I’m sorry, did I write keying? I meant community enforcement of societal norms. Because this, observed at the Mall in D.C. a few months ago, is awful parking etiquette:
Always leave nearly a car length between you and the other cars when parallel parking. Or something.
If I owned a tiny car, I would park it in between them just to mess with them…
Aside: You shouldn’t damage other people’s cars. But they shouldn’t be inconsiderate assholes either.
mikethemadbiologist
I love this, I drive a smart car, people are always leaving me parking spaces right where I want to be…
Were you there when the person parked his car? Maybe she parked it in a tight space and then people on either side moved away? Maybe he was there first and the other cars didn’t pull up close enough? Parking is not a static activity. You are engaging in mind-reading if you think you know how someone parked their car when you were not there to see it. And anyone who keys someone else’s car is an a-hole in my view.
What Lynn said – you have not presented evidence of the order of events that led to these spatial arrangements; assigning blame to one individual these cases is not possible.
Rather than applying vandalism, enforcement of societal norms can be achieved with small printed cards, placed under the windshield wiper. They typically state something like “You park like a [redacted]”; choose your own insulting word to drive the point home.
I’m with the above two. Hard to know who the true culprit is.
I live and work in DC. The photos above were made along Jefferson and Madison (the streets bordering the National Mall). Now, these streets have no actual properly marked parking spaces. It is one long open space with three hours free parking starting at 10:00 AM. When you are one of the first to park you have no control over where or how close others park after that. Spacing like this occurs all the time. It sucks, but it isn’t necessarily on purpose.
That said, I agree, people shouldn’t be inconsiderate assholes.