An open letter to City Council, concerning MonkeyParking

To the Honorable Seventeen Paintmunching Knaves, Long May You Reign.

It has come to our attention that one among you, the Honorable William Greenlee (D-At Large), who has done the previously-thought impossible and distinguished himself from your ranks by his sheer dumbfuckery, has discovered the internet sufficiently to have heard of MonkeyParking. MonkeyParking is a smartphone app that proposes to monetize parking by facilitating payments from people who want to park cars in places, to the people who currently are parked there. Councillor Greenlee, who is as afraid of this as he is of anything else that might be termed “new”, wants to make it illegal in the City of Philadelphia. Much like a stopped clock twice a day, he’s right. This app is disgusting.

Of course, none of you are going to realize on your own that the only reason this app exists, is because our parking meter and residential parking permit rates are way the fuck too low. The existence of shit like MonkeyParking is the symptom, not the disease. So, let’s all review the basics of parking:

If there isn’t available parking for everyone, when and (about) where they need it, the price of parking is too low.

If there are lots of empty spaces, the price of parking is too high.

Free parking is fucking expensive… for you.

If people are willing to pay (more) money for parking, they are willing to pay that money to the City.

The way you collect the money people are willing to pay, is through meters and residential permits.

You Like Money.

YOU LIKE MONEY. MONEY IS GOOD.

(I can’t believe I have to remind you of that part so strongly, but… you’re really fucking bad at remembering it.)

So get on the stick, and jack up our low meter rates and pathetic permit rates already. You can even say with a straight face that it’s For The Schools, although it’s pretty clear that next to nobody would care one way or the other between the money going to feeding starving orphans, or Blackjack and Hookers. The point is people want to pay money so they can park their cars, and we should take their money. Don’t even bother outlawing MonkeyParking. Just stop enabling their business model through shitty policy, you chucklefucks.

My usual No Love,

-Michael Noda
-Sic Transit Philadelphia