When I ran into this shot posted at the Cohort by Staxman, it reminded me of the time I had a number of Peugeot 404s and one 403 while living in an apartment in Santa Monica. I only had one assigned parking space, and my 403, which was a total mess, hibernated there. But I had several more on the street and in a church lot next door, that I could use until Sundays. And then there was the weekly street cleaning day, when all cars had to be moved off one side of the street. Since my 404s weren’t all running, I expended a fair amount of energy pushing them around. The joys of being young!
Obviously, I don’t know the situation behind this shot of of these three 1965 Mercuries. And resident apartment managers are largely extinct. But it does make one wonder.
Ugh, bad memories. In Toronto the city had a terrific scam going: many residential streets, including ours, had one-side-only parking. Catch was, the side switched every 2 weeks. This was ostensibly so that the non-park side could be cleaned—LOLROFL, that happened maybe once or twice a year. It was actually so as to wring money from everyone who either forgot or failed to move the car to the other side before 7am on changeover day. The parking wardens were remarkably efficient, too; 7:01 was risky and 7:07 usually meant a ticket.
Now their scam is to turn parking lanes into through traffic lanes from time to time. Fail to move your car and it’ll be ticketed ($60) and towed to a lot on the opposite side of town ($186). At least with out-of-province license plates there’s no real need to pay the ticket.
That’s so odd Toronto didn’t clean the streets like they said; while I lived in perpetually broke Chicago, street cleaning happened on schedule like clockwork. Best believe if you ignored the schedule, your car would be gone (This was Lakewood Balmoral). Growing up in MN, street cleaning happened once a year, so it was quite the contrast.
At least here, if you do forget, if you’re lucky there’s a spot across the street and they’ll just move your car over there.
(As soon as I could afford a garage, I had one. Life’s too short to deal with street parking.)
I live in Toronto. Street cleaning is done reliably once a week. In my neighborhood , its done on Tuesday morning.
But many downtown neighborhoods are jammed full of cars, so I can understand cleaning may be more trouble.
What is this “street cleaning” of which you speak 😀 ???
It consists of the city deploying a machine with big rotary brushes that just moves the dirt around.
In Brooklyn we had alternate side parking twice a week for cleaning and sanitation pickup. Streets, which generally ran East/West had different days than the Avenues running North/South. Since it was rare to ever park in the same general vicinity twice, it was a total mind f*&k to try to remember precisely the day and 2 hour period when your car needed to be moved. This is not to mention the insane number of recognized holidays of all faiths and creeds, which might mean suspension of alternate side parking rules, or special rules that might come into play during weather events or neighborhood festivals, etc. The day will never come that I do not have a designated parking spot again in this lifetime. Try parking a 2WD Durango with a trailer hitch on the streets of Brooklyn during a snowy Winter, and then having to dig it out and find another place to put it for 2 hours twice a week. Hell No.
Still the same here in Brooklyn, although many of the “brownstone” neighborhoods have gone to 1x per week. On the other hand, we now have incessant film shoots – three in my immediate neighborhood over the last 3 weeks – which take up whole blocks for the various support trucks.
Amazingly, they’re often using my neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, to represent somewhere else. Steven Spielberg was here last week shooting Brooklyn for Georgetown for his new Washington Post/Pentagon Papers movie, and they used the townhouse across from me in The Departed.
Identical triplets Mabel, Mavis and Maude at Mabel’s apartment for their weekly scrabble game.
Perhaps it’s a sales tool for the brochure: “Each apartment comes with a lovely, comfortable Breezeway.”
Could be the apartment manager’s Mercuries (Mercurys?).
Not an unreasonable thought. My brother once rented from a fellow who filled the house’s back yard with old Mercedeses.
Must be, how else would you get 3 spaces in a row
Either way, so long as you don’t use an apostrophe [Mercury’s].
I put a starter in my TR3 in a apartment, and the manager was on me right away. I said I had to fix it to get to work Monday. Those were the good old days of $500 British sport cars.
Oh, I love irony. The good old days of $500 British sports cars. That one had me a jolly good laugh ?
The one on the far right looks like the one my dad owned 50 years ago.
Living dangerously in this way is not something I am unfamiliar with. My landlords have thus far not given marching orders for two 1993 Ford diesel ambulances, a 1998 Honda PC 800 sport/tourer, and, at times, my ’65 FIAT 500 and/or 1973 850 Spider. Oh, and my everyday car. All this with an apartment that is less than 230 sq. ft.
The city I live in has street cleaning….whenever someone feels like sending the cleaning crews out. And while they do “clean” the streets, the main function seems to be to wet the streets and give the crews something to do as it’s not unusual to see 2 or 3 cleaners traveling down the same street just feet apart.
I once lived in an apartment complex where the management USUALLY ignored unlicensed vehicles. But every now and then police cars would prowl the property looking for cars with expired plates or out-of-state plates.
I can’t imagine liking a car so much that I’d want 2, much less 3 of the same model.
