Got yet-another parking ticket from the enforcement vultures grabbing your cash in Cambridge? The city knows how to make you feel better. No, not more public parking or better meter maintenance.
Starting this week, the city of Cambridge has been handing out redesigned parking ticket envelopes that feature a revamped method of receiving a parking citation. Part of a public works project called “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations,” the envelopes adorned with yoga poses are an attempt to bring out the poetry in parking enforcement.
“The idea is to take something out of an interaction that has some sort of tension to it and give those kinds of communication an alternative quality to them,” said Lillian Hsu, the director of public art at the Cambridge Arts Council.
[An aside: Does anyone have any idea what the hell Ms. Hsu is saying in that statement above?]
The City of Cambridge is solely responsible for this taxpayer-funded idiocy, but the guy who gave them an idea is, well, a real winner:
The public installation is the brainchild of Providence artist Daniel Peltz, the city’s artist-in-residence, who came up with the idea after shadowing parking officials in a number of cities…
This research led Peltz to develop “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations,” which will run in the city through Nov. 17.
“The aim of our ongoing interaction is to shift our relationship to parking enforcement from one fraught with anxiety, confusion and resentment to one that includes gentleness, wonder, curiosity and joy,” Peltz said in a public letter to city residents.
Uh-huh.
Then there’s this:
As part of this project, six new street signs were installed around the city. The signs, written and designed to appear like a regulation street sign, are meant mostly for pedestrians and play off the poetry Peltz found in his reading of the city’s parking code.
“The idea is that people stumble upon them and wonder about them and find them puzzling,” Hsu said.
For example, in response to an existing sign on Inman Street that reads, “If you’re reading this sign, You’re biking the wrong way,” a new sign continues the poem with the phrase “If you’re reading this sign, You’re reading this sign.”
Peltz also wrote a “soft-booting” regulation that is “subjective, idiosyncratic and playful.” The boots, made of soft fabric and stuffed, will be placed on select cars throughout the city.
“I got a boot once, and I didn’t feel bad for me. I felt bad for the car. It looked so humiliated,” Peltz said. “With the soft boot, the car can’t be humiliated; it’s been cared for.”
OK, ya got me. I confess that I absolutely will be “puzzled” by finding a fabric bootie on my un-humiliated-but-illegally parked car. Then again, if I’m looking at a taxpayer-funded parking sock…I’m looking at a taxpayer-funded parking sock.
Remember: Cambridge liberals are smarter than you.
"The truth is something [Warren] probably prefers not to confront. Harvard doesn’t come calling just because you’re a smart lawyer and a terrific teacher — not with Warren’s modest, Oklahoma upbringing and non-Ivy League education. She is not your typical Harvard professor. At a certain point, when the law school was under pressure to promote diversity, she represented a three-fer: a great lawyer with a national profile, a woman, and a minority, at least by virtue of family lore. "
-- Joan Vennochi
