You pull into a parking spot at your office, at the parking lot or garage you have monthly parking at, the grocery store, the drug store, the place where you pick up your cat’s food. You head in, get things done, and come back out minutes or hours later to find a nasty note about your parking on your vehicle. You look around. You’re not double-parked, you’re not on the lines, you didn’t accidentally park in a marked handicapped spot. Then it hits you. You’ve committed the crime of parking a motorcycle.
After you spend a few minutes being mad, trying to figure out who left the note, how you might be able to get them back, mocking the writer’s spelling and grammar, or whatever, it hits you. It’s a parking spot. It doesn’t say ‘car parking only’. You’ve legally parked your legally registered vehicle in a legal spot. You might even have had to park in a full-size parking spot because the designated motorcycle parking was full of…cars. And yet somehow you’re ‘entitled’ or ‘rude’ or any number of things because you had the audacity to park your motorcycle in a parking spot while going about your business.
You’re not the baddie here. You’re a motorcyclist. And you are entitled to that entire parking spot. Even if some car driver tells you to grow up, be an adult, and get a car if you want to park in a full-size spot. Or if that car driver is parked in a designated motorcycle spot and tries to tell you their car fits (it doesn’t), or nobody rides when it’s raining (you are), or when it’s hot out (you are), or that there weren’t any open full-size parking spots (there were – you, the motorcyclist, wound up parking in one).
We motorcyclists pay our taxes and contribute our share to road maintenance. We’re entitled to park in legally designated spots, and we should park in those spots to raise visibility. That being said, I do try to not be a jerk about parking my bike. I do prefer parking in designated motorcycle spots, and park in those when available. When I do park in a full-size spot, I look for compact spots, or spots that are difficult for cars to get in and out of (concrete poles are my friend), and unless a neighboring vehicle has parked over the line, I park so there’s enough room for a fellow motorcyclist or two to share my spot if they like. I never park in handicapped spots (or in the wheelchair access areas of handicapped spots), and I’d only park in an electric vehicle spot if I rode an electric bike and it needed a charge. When given the chance, I politely explain to those upset at my parking choice that I’ve parked my legally plated vehicle in a legal parking spot and they’re welcome to do the same, in any spot that’s not clearly designated for a particular vehicle or user.
What prompted me to write this? I parked in a full size spot in the garage I pay for monthly parking at, and which doesn’t have specifically designated motorcycle spots (nor does it offer monthly parking for cars, as it’s a city-owned garage in the heart of the downtown shopping core). Management of the garage allows motorcycles to park in the yellow-painted ‘no parking’ zones, and that’s my normal parking choice. However, construction has eaten up most of the ‘no parking’ zones, and I do, on rare occasion, need to park in a full-size spot. And naturally, on one of those rare days, I happened to find a note that read “What an entilted Bitch Park in a motercycle spot Next time Douch” (sic) tucked into my bike’s bodywork at the end of the day. Am I going to let this apparently sad and angry person stop me from parking my motorcycle wherever I deem it safe and appropriate to do so? Nope, not a chance.