Working in Santa Monica (and driving in from the foothills north of Glendale) around ’79/’80 the dealerships employees were required to park in an alley, 2 hour parking. The lot worker/porters had a system down where all cars were musical chaired every hour and forty five minutes, they had a inventory of keys on hand as well. I never dared to drive anywhere for lunch for fear of no place to park on return that wasn’t metered and blocks away. It paid off to arrive a little early, getting stuck in traffic jams and arriving late with no place to park was great fun.
Dad had a ’67 Monterey 4 door in the same puke green as the ’65 pictured.
In New York City I owned three cars at one point — my daily driver ’64 Dart sedan, my ’53 Studebaker Champion sedan, which I tried to keep in the garage I rented in Jersey city, and a ’65 Barracuda (down converted to a Slant 6 w/pushbutton transmission) that I desperately tried to loan out to everyone and anyone — just so I wouldn’t have to move two cars EVERY DAY for street cleaning. Then someone gave me a ’74 Nova. Quickly I gave that one to a friend in Boston. Who ever needed a stripper ’74 Nova!?!
I also bought my first convertible, a ’63 Dodge Dart, because it’s owner had seen me in my ’64, had gotten housebound, and the car wouldn’t start and he didn’t have the strength to push it across the street everyday anymore. That one, I put a set of points in and drove it to the parking lot of my office in Larchmont.
I had to fix my Olds in the parking lot at my girlfriend’s apartment earlier this summer. Was a a little concerned about leaving it for a couple of days up on stands, with the gas tank and exhaust down on the ground.
Turns out that the nice young guys next door are part of the maintenance staff and were more interested in guessing what the problem was than worrying about it moving.
Another reason why I passed on buying a condo and instead purchased a house with a loonngggggg driveway.
A thought on these Mercs – did any car ever come closer to literally filling the box, as Elwood Engel liked to say?
It was amazing how to me in ’65 the all-new BOF Mercury was styled to look more like the unibody Lincoln than the Ford, which was mechanically almost identical. I wonder if it helped Mercury sales at the expense of the Continental, which shared the same showroom. By the time the Panther cars came out, you could not tell the difference between a Ford and Mercury from more than twenty feet away.
Mercury marketing from the mid-60s on emphasized the Lincoln connection – not just in styling, but specific components lifted from the luxury brand. Seemed not to hurt Lincoln sales, though.
This guy is just crazy bout a mercury. See “Mercury Blues”A song first recorded by KT Douglas in1949 . Allen Jackson 1992. Sorry I could not post a link.
LOL. Meaningless lyrics by 1992.
Never knew it came out in 1949, back when one could really be “crazy ’bout a Merkury”.
KC Douglas…..
-Nate
Forgot Steve Miller Band in 1976?
This is in Seattle (unless the owner has a twin here) and this building and the house next door is always jam-packed with cool old cars. Always a couple of these mercs around though.
I have 11 Citroens on the road in London…why ? I like Citroens!
I remember those dayze ~ living in some cramped place and having to push my old VW’s around every week or two…..
Why I always tried to rent a rear house or duplex and why I learned early on to keep it cleaner than it was when I rented it as some nosy neighbor would inevitably call the land lord to complain and the fact that I cleaned all the previous oil stains and trash up didn’t always cut the mustard .
Sigh .
They now sweep during daylight hours but still have the over night 3 ~ 6 AM parking curfew plus the City’s Ticketero following the sweeper as it trundles down the street twice a month .
Quite the good racket for them although the don’t often tow vehicles .
Oddly, two blocks from my house a stolen car was allowed to sit undisturbed and un ticketed in spite of removed VIN for almost TWO MONTHS is spite of repeated calls to the Police Dept…..
It wasn’t until they came to me to ask how to get rid ot if that anything happened .
parking nazis ~ harrumph ! .
-Nate
(I dig the Mercs BTW)
Notice the bane of 65 Full Size mercury ownership. Not one complete parking light lens in the bunch. I wonder what the average life span of one of them is….or was. and good luck finding replacements.
Love these cars. My parents had a 66 Montclair from new. My first automotive love. A true COAL. Palisades Turquoise with an aqua cloth and vinyl interior.
” In the Lincoln Continental Tradition”, of course !
Another trifecta I caught 3 weeks earlier:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12119356@N00/35038907403/
Pushed cars around on the street? Sounds like an elderly Eastern European fellow who happened to live on the street I did in the Richmond District back in 1989. He must have had 20 derelict import cars parked on 21st Avenue between Clement and California. Not a lot of parking on those streets due to cutouts for apartment driveways. He moved them around only to avoid street cleaning tickets.
It took some creative thinking to persuade him to stop doing that so the many others could park their cars. After which he spread them around several blocks. He lived in a large three story apartment building at the corner where the street level is the garage doors. When he died in 2005 they pulled out four dumpsters of old tires stashed behind those doors. Stunned the neighbors and the SFFD.
I lived in San Francisco ~40 years ago, and I thought California and Clement were pretty close together, but I had to check Bing Maps. Holy smoke, from California to Clement is only 1 block, and as you said, there are the driveway cutouts. I don’t know how the guy did it.
A nice trio. Wonder if any of them are in operable condition, and what the end game is–construct one or two good ones from three in semi-rough shape? Still pretty cool to see all three of them together like that.