RANT + response = funny!

I'll explain in a moment. For those of you who haunt the 14th Street area, you are aware that it epitomizes the term "progress" in that 1950s, can-do, World's Fair kind of way. Construction everywhere, new restaurants replacing burned out buildings, lots of different people on the street, and so on and so on.

However. I am all for progress...on someone else's street that I can walk past and marvel and then still find a parking spot on my way home. Since I never got around to blogging about it, I'll fill both of you in here - about a month or so ago, I was speeding like a banshee on the Beltway (because the opporunity to do so is so rare, you must embrace the moment when it arrives) and my oil pump blew, killed my engine, and almost killed me. The car wasn't completely paid off though, and the costs of paying it off, plus a new car, plus all the tickets and dings and additional costs one assumes when driving in the city made my stomach churn, so I have been attempting to live car-free. Aside from my work commute to Virginia, I'm pretty much good to go.

But I've been borrowing the car of a friend who is on travel 1-2 times per week if I have to run and errand or my carpool partner is not going to work, parking it on my street (only parking available) and cursing the kabuki dance of driving around the block 8 times to find a spot, particularly if all the goths are in from Maryland for a Black Cat show. Now, back to yesterday - they are building a new mega-restaurant on the corner of 14th and T (the proprietors, in a vain effort to convince T St residents that this was not the Worst Thing That Could Happen For Parking and Noise and General Well Being on T Street, pathetically tried to call it "the next Loriol Plaza" - like this wouldn't make everyone run to their real estate agent. Oh goody, crap Mexican food in a warehouse with no soundproofing! No reservations! Watered down frozen pink crap-in-a-glass! Sign me up!)

And here's the rub - first off, the New And Improved Crap Mexican Place construction has taken up a good portion of the street - say, three car's worth of parking, worth its weight in gold - with a giant dumpster enclosed by a fence. There's still room though for one midsize car behind the dumpster, however they have put awfully official-looking cones so no one will park there. I know this because every time I swung round to T St in the Kabuki Parking Dance I thought, gosh, I wish those official-looking cones weren't there, cause this car would fit really well into that spac--

Wait a minute.

Those are just cones. They've been put there by people with no authority to tell me I can't park there. They're building a restaurant, not fixing the streets or fighting crime or aliens or cleaning up a murder or, you know, something cone-worthy.

So, like any red-blooded American, I got out of my car, moved the cones to the sidewalk, and parked the car. And again. And again. And each time I marveled at how this is the perfect way to reserve street parking - just add official-looking cones!

Most mornings of the five times I have done this I saw one or two of the workers as I got into my car, slid out of the spot, put the cones back, and drove away. No one seemed to notice, and once, one guy who was carrying something around my car to put in the dumpster retorted when I apologized for blocking his path, "you so fine, you can park anywhere you want". So, problem solved - and with what sounded like a ringing endorsement!

Except yesterday I got to my car and someone, I wonder who, had tied police barrier tape all over the car. Obviously it was not the police, because it only said "caution" on it, and last time I checked, police usually issue tickets, not ticker tape. And not tied to your windshield wipers.

Now ordinarily I would applaud this type of message - far more effective that a congenial "hey, do ya mind, toots?" But on this morning I was in no mood, so when the three construction guys were standing there staring as I untied the tape, I turned and snarled at them. Literally. And they looked really uncomfortable -- I don't think because a girl in a black dress and red scarf and three inch spike heels was snarling at them, which I grant you is odd, but because they didn't think they'd have to sit there and awkwardly watch the butt of their prank untie the fruits of their morning labors, especially because they probably thought it was some jackass guy they could laugh at and not some pathetic (sniffle) female in tottering heels. One guy came over and apologized, saying "here, let me help you, I don't know who did this but..." and I cut him off and said "I'm fine, thankyouvery much" and got in my car. Okay, first I stuck out a stiletto and kicked over one of the cones as I got into the car. Now I wish I'd just thrown my hands up and laughed and been all "ok, you got me! point taken", because their move was actually the perfect response to my insolence, which was the perfect response to their insolence in placing those cones there in the first place.

Except now they have busted a watermain on T Street and the whole street is flooded and WASA is out there now at 9PM trying to fix it and I have no water. Bastards.