New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
[Neighbor 1: Let me borrow some sugar.
Neighbor 2: : I apologize, but I’m out of sugar.
Neighbor 1: Well, go to the store and get some sugar so I can borrow some.
Neighbor 2: I don’t want to: go to the store yourself!
Neighbor 1: You’re being discourteous!]
Neighbor 1 sounds pretty discourteous to me, but perhaps I’m taking my sugar analogy too far. I must confess that I’m fairly new to street-parking from my home, but I’m not new to the concept of courtesy. To me, street-parking courtesy in New Bedford has come to mean actions like the following:
*Park close to the sidewalk because there’s limited space for vehicles to pass.
*Park as close as you can to your home whenever possible because other people need street-parking space too.
*Do not park too close to the vehicles in front and behind you because they need enough space to safely get out.
*Do not park on the sidewalk or on the side of the street where no parking is allowed because that’s utterly rude to pedestrians and neighbors.
*Do not park beyond the white line or too close to driveways so those with driveways can safely exit onto the road.
*Park quickly because it’s rude to hold-up traffic.
*After parking, look before you open the car door because it’s impolite to scare the daylights out of a driver who doesn’t want to crash into your car door.
I’m sure there are other acts of New Bedford street-parking courtesy that I’m missing, but I’m really hoping that it does not include the following:
*Do not park near your house because it’s discourteous. [Do what?]
*If you have a driveway that only fits one car, do not park near your house with your second car because that’s discourteous. [But I thought I was supposed to park near my home?]
*Do not park near your house if you do not drive your vehicle every day. [Are you my neighbor or my warden?]
*Do not park on the same street of your house if the only street-parking spot available is in front of a neighbor’s home that doesn’t have a driveway. [Bless your heart.]
*Do not park in the street-parking spot closest to your house because your neighbor says you shouldn’t. [Last time I heard, you don’t own the street!]
*Do not park near your house when there are single women who rent apartments next to your home. [Bleep. Bleep. Uber-bleeping BLEEPER!]
Within a week or two of moving in to our newly purchased New Bedford home, one of our neighbors approached my husband about street-parking. His entire argument about not parking in particular street-parking spots was predicated upon the fact the he rents to single women. I am a married woman. Do I by proxy have less of a right to park in a safe parking spot near my home because I’m married, or does that simply mean a woman needs a man to walk her to her car every time she drives? And here I thought the idea of a “damsel in distress” was a backward Southern sentiment.
A week later, another neighbor asked us to move our vehicle because he had just purchased a home and had not gotten to park in front of his house since the purchase. My husband and I complied with this request as often as possible.
About five months later, we invited extended family to live with us. Within days the same neighbor aggressively confronts our female cousin and tells her that she can’t park in his spot. Does she have less of a right to park there because she isn’t a homeowner? The same neighbor parks on our sidewalk where no-parking is allowed several times before receiving a citation. Two days after the citation is given, the other neighbor with “single-women tenants” approaches my husband and tells him that we are being discourteous by parking on the street near our neighbors’ houses.
Observe the picture above. The one in front is our second car, a vintage Jaguar that I drive when I need to. The picture was taken from the bottom of our front porch. No, I don’t drive the Jaguar every day because I’m a writer: does that mean I should park on another street? It seems to me that if parking near your home is a major issue, then you should purchase or rent a home where you know you will have parking — or, at the least, not try to manipulate your neighbors to comply with the number of steps you feel you should have to take to reach your front door.
I may not bake homemade cookies for everyone who lives near me, but I would certainly let any of them borrow some sugar. On the other hand, I will not make a special trip to the store to buy sugar any more than I will park out of my way to appease a whiny neighbor. If that makes me discourteous, then pet my head and call me crazy.
I suspect that New Bedford street-parking “courtesy” varies widely by street and neighbors. Let’s see: comment and share your stories!
