Snow Ordinance in Minneapolis Can Kiss it…

Saturday night I got towed while parked on a street in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis. Fine, I was on the wrong side of the street, whatever. That’s annoying by itself, but the steps taken to get your car back is pathetic.

I take a cab to the Minneapolis impounding lot and as we’re nearing the building, I see people standing outside. I thought ‘oh great, there is a line, this could take longer than I expected…’

I get out, light up a cigarette and start chatting with others around me about how crazy it is how many people are in line (at this time there is at least 100 in front of me…). I’m standing there and hour and my feet are beginning to hurt (it’s about 15 degrees by the way) and I’ve only moved about 20 feet. I start contemplating just saying ‘fuck it’ and leaving and coming back later, but I’ve already wasted an hour…plus how much longer would I have to wait?

Two hours roll by and I’m still not even inside the building…and the line behind me keeps getting longer and longer. I’m guessing at this point, there are 200+ people in line to get their cars back.

A little after waiting outside for two hours, I finally get inside a door…not THE door, but a small shitty building BEFORE you get into the real building. Stand in there about 30 minutes not moving, then after about 3 hours, I get into the building and notice a queue of people still waiting…so I’m still pissed at how long this is taking…but at least I’m inside. What is annoying at this point is that there are only 4-5 employees helping people out…why wouldn’t they get double that amount when they know there are going to be a ton of people getting towed for a snow ordinance?

Anyway, I finally get to the window, the woman is friendly, I pay by $138, grab my other $34 ticket I have to pay within two weeks and then think I’m all set. But no…I walk around the corner and we are in another line now…a line for people to take us TO our cars because this lot is so fucking gigantic you could get lost for days. So I wait for another 20-30 minutes to get a ride to my car.

As I’m leaving the lot, I see the line of people is now double the size as when I first got there. Those poor people would have waited about 6 hours I’m sure.

It was nice to see people making snowballs and hurling them with some nice obscenities attached at tow trucks that were still carting in cars and trucks every 15 seconds.

A buddy of mine also got towed and called the impound lot today to see if there was a line and they told him it was just as bad today as it was yesterday. That’s unbelievable.

The latest count is that close to 2000 cars were towed in Minneapolis on Saturday night. That’s a nice $500,000 stimulus payment the citizens just gave you, kind city!