So I rolled into the cursed garage of Shirlington at 6:57PM, as my picture shows, to rehearse for an upcoming extension of the Kander and Ebb Celebration at Signature. Of course I could not park in a Signature parking space, as they were all taken. (See my comments below on the last post where I tell the story of an Arlington County Police officer parking in a Signature Theatre Employee space).
I noticed as I came in that the spaces that were designated for Library customers were full.
Yet...
How is this possible?
As I reiterate, these are the hours of the Shirlington Library...
And to add further hypocrisy, the Police are added as a secondary number to the over zealous and money grubbing dirt of the earth towing company, A-1 Towing. This is even more funny since a Police car was parked in a Signature Theatre Employee space earlier this week. I guess that is ok?!
So the Library has been closed for one hour and fifty seven minutes, yet, these are the cars who are parking there...
Now the reason that I was towed was that I was parking in a Library spot. Even thought the Library had closed 8 hours earlier. Well, here are many parked cars in the Library spots and the Library was closed. Why aren't they being towed?
Is there a certain time that towing starts to get enforced, and if so, why is that time not notated in signage in the garage? Why is it ok for these people to park here and they don't get towed, yet I did?
Let's look at the ONE small sign outside the garage again...
It says Permit Parking 24 Hours a Day/ 7 Days a Week Towing enforced.
Well...obviously not. There is a hypocrisy here. The tow trucks really tow at a certain time. Why is that time not posted? If it was, I would have not parked where I did. The $100 that I had to pay left me with $75 to get through the week on. This will make things very tight for me. For what?
There is already limited parking in Shirlington, so why does the Library horde these spaces even when they are not open?
SO I left my rehearsal at 9:07PM, 4 hours and 7 minutes since the library had closed.
Look at the cars behind my cell phone. As you see, they are still there. No one is towing them. Why? Why is it ok at 9:07PM, but not at 2AM? If there is a certain hour in which it is forbidden, it should be posted. I cannot help the fact that I keep later hours due to my jobs, and if all of these people who parked here illegally at either 6:57pm or 9:07pm were not towed, then why should I have been?
I am not done exploring this, and will be e-mailing both Federal Realty and the Shirlington Library tomorrow. I will also be in touch with WTOP's Shirley Rooker with Call to Action, and Channel 7 on Your Side.
It is not in your best interests to park in this garage, as there are obviously rules that are being made up at random that don't apply at all hours of the day, and you could be towed within 5 minutes of parking there.
Stay away from this garage at all costs.
SGS
3 comments:
I would LOVE IT if you took down A-1 Towing. For all the money I have had to pay them. The worst was when they towed my car from Alexandria and I had get it back in Newington, pain in my ass! Get'em take no prisoners!
Stephen- this is all so weird. When I read your blog I thought that you had parked in a specific space that had one of those signs in front of it indicating that you could only park in that space if you had a permit allowing you to do so. I was at Shirlington today and since I didn't recall seeing any of these "towing" signs in the lot I was curious to see where exactly this permit only spaces were. I drove around and around the lot - I even went to several levels. I didn't see any such signage. The only signage remotely related that I noticed were respective to handicapped spaces. Even then while the signage indicated that one needed a handicap permit to park in one of these spaces there was nothing whatsoever that addressed the issue of towing. So I started over and pulled into the lot again entering from the driveway between the library and Harris Teeter. There is it was- the sign. Very strange...it was posted at the entrance of the garage. What a ridiculous sign...except for the handicap spaces - generally speaking there are no permits to be had for parking in the lot. Please make sure when you file a complaint about your experience that the sign wasn't even near the parking spaces and that the neither the library nor Harris Teeter (both of whom have some assigned parking spaces in the garage) provide patrons with parking permits. By chance did you notice if this same 24 hour towing sign is posted at the rear entrance to the garage? This whole thing is ludicrous.
DUDE!!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY TOWED YER CAR!!!!
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