8/01/22: Parking Meter Mafia (Part 1)

It started out as a prank. 

The Lawful Goons were a group of four friends who were perpetually bored after school. One day, they found a ticket on Jensen’s car.

“What the fuck is this?” he said. “I was 2 minutes over the parking time. What asshole meter maid wrote me this ticket?”

This meant, of course - war. 

That afternoon, they grabbed a large jar of quarters and began following one of the city’s parking enforcement officers around. Every time he got out of his car to write a ticket, one of the Goons would swoop in and put a quarter into the meter. This continued for several hours. The parking enforcer got angry.

“Look, I’m just trying to do my job. You have to stop doing this.”

“Whatever, meter maid.”

“Stop following me.”

“We’re not following you, you’re following us.”

“I’m not kidding. STOP FOLLOWING ME.”

“NO, YOU STOP FOLLOWING ME.”

“I’M NOT KIDDING, STOP FOLLOWING ME.”

“NO, I’M THE ONE WHO’S NOT KIDDING. YOU STOP FOLLOWING - ”

Jensen and the enforcer nearly came to blows. The Goons filmed the entire thing, and uploaded it onto youtube. It received all of two hundred views.

This soon became their new favorite after school activity. Here was a fight in which they could feel self-righteous. 

“No one fucking likes fucking meter maids,” Jensen said to the camera. “We have the fucking moral high ground on fucking parking fucking meters.” 

“Maybe use less ‘fucks,’” Hannah said. “You sound like you’re trying way too hard. Or like you want to fuck a meter maid.”

“Oh. Sure whatever. Okay. Yeah.”

“Don’t look so butt-hurt. All I’m saying is that you do this thing with ‘fucks,’ and it ends up actually being hard to understand what - “

“- Okay okay, I get it, thanks for the criticism or whatever, you’re the best, wow you’re such a good friend for being honest with me, you happy?”

In some ways, Meter Mashing, as they called it, saved their friendship. They had slowly been drifting apart for months. Tim had increasing responsibilities at his family’s shop. Jensen took his schoolwork seriously, and was dumping time into college apps. Hannah was spending more time with her new boyfriend, who was about as interesting as toast. And Larkness was spending an increasing amount of time utterly stoned - to the extent that no one really knew how to engage with her any more.

Meter Mashing gave them an activity which didn’t demand too much of them. The car felt separate from the world. It was easier to talk in there. Any awkward silences or lulls in the conversation could be filled by getting up to fill another meter. And, perhaps best of all, the car could only comfortably fit four, so Hannah’s boyfriend never came.

“You know, I can touch up your apps for you if you want,” Jensen offered one day. They were idly following Enforcer Yeltsin. 

“You sure you have time for that? Don’t you have, like 20 apps still left?” Hannah said. 

Jensen’s father had un-disowned him, and told him that he would pay for whatever college he could get into - and so Jensen had drawn up a list of the forty most outrageously expensive schools in the country and had been spending considerable effort trying to get in just to give him the middle finger.

“Naw, I’m done now. I don’t want to be pushy about it. Just. You know?”

“I’ll… take you up on that,” Larkness stammered out. Jensen was a bit surprised. She had been quiet ever since the group had had a heart to heart with her about maybe not being close-to-passed-out from weed all the time. 

“Well okay then,” Jensen said. He parked the car when he saw Yeltsin getting out. “Anyway. It’s Quarter Time.”

A few weeks later, Hannah brought a sheaf of papers on one of their drives. 

“There’s something I haven’t been able to figure out,” she said. “I was looking over the city zoning for parking meters, and we’ve been driving by a lot of meters which shouldn’t be there.”

“Why were you looking at city zoning plans?”

“Shut up, Tim.”

“Lol.” Tim pronounced the actual ‘Lol’ out loud. Hannah always hated that.

“I’m serious guys. There’s something that’s not right with this. There are entire blocks of parking meters which don’t exist, according to city planning documents. I only noticed because we’ve driven past them so many times.”

“So, what, there’s a conspiracy?”

“All I’m saying is, we should, you know, look into this.”

“Sounds like work,” Jensen said. “How would we even ‘look into this’?” He used his fingers to make air quotes.

“Meter Mashing has been a bit boring recently, anyway,” Tim said. “Ever since Yeltsin quit.”

“Yeah I felt a bit bad about that.”

“I don’t,” Hannah said. “He was a dick. Anyway, the way we ‘look into this’ is by doing a stake-out. The collection times for all the quarters happens once a week on Tuesdays. Why don’t we just wait for the collection tomorrow, and ask the parking dudes directly when they arrive?”

There was a brief pause. 

“Sure why not,” Tim said.

“Alright,” Larkness mumbled.

“Yeah,” Jensen said. “Why. Fucking. Not.”

…To Be Continued