Yeah, I think SUVs are obscene.

As a suburban soccer mom, I am OFFENDED BY YOUR LACK OF COMPASSION! It takes me a long time pick out just the right polar fleece vest to match my yoga pants. Then, after a long day of scrapbooking and checking my neighbors for HOA violations, I have to queue up just the right episode of Hannah Montana on the onboard video system or the kids will riot from boredom on the 10 minute trip to the library. By the time, I get there, I'm exhausted. I don't have the energy left for petty things like "parking between the lines." Besides, this car cost A LOT (more than we can afford, technically, but what's the use of a four car garage if you don't fill it up?) and I don't want to risk scratching it. Before you judge someone, you should totally walk in their sensible yet fashionable shoes!

Disclaimer: Though I do, in fact, live in the suburbs and have a child who plays soccer, I do not drive an SUV, have a four car garage,let my kid watch Hannah Montana or wear vests. Yoga pants are cool, though and I'm at the library a lot.

jrossi4r: If I had been drinking a carbonated beverage, and this was a zany Hollywood movie, in the course of my laughing at your comment I would have spit said liquid all over my keyboard and/or monitor in a comical fashion. At which point, I would have asked you for financial recompense for the damages inflicted upon my property due to your wanton reckless hilariousness.

I was just at the drugstore and they had Hannah Montana gummy guitars for sale, and this is here in NYC, not suburbia. (and I'm in favor of letting kids watch whatever they want (no offense, jrossi), simply because making something forbidden to a kid only increases it's appeal).

For fucks sake. (Almost as bad as my mother parking her SUV in a compact car spot. At the hospital. And I had to go retrieve it. Someone nearby gave me a nasty look.) My mother is one of those 'I'm entitled so waaaaaaaaaaaaa' people. Drives me fucking nuts.

No, I didn't give them the finger. Thought about it.

Actually, it's the jerks who paint the lines in those parking lots that suck.

I have a tiny 1986 Accord and they barely fit my car. Parking lot painters KNOW a lot of people have big cars but try to fit as many pseudo parking spaces as possible.

But... small_ruminant, what stake would a random contractor have in creating as many spots as possible? Do you believe there's a parking cabal?

This soccer
is mandatory?

Sorry- not the contractor- the person designating the spaces. For public buildings it's often the city. For mall type places they need to show the city they've got as much parking as possible, so as not to mess up the city engineering on the roads.

I dunno. I guess because I don't have a car these days and rarely rent I find it kind of futile to get up a rage about too-skinny parking spots. But I do find the lack of bike posts in neighbourhoods I frequent very irksome, so maybe it's the same thing.

jon - did you look closely at those "guitars"?
≡ Click to see image ≡

Well, I drive what you lot can an SUV, plus a very small car and I get pissed off by the increasingly small parking places - this is caused by government requirements for shopping centres etc to have x parking spaces to get development approval. Because parking is not lettable space, it makes good economic sense to cram those spaces into the smallest possible area. Hence, parking spaces at the minimum end of the scale allowed by the relevant standards.

But you know, people who drive larger cars should look elsewhere for parking if they can't fit in the spaces provided - someone else's lack of consideration is not an acceptable reason for passing on that lack of consideration to others.