The Irony of it All

Today I dusted off the good ol' husband and took him out for a lovely, tea-infused (ha ha) brunch at our favorite hoity-toity tea shop in the city. Though they changed their waffle mix on us -no more ginger polenta waffle! Damn them, damn them straight to hell!- we had a fabulous time.

While patiently waiting for our check, I happened to notice a something a little odd over Johnny's shoulder. An interceptor backing into a tiny space between two cars, so that it was perpendicular to the cusomary way of 'parallel' parking along the curb, as a motorcycle would. For those of you blessed enough to never have seen one of these vile little vehicles, behold:


Run and move your illegally-parked car if you ever do! Anyway, out of one of these little buggers pops a cheery-looking blonde, long hair and obnoxious, expensive-looking scarf flapping in the breeze. The vehicle so tiny, and she so colorful, the clown-in-a-car effect was not lost on me.

Anyway, parking aside, this was so odd because her outfit was clearly not DPT issued. Believe it or not, they don't even allow scarves for the holiday season. This woman was dressed like anyone, not in the resplendent official-looking mom-jean-waited trousers or the semi-cop looking dress shirt and jacket. She wasn't even wearing the mandatory bike helmet! Out popped the ubiquitous iphone (even our mailman has one) and she breezed down the street, happily chatting away. Clearly, she was not on duty. Surely one can't just borrow it for the day? Johnny and I pondered this a few minutes.

Then, things really got exciting. Enter the renouned SF city streetsweeper, whose sole purpose is to provide the DPT yet another excuse to relentlessy ticket helpless cars everywhere. As always, in front of this behemoth darted the interceptor, ready to sting. It almost got a BMW, but the frantic owner materialized just in time, before the fateful printing. Next, the little vehicle paused in front of the other interceptor, unsure of itself when confronted with its own kind. Should he ticket one of his own? We both strained to see, unsure what the outcome would be. The suspense was awful. Finally, the relentless evil that lurks at the heart of every metermaid one out. Ticket. As we left the tea shop, we just had to walk by it and revel in the glory and justice of it all.

The moral? As seen on our good friend's recent post on their blog, I just have to repeat, always bring the camera.