Not so Neighbourly Parking Wars

As far as Mississauga goes, we live in an older neighbourhood. I guess you could go so far as to call it "established". The houses are all pretty much 1950s bungalows, with big lots, wide streets and mature trees. There are LOTS of retirees on our street, many who appear to have moved in when the houses were built. As far as I can tell, the first 5 houses before you get to ours are all retirees - or getting very close to it. After us, our next door neighbours have two pre-teen girls and then it gets older again. I guess what I'm saying is that people are used to things being a certain way....

Leave it to us to shake things up!

We have two sets of next door neighbours, whom I'll call...The Oldies and The Trashies. We've already had a run in with the Oldies. Mrs. Oldie is a classic gossip who I finally had to start avoiding when I was outside because she would start a conversation that was impossible to get out of. Her two favourite topics..herself and The Trashies (who are apparently loathed on the street for their bad behavior, none of which we have ever really witnessed - although they HAVE had some kick ass fights).

Anyhoo, our Oldie run-in was over Eric's clients parking on the street. Apparently, they have a real issue with this- especially when said cars are parked directly across from the end of the Oldie's driveway. Eric asked his clients repeatedly to avoid parking there, but it took forever for the clients to get the message AND dozens of notes left on Eric's clients cars saying things like "Please don't park here or we will hit your car and it won't be our fault. You've been warned." Anyway, it worked. Clients instead started to park in front of the Trashies. And the Oldies stopped talking to us (and vice versa).

Well, wouldn't you know it. Last week, Mrs Trashie comes flying out of her driveway and slams into one of Eric's clients cars. She apparently didn't see the car parked there due to the high snowbanks. The Trashies stormed into our house - literally, without knocking - and angrily exchanged information with Eric's client (a teenagers he trains) saying they didn't want to go through insurance but that they would pay for the damage.

It seemed OK after that...until...the Trashies were told that the repair bill was $1000. It seems they, and let me quickly summarize: hit the roof, refused to pay, refused to give out their insurance info, hung up on Eric's client's mom - who then called the cops. Apparently, the police intervened and the Trashies (who thought they were being ripped off) are going to pay the garage directly. But I think you can probably imagine the neighbourly ill-will towards us.

According to Eric's client, the Trashies said that we have cars parked there every night (more or less true) and if they see one more car parked there - EVER - they are calling the cops. They also said that they don't know what kind business Eric is running (of course they know), but its probably illegal. Luckily, Eric's business is fully registered, we pay our GST, and it's claimed on taxes, so they cannot really touch us. And the cars are never there for the three hour limit anyway, so they cannot even get to us that way.

But still....this is really irritating. It's not like I don't see their collective points because I do. And it's worse with the colossal amount of snow that makes the street about 6 feet narrower than we're all used to. We got a quote last summer to pave a portion of our front lawn, but it was expensive and there is actually TONS of street parking. Obviously, we are going to have to bite the bullet and just do the paving, but there is currently about 7 feet of snow on our front lawn, so its going to be good while before we can get that done.

Anyway, Eric is going over there tonight to have a "talk" with them. We'll see what happens.

Upside? Another neighbour not talking to us, probably.