Last Friday, I got a ticket from the Evanston parking patrol. Technically, it was my fault. I was parked on a street where street cleaning was scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays, and I’d forgotten to move my car in the morning. But there were several other cars parked on the same street at the time I received my ticket, and I didn’t notice tickets on any of those cars. I reluctantly paid the $25 I owed the City of Evanston. My $25 joins the more than $125 in parking tickets I paid last year due to Evanston’s absolutely insane parking laws: a ticket issued at 3:10 a.m. in front of Burger King when I parked on Clark (no parking between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.) and several other “street cleaning” tickets (as a side note: do they ever actually clean the streets?). The icing on the cake was a ticket for parking more than 12 inches from the curb. What gives, Evanston? Did the parking patrol get down on the ground with a ruler to measure the distance from my tire to the curb? I swear I’m a great parallel parker. The amount of arbitrary parking laws in this town is just ridiculous.

Tania Karas is Co-Special Projects editor. She can be reached at [email protected].