This morning at 7:30 a.m. I got kicked off a bench in a large grassy area downtown that the guy told me was on private property. In this area there are about ten benches, lots of grass, plants, and the gate was open. I told this man that there are not enough places to sit downtown and that it "sucked" that here were these benches in a nice quiet oasis at queen and university and no one was allowed to sit on them. He was like: "yeah, it's like at the Bay, you're waiting for your fucking wife and there's nowhere to sit because every goddamn fucking inch is taken up for selling products." I agreed that these were similar problems and he showed me a place where I could sit and wait for whoever I was waiting for across the street. I told him that I was waiting for no one and only wanted to sit and relax, whereupon he reiterated "across the street". He was trying to be nice, and he was only doing what he was paid to do which looked like some kind of groundskeeping work. It was well kept. Too bad no one was allowed to sit there. I found the place he pointed out to me. He told me that he had noticed other people sitting there, and they seemed to enjoy it. There were no benches, just grass worn down into dirt littered with cigarette butts, and some concrete steps plastered with bubblegum. So I just went to work.
Posted by King at Junio 02, 2003 08:48 AMI just got the law laid down on me and my Peugeot Grand Cours 10-speed. I was biking up Augusta to College when I saw the portly yellow figure of a bike cop talking to two bike couriers. I crossed the street and, because the typically fatfuck officer of the bike law was standing in the middle of the bike lane and there were lots of fucking cars going really fucking fast in the lanes next to me, I went up onto the sidewalk to get around the scene of the bike crime. The representative of Toronto's Finest Bikes pointed a big sausage finger at me and shouted "Stop". So I did. He then splayed all his sausage fingers on the hips of his sausage midsection and told me that I'd just commited an offence that warranted an $8.75 fine, then he did a sausage sway by alternating his sausage-heavy weight on one then the other of his sausage legs. I muttered something about entrapment but then figured I probably ought to shut up and then Officer Sausageface T. Bikefuck dealt with the bike couriers who didn't have fucking bells(!) or lights on their bikes AND they'd run a red light, so they got fined $175. By the time he got to me, he'd already forgotten what I was in for and started writing me a ticket for running the red light then I reminded him that I hadn't run the light but that I'd gone up on the sidewalk because he was blocking the bikelane and he perpetrated the shittiest fake "I've heard'em all now!" chuckle and then wrote my ticket and went through the what's and why's of my offence and I asked him what to do if I wanted to contest the ticket and he barked something about old city hall and then sausage-shuffled over To Serve And Protect Bikes some more by writing some more steep fines for the 8-odd people behind me who had been stopped since. Oh and the cop made some joke about how he's normally "chasing crackheads up at Bloor and Landsdowne" and how that's what he'd rather be doing because "at least that's fun". Notice how he didn't say "crack dealers". Furthermore, he made the joke in a way that implicated everybody in sharing his opinions about how fun chasing crackheads would be and how that somehow related to the daily grind or whatever, like "we can at least all agree on that, right guys". What the shit was that all about? And another thing, when he asked me for my address I got all flustered and for some reason I gave him the address at my parents' house. Which I suppose is indicative of some Pavlovian response to authority and I guess I reverted to myself, aged 15 getting hassled by cops for skateboarding. Anyway, it's bullshit and I guess I'll try to contest it or whatever but it seems petty and a lot of work for such a small ticket.
I don't know how much this has to do with private benches but there's some consistency in terms of men in uniforms being unreasonable.
Thats too bad about the ticket boyo. I was given a ticket once for jaywalking. It started to rain and I ran accross the street in order to get to a bus shelter. Two cops threw me in the back of their car and gave me a $100.00 dollar ticket. The thing that amazes me is that we pay them to do this to us. It doesnt really make any sense.
For some reason I equate Canadian soldiers with Canadian cops. I was watching some CBC documentary about our troops in Bosnia. They were all fat as hell. Some of the interviews were held in offices and the Canadian soldiers were out of breath.
My point is that all of our cops and soldiers are embarrasingly rotund. You said the cop would rather be chasing crackheads. If someone is on crack I bet they wouldnt be that hard to catch. You never hear a cop say they'd like to be chasing speed head pill poppers. Fat fucko on the bike would probably have a heart attack.
Discourse. Though I never responded, I did sympathize with your story. What a dick. An $8.75 ticket? Appalling. By handing out a fine that small, he's basically saying it's bullshit. If you fight it I guarantee he won't show up. Which makes it even more of a bullshit ticket. The sad thing is that even though it's bullshit, most people will just pay it because it's not worth $8.75, or $20 or even $40 to go through all the line ups, go to court, wait through all the cases and shit. Fuck I hate tickets. You know what, if they start handing out tickets for pot it really is gonna suck. I mean, look at that, an $8.75 unfair pain in your ass, why, cause you went up on a curb? Jesus Christ, who gives a shit? Just wait until they get into drug offenses. If they do, I'm not really up on the news on that.
God it's gotta be depressing being a cop, man. Especially a traffic cop, and even more especially a parking enforcement guy.
Posted by: king on Junio 17, 2003 08:35 PM .