Its often the case of complacency vs control. People get in a routine and think they are entitled to their own flow. We are many, adjust to suite the now
oh please that is ridiculous I pay my taxes to park where i want and if someone parks in my driveway i call a tow truck or slash their tires and key their car – my driveway my property! Stay off! Inconsiderte people will pay for being inconsiderate and stupid!
I’ve run into this issue with people parking on the street near my home. We have a driveway, so we often pull in and to the neighbors on our direct left, we sometimes let them park in our driveway (if we pull in far enough, we can fit 4 cars comfortably). I dont have an issue with people parking in front of my house…my issue is when people pull into my driveway and wait, or when they completely block my driveway and I can’t get out…that’s so rude to me.
But as far as street parking goes, you don’t own the street, anyone is free to park anywhere. But it’s even worse when you have to dig out your car in the snow/winter. People assume because they dug out the spot, it’s theirs to claim, even on the street.
I got into a fight with our upstairs neighbor because I had dug out my car to go to work. He took my spot which wasn’t a big deal because i parked in his spot. Someone then took my original spot and he came in asking me to move and i told him no. He argued with me that he dug it out. I told him I dug out the spot he parked in (previously my spot) but it didn’t stop him from taking it b/c it was closer to the house.
Once your car is gone…free game for parking in the snow..just like first come first serve in the other 3 seasons. People needs to deal with it, or like you said, find a home/apartment with adequate parking to meet their needs.
My biggest beef is that…I have handicapped parking in front of my home. I am handicapped. I cannot walk unaided for more than ten feet. I do realize that if someone who is handicapped parks in the handicapped spot there is nothing I can do about it. I know that if there is a reserved handicapped spot in front of someone’s home not to park there because there is a reason for this spot being there.
I live near a library on my street in the south end. The problem I have is they have a parking lot but nobody parks in it. The people visiting the library park on our street and there is never any parking when people come home. Some days are worse them others.
If you thought of your neighbors as extended family, I bet you would act much differently. Do unto others… If your “vintage” occasional driver is camped out unused for extended periods, don’t you think it would be more courteous to find a street spot that is less frequently used so you would have less impact on your neighbors? If it were me, that’s what I would do.
Yet, if you needed emergency access to transportation due to actual family health issues, would you risk the life of kin so your neighbor don’t have to take ten more steps?
If you park on another street to avoid taking a spot in front of a neighbor’s house, aren’t you just creating a similiar problem for a different neighbor on the other street? Ridiculous. Everyone is entitled to park wherever it is legal.
While I try to be as courteous as possible when it comes to street parking because I live on a street with lots of tenements and only about 4 of which have driveways. I understand everyone needs to park and sometimes that means I have to walk a block because there’s just more cars than there are parking spots it REALLY pisses me off when during a parking ban in the winter our neighbor (single family home) who has a drive way that fits 4 cars and between him and his son they own 3 cars and park all 3 cars on the street and NONE in their driveway!!! That’s discourteous!!!
If someone keyed my car and slashed my tires I think they would have an electrical problem with their home. They can come home to ashes where their house used to be. Be nice.
I live in the middle of a complex so the walk alone from the street is long you would think there would be rules for street parking but there isn’t I have neighbors who have children watch there spots tell their parents when the closest spot has opened so they could be super close to their building!!
We now live in a world where no one cares people are only out there for themselfs when it wasn’t to long ago it feels that my parents used to talk to their neighbors about planning where the spots should be but then again they all watched each other’s children when we all played outdoors …… I don’t think this is about parking as much as it is about people and there self centered ” me me me ” thoughts
I would have told my neighbors as nice as possible ” it’s a place on a street if u park there ok if I park there ok but don’t expect me to care about who gets there first I’m trying to get home cuase that’s all that matters”
The door thing is actually a State law:
Motorists and their passengers must check for passing bicyclists before opening their door. Motorists and their passengers can be ticketed and fined up to $100 for opening car or truck doors into the path of any other traffic, including bicycles and pedestrians. – See more at: http://massbike.org/resourcesnew/bike-law/#sthash.nGcB03wZ.dpuf
Folks get seriously hurt by being hit by opening doors or pushed into vehicle traffic.
