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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

You park like an asshole

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I occasionally drive, borrowing my mom’s car once a month to pick up large items out in the ‘burbs. This means I also get to experience the road rage that was so common during my college/university years. Its amazing, but its almost like a switch and I start calling anyone who gets within 5 feet of the car horrible, horrible names. Luckily for me, we now find ourselves in the midst of winter and the windows cannot be rolled down, but in better weather I’ve seen a person or two swivel their head towards me while I’m waiting at a stoplight, cursing at the old person in front of me who has watched the green light for three seconds but still has their foot on the brake.

I remember one instance when I was at Fairview Mall in North York (probably in 1992, around Christmas time) pointing and yelling at some guy who cut into a parking space I’d been waiting to get into (I’d car stalked people coming out of the mall on the way to their car). Not only had he “stolen” my spot, he parked diagonally and was blocking part of the reserved disability space (like the photo above). If that had happened today, I could take pic of his stellar parking job with my camera-phone and submit it to the very entertaining web site You Park Like An Asshole.

The site has a great gallery of the worst parking offences, and a section that allows you to download tickets (in PDF) so you can give out your own violations. The tickets come in two versions: one cites your offence, the other is just the web site address youparklikeanasshole.com. They even have a section for those who’ve been “ticketed”, with diagrams that help folks identify what kind of parking asshole they are.

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8 comments

  1. I sometimes wonder why we don’t run into you more often on the streetcar, but now I know it’s because you’ve been borrowing your mom’s car 🙂

  2. Has much more to do with taking the Lansdowne bus north to get anywhere east of me that is further than Yonge.

  3. If only there was a checkbox for car parked in bicycle lane. I’d give those out several times a day for those assholes parked in front of my building.

  4. Cars. Make people. Crazy. I’ve known more than one gentle soul who goes all Gladiator once they’re behind the wheel; that’s the real reason I don’t carry a driver’s license (the “sustainability” thing is just to get dates). Bike rage is bad enough for my health without wrapping it in fast-moving steel.

  5. Don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve noticed a rise in tailgating lately – half the time behind the wheel, I feel like I’m going to get bumped or worse when I stop.