Well, this is highly unusual that I'm not going after one of our right wing members this time but my anger is directed elsewhere.

As you can see by the title, my ire is aimed directly at the "quaint" little villa of West Hollywood. What began this rave is a trip our family took two weeks ago to Disneyland. We spent three days at the money pit walking, spending, walking, spending more, and sweating profusely. I'll always love Disneyland but Walt's ghost is fading more and more into the distance as the men in suits make more of the day to day decisions. The details of that will be in a separate post.

On the fourth day in sunny Southern California, we obliged the boys with a trip to the beach with the intent of heading back to Phoenix that evening. By the time we were ready to begin our journey back, it was the beginning of rush our in the Las Angeles valley. I took city streets instead of the backed up freeways as the boys had never really seen downtown LA and its suburbs. Our intent was to head north and then go east to avoid the mess on I-10. If things worked out, we'd do the I-40 return giving us a different view of the world. Once we got above downtown we got on a freeway and found it packed like the rest. I saw the exit for Santa Monica Blvd, remembered the Sheryl Crow reference in her song, and decided it was as good as any for movement east.

The route took us through the southern part of Hollywood. The kids could see the sign on the hills and we eventually ventured into West Hollywood. As we were driving we were also on the lookout for a Coldstone Creamery or any ice cream shop as we figured we'd earned it with our frequent hiking miles at the Magic Kingdom.

At La Brea I spotted a Ben and Jerry's in a small mall like structure and we turned onto that street to find the parking lot. As we turned, my wife saw a car pull out from a parking meter right in front of us. We pulled in quickly, threw in a few quarters, and sprinted to the ice cream shop and the nearby restrooms. It was probably about 3:45 pm when we parked. Our stop took a bit longer than we expected since the bathroom breaks were a bit extended and we finally were ready to hit the road at about 4:20 pm, easily within the time on the meter.

As we rounded the corner (we were never more than 200 feet from our car) we were horrified to find it and all the other cars along the road gone. The one exception was the tow truck down the street negotiating with the final vehicle's driver. It was only then that the sign on the meter became clear that said "Parking time restrictions in place" or something like that. You then needed to look up to the street signs to see that that time period began at 4:00 pm. We ran to the tow truck driver and asked where our car was and he gave us a card with an address of an impound yard a mile down the road. Needless to say, we rushed to that facility and demanded our car back.

The man at the reception desk said we were lucky we'd gotten there so quickly because in a minute there'd be a slew of irate motorists that suffered the same fate. Apparently, this is a daily occurance and he confided it wasn't worth the hassle of facing these people for the money it brought them. The towing bill came to $137 and we also had a $65 ticket on the windshield. As we drove past La Brea, the traffic was barely flowing. It appeared the addition of this extra lane wasn't so needed after all.

I normally read traffic and parking signs like an eagle but never in my wildest fantasy would I have believed that legitimate metered parking spots (maked with spaces mind you) would be taken away during normal business hours to be turned into some sort of rush hour lane. I'd seen time restrictions before but they'd always been in the middle of the night for street cleaning or the like. There was simply no reason for a person to believe that their vehicle would be towed away like that. Also, the towings would've had to begin exactly at 4:00 for all those vehicles to have been gone by 4:20. No put the ticket on the window, check back in a half hour to see what's left and then tow. Nope, this was opportunism at its finest.

I've written the mayor and council of this "fine" city hoping to get this thrown out and got nothing more than an apology for my inconvenience and some half-assed explanation that they had to do this because LA bullied them into it. I replied that my recourse then would have to be through the media.

Here's my first stab at it. Please, never spend a dime in West Hollywood if you can avoid it and pass on this story to all your friends. I plan on finding their local newspaper and attacking them there. The LA Times will be next. The the Govenator will get an earful about this lousy tourist experience in his high falutin state and how this family will never again set foot in his attractions. Travel publications will also be a target.

Do I sound a bit pissed?

Art