I sometimes hhave trouble walking and there is limited space on my street for parking and there are neighbors that have driveways and don’t use them. I have been parking in the same spot for years, and most of my neighbors are extremely nice and considerate and will not park there, leaving it open for me. But, occaisionally there are rude people, company of a neighbor, who park so they’re taking 3 spots and you can’t get in front or behind them. That is extremely inconsiderate and they will hear.me when they come out! Its about icourtesy and being considerate of your neigh bors!
Here’s an idea…next time, buy a house with a driveway to park your vintage jag…either that or move.
Jennifer – How about the next time you write a crappy article and feel the need to have to document it with an image, reverse the camera so that your readers will be able to see the real story. I’m sure that the New Bedford Guide is thrilled that you abused your privilege of writing for them by sharing your fabricated list of self-serving and useless bullet points. All this in an attempt to put yourself on a pedestal and to gain pity from the readers of this website because you have nothing else going on in your life to write about. Oh yeah, you cleaned your deck and made eggplant the other day, thanks. We couldn’t have found that on the internet. And thanks for telling us about Price Rite and that they have the cheapest groceries. No, really? I would have thought Whole Foods.
I realize that your article was an opinion but considering that you are basing it on an actual personal experience shouldn’t you be fair and honest and separate the facts from your mostly fictional story? And then you compare your fabricated version of your neighbor’s request to your own fabricated and baseless list of guidelines as if they were legitimate. Shouldn’t you have done some research and checked with the Traffic Division of the New Bedford Police Dept. for their input on parking on the city’s streets prior to trying to educate the residents of New Bedford on street parking procedures yourself? Did you reference or even take one look at the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) which all municipalities use as a guide before publishing what Jen, the new city Traffic Officer, perceives as helpful and to-be-followed parking guidelines? Park as fast as possible? Isn’t going slow and parking safely more important? Not near the white lines? White lines on our roadways are actually meant to be crossed as opposed to yellow lines. Your article is not only baseless and full of lies, its poorly written.
Nobody ever asked you not to park near your house or to park on a different street. Are you serious? You were simply asked to use common courtesy. Why don’t you come out of your house and tell your neighbors face to face that we fed you this bullshit? Because you know that it is all BS. And you hide in your hideous purple, yellow and green house behind your almighty pen and try to discredit the reputations of myself and some of our other neighbors who are all actually very good people. Most of us on this block have lived here for 10+ years and we never had an issue with parking on this street until you moved in and thats because everyone else who lives or has lived here had common sense which you people seem to know nothing about.
Your wonderful and most pleasant husband was simply asked that if the vehicle isn’t being used for extended periods of time or when you are out of town as you recently were to “please” park it in these other spots that are just as close to your house as the space where you insist to keep it. But for no reason other than to cause friction with your new neighbors you refuse and the vehicle is left parked there even when you are out of town. That’s courtesy?
Your credibility as a wanna-be aspiring writer should be thrown out the window when you attempt to deceive the readers of this article by weaving in mostly illiterate garbage with a couple of true facts of your experience. You publish an article about courtesy but yet you and your husband are probably the two most discourteous people in this city.
Why didn’t you include anything in your story about the actions of your husband when he was simply approached by a neighbor to discuss a matter? You were outside the other day when I attempted to have a civil conversation with him and you witnessed his response. I no sooner started to have a conversation with him before he became threatening by walking up to me positioning himself only inches away from my face trying to encourage me to fight him.
I went to talk to you guys to see why you couldn’t have moved your vehicle away from the only two house on this street without a driveway while you were out of town and instead I’m challenged to a fist fight in the middle of the city street. When I soon realized that my words were falling on deaf ears and that you people actually enjoy going out of your way to inconvenience people your husband again rushed at me wanting to fight but this time on the corner of the street. I’m not sure why he thought the corner of the street was better but of course I didn’t fight him over a parking issue. Why is it too that you were yelling at him to return to his yard and that fighting me would “not be worth losing his freedom over”? What was your husband planning to do to me that he would have lost his freedom? Is there anything us as neighbors need to know here?
