Follow-Up: No Parking "Other Times" Sign

“The odd parking warning was first noted by the blog Sheepshead Bites, which has yet to post a follow-up.” – “BREAKING: Existential ‘No parking’ sign was a fake!“, Courier-Life; September 14, 2010.

It’s rare to get a mention (and a link!) out of the Courier-Life editors, so when they feel obliged to do it that invariably requires a bit of back-handedness.

Well, we didn’t post a follow-up to our original story about the sign, which was eventually mentioned in the New York Times, NY Mag’s Daily Intel, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Vos Iz Neias and scores of others, because it was all a bunch of hooey.

There is real news to be reported. This is funny and quirky and a space-filler; but Courier-Life assigned two doting reporters to the monumentally inconsequential.

To make a mountain out of a molehill? I guess that takes a special kind of editor. They chased that story down, producing a follow-up that essentially was a DOT “we-didn’t-do-it,” as if anyone expected them to confess the errors of their ways (and if they started now, they’d have decades to apologize for). But Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo left the DOT’s response in our comments before Courier’s first article ran, so the information was there for all to see. No need for us to spotlight a highly dubious DOT denial.

And yes, I believe it’s highly dubious. Because, as seen above, the DOT has replaced the sign with a proper “No Parking Anytime” sign, maintaining the same rule that’s been around for as long as I can remember: you can’t park in that intersection. We have no proof, but we think the DOT screwed up, denied the error and quietly fixed it. No one benefits from the idiotic sign that was previously put there, so it’s doubtful it was an attempt to reserve a parking spot as Courier-Life implied.

The sensationalized story was first created by the “news” publisher Courier-Life, who has yet to post a correction for their many inaccuracies.