Got a LoJack warning tonight: “Your vehicle may have been moved without your authorization.” Rushed out through the freezing cold to check on the car: gone. Street lined with TV-shoot signs: No Parking Wednesday. Usually they put these signs up a couple of days in advance, but I guess not this time.
But right there was my friendly neighborhood NYC tow truck driver, busy hooking up another vehicle, so I talked to him. Turns out that when you’re towed because of a movie shoot they don’t take you to the pound and make your life miserable and charge you a lot of money. Instead, they tow you around the neighborhood until they find another spot for you, park you, and put a sticker on your car exempting it from being towed or ticketed for 48 hours. When – hopefully within 48 hours – you discover your car is gone and call the cops or the pound, they tell you where it is. Mine had been moved just to the next street over. I checked and there it was, not only safe and sound but in a perfectly legal spot.
I choose to attribute this surprisingly not-so-awful circumstance to the ascension of Barack Obama.