Why wouldn’t you have used your privilege as a writer for the Guide to educate the residents on more important parking matters than that waste of space of an article. With the recent hot weather maybe you could have reminded residents about not leaving pets or even kids in hot cars for any amount of time and a few tips on how to prevent that from resulting in a tragedy. Or remind the residents that during the winter we should always be sure to clear the snow away from the tailpipe to avoid a carbon monoxide tragedy. Or remind us not to disobey the law when it comes to parking too close to a fire hydrant just as a resident of your home did a few weeks ago and who was cited $100 for the selfish parking job.
It sounds as though you came up with that list of bogus bullet points by sitting in your house 24/7 looking out the window watching all of your us, your neighbors, go in and out of our vehicles coming and going from actual jobs. We all work full time around here so we all pay taxes to maintain these streets. What have you contributed to this city so far? Lets see, at $15 an article you have earned about $150 since moving here this past winter. The taxes on that aren’t even enough to offset the city’s expense to repair the damage in the street that your “vintage” car has caused. It has leaked oil and other fluids all over the street where you have kept it the past few weeks. It seems to me that if a vehicle is leaking fluids that will ultimately eat away the pavement over time causing a pothole and a future expense to the city that it should be parked in a private driveway.
Nobody approached you after 2-3 weeks after moving into your house. Your anger-management in need husband was approached 2-3 MONTHS after you moved into your house. It was months and not weeks because everyone on this street knows that your “vintage” piece of shit never even used car sat in front of one of the only two houses on this block without a driveway for the entire winter. I know this because I shovel the snow out from these couple of on-street parking spots for my tenant and neighbors to use but your “vintage” relic was parked there for the winter as if the New Bedford city streets are your own personal storage garage.
After 2-3 months when this car had never moved from this location your husband was asked why this vehicle is parked there and never used. As a taxpayer of this city for 10 years and sharing these two valuable parking spaces with my other hard-working neighbors we had a right to know if this car was disabled and/or legally parked. It was a simple common sense request and a simple question and not an “argument”.
We asked that if possible when this car isn’t being used for these extended periods of time to park it anywhere else on the street rather then these two spots. 99% of the city’s population would have probably saw the logic in this request but of course you and your husband are the 1%. It was also brought to your attention that the next couple of parking spots on this street are in front of a vacant house and that this spot is equally as close to your house than where you stubbornly insist to keep it now. Why am I not surprised that your article about courtesy didn’t mention that you have these other available parking spots as close or closer to your house than where it is parked now but you simply refused to move it just to spite your neighbors?
Don’t you realize that we as your neighbors are the people who watch over your property when you are out of town? That we are the ones who if your house catches on fire would call the fire department and who would rush into your purple, yellow and green (cringe) house if need be to help you and your family members out? What part of treating your neighbors with respect do you people not understand? How can you ever become a successful writer of any sort if you are so closed minded and can’t even understand the basic concept of respect to those around you?
I hope that if you are allowed to continue writing for the Guide that your future articles will be truthful and much more informative to its readers than that self serving BS. Maybe we can give you a break this time and blame it on all of the marijuana you have been using that may have clouded your judgment. Maybe your next article can be about marijuana and the affects of using too much of it which not only could over-inspire one to write crappy articles but that it may or may not result in an impulsive decision to have your house painted purple, green and yellow. I can see why you may have been nominated for some of your fictional writing because that certainly is what you do best.
