Neat! The article is pay-walled, so I’m left guessing on most of it, though. I wonder if the jail has classes on flag signalling.
When you ignore a “No Parking” sign, you roll the dice and take your chances.
I’m there too. On the one hand, it’s a bit obnoxious to film and post videos of cars you have towed from your lot. On the other hand, what I said before. Dude was warned and still parked there.
This was also my first introduction to lot scammers. That was fun to learn.
What I didn’t get was, what was the point of the breakdown of the specifics of the car that was towed? Was it an additional attempt to shame the guy for owning a Ford Focus? Maybe if I watch more videos, I’ll get it.
Or go home and then come back to pick them up. Like when you were a kid and your mom would drop you off at the mall.
(edit) and yes, I get this would make traffic congestion worse. It’s shame cars can’t dissolve when we don’t need them and then reform when we do.
Another advantage to this is they could be packed in a bit closer together, since you wouldn’t have to accommodate a person getting in or out. As long as the car doesn’t crap out in the spot. Or other issues. Hmm. Whatever the solution, I’m glad it’s not up to me to come up with it.
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If you have Safari, “Reader Mode” works nicely.
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I hadn’t even thought about it, to be honest. It’s like being for or against someone who gets beaten up for a ridiculous provocation: on some basic technical principled level I suppose I am against it, but I can’t stop laughing at the Ghost Car of Bad Decisions so it’s all fine with me.
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“Invitation” is an excellent term here. I think the filmer’s true motive is, at least consciously, to discourage public use of the private lot, but that it collapses somewhere along the way to what you describe. These disharmonies of intent and experience are a part of why such trivial things become compelling, not merely virally but as palimpsests for the rage and compassion we can’t effectively express about more important matters.
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Actually that was my favorite part…good editing on their part to be honest.
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That’s the most impressively disgusting anecdote I’ve heard in a long time.
All i picked up was Rob’s standard sardony.
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This is a problem that can be hard to solve. The parking lot behind my office is off an alley and we have cramped tandem parking. We want more than anything for people to not park there and have a bunch of signs that say no parking. They just don’t work.
People don’t pay attention or think it’s Ok if they just park for a few minutes. I’ve come out to my car to go to a meeting and someone is blocking my car. They saunter back 10 minutes later and say they didn’t see the signs.
The funny thing is that my office designs signs, and even we can’t get people to look at them or care.
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About 10years ago I flew into LAX with a colleague for a meeting and rented a car. We ended up near Koereatown with some extra time for lunch so we spotted a Cuban place on the corner of a shopping complex that included an Office Depot and other stores surrounding it. Assuming the parking lot was for the whole complex we pulled into a spot, put our laptop bags in the trunk and headed into the restaurant.
We came out about half hour later to find our rental car gone along with our bags and meeting materials. A guy came up and handed me a business card for a tow company and suggested that I might need to call them.
Long story short; the Cuban place was the one business excluded from the list of stores sharing the parking lot and the tow company hired homeless people to watch for suckers like us to not read the signs carefully so they could swoop in and snatch their cars. Cost us $400 to get the car back and we barely made the meeting.
Funny note: the colleague I was with tried to expense the cost of the fine and his wife, who was our company’s financial controller denied the expense.
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As someone who worked in a parking lot as a student, I have to say these videos were very cathartic.
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Do you just call the rental company at that point and be like, “Yeah, your car is at XYZ Tow.”
I guess they probably have a clause in the contract to foot you with the bill anyway 
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Reminds me of something I read (ten, fifteen years ago) about the high-tech parking meters of Tokyo. (Sorry, no citation at hand.)
Not only do the meters limit the time you can spend in a spot, but also:
- You can’t just top off the meter when it’s low – the meter requires that you actually drive away.
- You also can’t start to pull away, then back in again – the meter knows.
- The meter is networked to Tokyo traffic control, with automated tickets and billing.
You can’t fool the Tokyo parking meter. It knows if you’re a cheat, and it tells on you!
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I hope no one vomits or pisses or whatever all over the car I need in 20 minutes.
That tow truck driver is a real pro.
I like watching people who are good at what they do.
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If you watch enough of the gtoger channel you will see the people who heeded the warning and get showcased for it. The cars being towed is the draw so more of them are showcased or exclusively the subject of videos.
Reposted a portion of the video with a much better soundtrack.
So, I’ve known this obscure song since forever. It was on a sampler record from 86 or 87 in a college radio station, something from a Snickers song or band contest and the record was the semi-finalists. Anyhoo, it is such perfect little pop song and immediately pops in my head every time the topic comes up, so I had to do this:
(sorry for audio quality, wish I had taken the time to do a better transfer from cassette but my tape deck is in the back of a closet)
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We would have totally left it up to Herz to deal with except our bags were in the trunk.
And yeah, I’ve had rental company come back a month later to collect on a $2 toll charge + additional $15 “processing” fee of course.
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