No Parking

Parking in downtown Richmond is notoriously terrible. First of all there's nowhere to park and when you do find a spot, the parking is limited and conditional. The signage is poor, and the city is overrun with vermin-like parking attendants who exploit that, wantonly writing tickets, half of which are not even justified. They don't have to appear in court and are held to no accountability standard whatsoever- go to traffic court and you will see the judge dismiss dozens a day. They can do whatever they want. It's bad but it's never going to change because it is a huge source of revenue for the city. It's a dirty trick, and they do it because they can.

On Main Street between 4 and 6 it's "rush hour" and no parking. The first time I tried to park there at that hour, someone was nice enough to tell me (I didn't believe them either at first). But right they were. I learned that one $60 parking ticket later. So, now, whenever I see people trying to park near 4pm I always stop them and impress on them why not.

Sure enough, today I saw a guy getting ready to pay the meter- time to do my good deed. "You can't park here", I said. He didn't believe me and wanted to disagree. I persisted. He finally relented, and indicated an old bummy-looking guy sitting on the wall of Bank of America behind us. Sheepishly, he said, "He told me the same thing".

As I looked over my shoulder, the man pipes up with, "Yeah, you didn't want to believe a black man", and repeated it, I guess for my benefit. That really ticked me off! Excuse me, but I think you just implied this guy is a racist. He may not have been insulted, but I was, and not just because some of us were white and some were black. That's bullshit. He wasn't discredited because he was black- he was discredited because he was a bum hanging out on the sidewalk. But that's never going to be an accepted reason in his mind....it's always going to be "because he's black".

That man may have been a dumb parker who didn't want to read the sign...but I don't think he looked at the man and said, Oh...you're black!

I put my hands up to the man, shrugged and asked, "What's black got to do with it? Why's it gotta be because you're black?" (he didn't have an answer for that). I just shook my head and walked away.

Can you find the real racist in this picture?