I’m glad you commented so that others can see how demanding and whiny you are. I told you the same bullet points in the street that I said in this article. Yes, my article is based on opinion and contains rhetoric (that readers enjoy), but I did not personally attack you. In your reply, you have attacked our car, my writing, our lifestyle, and our house colors many times, and this is exactly the way in which you approached my husband. You even have the gall to make assumptions and attack how much you think I earn as a freelance writer, when this venue is only one of many that I write for. Plus, my husband works an average of 12 hours a day and pays an exorbitant amount of taxes. It’s also interesting that yesterday when we needed to use the Jag, you and the other complaining neighbor decided to take up three parking spots with two vehicles. Not to mention the fact that you have parking available directly next to your house on Parker Street. When the other complaining neighbor decided to illegally park on our sidewalk, what courtesy was even left? At this point you are correct, we will go out of our way to park in front of both of your houses. Plus, I plan to give writing workshops and perhaps sell baked goods or open a metaphysical shop from our home – with lots of ongoing non-resident parking – because we purchased a MULTI-USE BUILDING on purpose. Hmmm, maybe my next article will highlight the bullet points of a free poetry workshop offered to all married women in New Bedford – who will have no trouble finding the GREEN, PURPLE, and YELLOW HOUSE! WOOT!
Wow – I think both sides make valid points here. On the one side socioseer is correct in saying that we all as taxpayers have the right to park wherever we want on a public street. But at the same time, “neighbor” is correct in his point that in order for everyone to get along, there is a common courtesy and respect that needs to happen between neighbors to maintain peace. This is a nasty situation that I can see elevated to a place it shouldn’t have to go. I hope you can work things out as neighbors and grown ups.
does anyone know the law on how many company trucks can park in the street ? there is a company near me that parks about 9 vans on the street all the time parking is bad enough in new bedford but to park 9 trucks everyday is crazy
The most frustrating thing about coming home after work around 4 on a New Bedford Street to park my car is NO parking!! It seems like if your very large or fake that your disabled and can walk a mile or go to work like a normal person does 40hrs a week…how are u able to get a handicap spot in front of your apartment??? It blows my mind and must be nice not to worry about if u will have a parking spot when you get home!! It makes me sick when I see these people that can walk just as good as me!! Tricks of the trade I guess.
you have no idea why the person requires the use of a handicap placard…..it could be a heart condition or some other sort of medical condition that makes walking for an extended period difficult. H/P placards are not handed out like candy; the reasons that necessitate having one have to be discussed by a board of medical professionals before a parking permit is granted. It makes you sick? No one chooses to have a medical disability.
I life in a quiet neighborhood, dead end street, the house across from me has 5 cars, their drive way holds 3 cars, but they only park 1 or 2 there…and sometimes none. The house next door to me…which is family to the people across the street has 2 cars. one in the driveway and one on the street in front of their house and fire hydrant. Thought the day they have 2 or 3 family members come and hangout…they park on the street, since it’s a dead end, they just park one car behind the other and eventually come so close to my driveway making it hard for me to back out. This morning….thinking my I wasn’t home because my car wasn’t in the driveway someone parked in my driveway. In the past, their friends have parked in my driveway to run into one of the houses, leaving the car running. I’m trying to be a good neighbor, but this morning this took the cake.
I have been living on the 2nd floor of a triple decker. When the new first floor tenants moved in, she regularly parked over two parking spaces in front of our one way street (parking on both sides). When she does this, it throws all other people parking on the street off and we are lucky if there are 3 spots possible. (if she parked courteously, there is enough for 5 cars). She called the city to insist that a handicapped parking spot be installed in front of the house. A parking spot is supposed to be 20 feet in length. It is right in front of the door, but she still insists on parking partly in the handicapped spot and into the non-handicapped space behind her. She claims that the city says that the entire 40 feet is a handicapped spot. How can this be?
When she challenged me about parking in the first 20 feet (non-handicapped) she threatens to call the police. She doesn’t care that I or my daughter have to park around the corner or several houses down the street. I hate selfish, ignorant people. I have never had such trouble with any neighbor in 55 years until this arrogant woman.
k I have a drive thats for my bikes is it cool to say dont block my walkway sheds out back