The Averted Riot
Bernadette says I'm being paranoid thinking the full baguette laying on top of my car was put there by a member of the matzo mafia to attract birds for their pooping potential, an act of intimidation as part of the mafia's sinister plot to take over that whole block of parking. Maybe Bernadette, maybe I am being paranoid, or maybe I just have a more personal insight into how petty a man can be at the top of his game. To what McGyver-esque lengths a man will go to achieve total domination of his opponent. How crazy it is inside a man's head when that man is the last defense against the marauding forces and it is left to him to fight for every parking space under every crapping-bird-filled tree. Sure it could be random, the baguette finding its way atop my car in some completely innocent fashion, perhaps dropping from the jaws of a bread loving pterodactyl through a black hole in the sky of a parallel universe, but I don't think so. That I sit in my car trying to recall episodes of McGyver or the A-Team, or even Gilligan's Island, to figure out the best way to fashion out of an everyday object a weapon, to retribute these guys for their dirty game play, I hope is not one day the first shred of evidence used to pack me up and ship me away.
Ok, all joking aside, if indeed I must be joking to pass my sanity hearings, let me say this—those conniving bastards were up to no good this morning.
But I'm not even sure it's worth it, like the hour and a half of time I'm saving each week is being put to such crucially important use that I should be coveting these so-called cherry parking spaces.
And it would appear from my scant research that the factory (and therefore too the worker) is suffering its own hellish existence what with recent inquisition concerning its matzo--is it kosher or is it chametz, are the standards of production what they once were?, or even if everything is fine and dandy regarding quality and purity are they just being unfairly squeezed out of the world matzo market by other players that want their cherry spot. Also, they are trying to sell the building and relocate in an effort to perhaps modernize and improve their standing, but the asking price of 25 million is seen by most as a huge hurdle to that goal. So there is criticism and there is uncertainty in their world. And perhaps this could be part of what is making those workers just a tad more annoying to deal with, as they over-compensate in an effort to control the street, in an outside world (represented by one Lower East Side block) that could on its small scale be considered easier to control as it is not necessarily judged less pure and therefore not kosher by all the variety of excrement, spit, and vomit which coats it.
The factory has been operating at that corner since 1925 and some of these workers with whom I do parking battle look like they could be the aged children of the original workers. So who am I Johnny-Come-Lately to begrudge these men their sense of propriety?
So today, verily, I say unto you my brothers, I relinquish all future implied claim over those bird soiled parking spaces. They are yours to do with as you wish, until that perhaps distant but foreseeable future when the building is repurposed and the faces of our combatants change.
But not this morning, suckers. You can't flank a guy on just one side. You can't do a pincer movement on a guy if he ain't afraid to back illegally onto a one way street. It's not like a one way street is a cliff or a deep river. So that's what they do these guys, during desperate times. The Restauranteur said it happened to her once and Danny W. Dawkins also told me how he had to yell a guy down to get his rightful spot back after pulling to the opposing curb to let the street sweeper pass, and then finding some fresh worker had jumped his spot.
I saw the set up. They had two of their guys sitting in cars parallel and across the street from me, effectively making it impossible for me to just pull out and back in if the sweeper came. If I wanted to make that move I would have to honk and shout at them, while probably the sweeper truck honked and shouted at me, and they were banking on the pretty safe bet that I was not the guy to honk and shout. I was of course hoping the sweeper would not come today, which would make it simpler, and also reaffirm for me the idea of a somewhat benevolent, overseeing God presence in my life. Really, these thirty minute spots are just not worth it. On a good day there is no drama at all but on many other days it is just thirty minutes of pure contemplative aggravation.
But dammit, there it is. The Street Sweeper. The sweeper can come from any direction, its movement is not dictated by one way streets but it always approaches from the rear because it is a right side of the street oriented machine. I knew today it would not come from my right rear because of the sewage sucker trucks on that block. So what remained was straight rear and left rear. And then suddenly there it was, to my left with its blinker on. I looked in my rear view and could see another one of the matzo crew guys across the intersection awaiting a light change to pounce. And then the two guys illegally parked (or standing) to my left and then all of them parked in front of me and their lieutenant standing in the middle of the street ready to direct the movements of his army. So I just backed onto Rivington facing traffic the wrong way but pulled to the curb (opposite the legal metered spaces) and then as soon as I could, mostly oblivious to the honking from at least two directions, I pulled right up on the sweeper's tail and back into my spot. Although I gave a few inches to the queue in front of me, as an act of good sportsmanship, and may in fact be at this moment really close to illegally parked. So that there may be a 65 dollar price tag to this story. But how often can you achieve a major peace accord, if only an internal one and without your combatants knowledge, at such a bargain rate?
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