single one of us here at HillBuzz has ever tried any kind of illegal drugs. None of us have ever smoked. Two of us don’t even drink, and those of us that do have maybe two Pilsners or Guiness when out in Boystown, tops.
Maybe “Just Say No” didn’t work for every boy growing up in the 80s, but it worked for us.
That episode of Diff’rent Strokes was brilliantly crafted, actually. We hadn’t watched it in years, but found the clip above with highlights. We’re struck by not only how wonderful Mrs. Reagan looked — in classic “Nancy red”, too — but how persuasive she was in reaching out to children and telling them to avoid the perils of drug use. It was a marvelously well-done piece of television…something we wish there was more of today…in a world lacking an American First Lady as caring and committed to helping people as Mrs. Reagan was.
We can’t even imagine what it must have been like for Coleman to co-star alongside the First Lady in an episode like this, on what was at one time America’s favorite show, and then to fall so far from the limelight the way he did. To have all of that fame taken away, and all of his promise squandered. It must have been crushing. But, according to Panda’s firsthand report, Coleman was a kind and gentle, friendly man — despite all that loss. There was no bitterness in him. No statements that he was only proud of his country when things were going his way. We can’t remember a single interview he did where he blamed other people for his problems, or called anyone RAAACIST for not giving him what he wanted.
The guy had it all, as a child, then lost it, but never cursed America for his misfortune…not even for his diminutive size.
We hope his soul has found peace, and that all of you find a moment today to say a little prayer for him.
Saturday Open Thread: May 29th, 2010
Moon over Boystown, as snapped by Panda's cell phone, 5/28/10
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
