You are paying for this.

One of the least remarked scams foisted by American cities on their taxpayers is the ‘Handicapped Parking’ scam. As scams go, its a slick one. How dare anyone be so churlish as to criticize the creation of umpteen designated parking spots for the handicapped at any place where parking is available?

Yet, go to one of those public spaces and, time and again, you will find full parking lots except for, you guessed it, the many unoccupied handicapped spots. The number of such special spots vastly exceeds their use.

The reason is not hard to divine. Someone is making good coin from painting these spaces and cities can further clean up by levying egregious fines on taxpayers who actually work for a living and make the unforgivable error of parking in one of these. There was an oft quoted statistic when I lived in NYC that it would be cheaper to provide a chauffeur driven car service to all the handicapped residents than to build all those special bus and train entrances and attachments for the few who actually use them. The argument for parking spaces is little different.

Still, this blatant fraud does make for a nice snap, now and then.

Lumix LX-1, auto everything.

These fell out of the sky.

At the Embarcadero, San Francisco. G1, kit lens.

On Nob Hill.

G1, 35mm, f/5.6, 1/100, ISO100

Spotted in Huntington Park the other day.

At the beach.

Oceano Dunes, near Grover Beach in central coastal California, is most famous for the great work done there by Edward Weston in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s a fine beach which, of all things, allows cars to enter for a small fee. Odd.

Oceano Dunes. 5D, 15mm Fisheye.