Journals

  This entry takes you on an exciting (I'm lying. It's more like excruciating) journey through the Third World of NYC - The NYC Tow Pound.    Chapter I - The Setup One Friday morning, I took a day off to take my little bro James to check out his high school in Rhode Island.  I got my car out of the garage and parked on Greene right next to my apartment to help him bring down his luggage (we were spending the night in Rhode Island).  I went up and back down in no more than 5 minutes, got my little brother and his luggage.  And there he is!  A traffic cop standing there writing me up.     Worse yet, he told me that he's towing my car!  I looked around.  And found the scene to be strange.  Wait a minute, there were at least 6 or 7 cars on the street, in front or behind me, all allegedly illegally parked.  Why me?     "You're arguing with me!  Don't argue!"  Said the police guy.  "Where is your registration?  I need your registration." Oh boy, my registration was still being processed by the California DMV.  When it rained, it brewed the perfect storm.  So I told him, but he said that they can't find any record in the database. My solution:  "How about I pay for the parking ticket here because I need to drive my little brother to Rhode Island for his school orientation?"  No dice.  Can't believe it.  So I stood there watching them call the tow truck, and then watch the toll truck come and tow my car away.     A footnote:  I had gotten a ticket before on Mercer, under the same sign, and my car was not towed.  I also got a ticket on 35th under the same sign on the day my daughter was born.  No tow truck.  Go figure...  Consistency?  Or just NYPD needing to make monthly quotas.  I was hopping mad, but gotta keep calm in front of my little brother.  Still couldn't help a few f words letting slip.  Why bother, he swore more than I did.  Time to figure out plan B.  Can't think straight, but this is where my better half came in handy.  Rental car!  Ok, $100 a day, but what can I do!  This was start of my descent down to government bureaucracy hell.    Chapter II - Gates of Hell On Tuesday, I finally had time to bring closure to the matter, so I thought.  I called the Tow Pound bright and early.  Yep, my car was still there.  I told them the entire context, sparing no details.  My registration is still being renewed and car got towed, blah blah.  So the lady at the Tow Pound told me that since it was my wife's car, I had to get a notarized letter saying that I can pick it up.  Say what?  Notarized letter?  So Yvonne and I found a notary at the 4th bank we visited.  Giving Commerce Bank, that 4th bank a plug here because their service was really good.   When I finally got the letter, I headed for the DMV, in a cab no less because the subway pretty much didn't go anywhere near there.  As I got there, there was this unkempt dressing guy with a police uniform barely button up, with his gut and stomach hair hanging out.  He barely muttered a word and motioned me to the entrance.     Upon entry, it took me 20 minutes to get to the counter.  Then another hour and a half before my name was called.  Waiting in the tow pound is a sad and mentally debilitating sight.  I've been to the morgue once in my life, and this stirred some memories, except this place was hot.  You can tell that everyone in there were either numb, defeated, or angry.  There was a lady whose car was parked by the hotel valet and got towed, and she had to be in Philly in two hours.  Ouch.  There was a man asking for a form along with a receipt to show the people who gave him a parking ticket.  No luck.  There was another girl who got sent there earlier, then was told to go downtown, and then told to come back.  After she ran around all day, they told her to wait for another hour and a half.  No reward for Pheidippides who just ran from Marathon.     After the hour and a half of eternity, my name was finally called!  As I walked up to the window, the lady said, "Well, you don't have your registration (no kidding).  We'll have to remove your plate."  Ok...  "But we can't do that because your notarized letter didn't say that we can remove the plate."  Uh...  I told her that I called earlier specifically asking for everything I needed.  I followed every instruction that was given me.  She told me that they didn't explain clearly, and she went to get her manager.     So I moved over to the manager's window.  After some long minutes, she appeared.  She was a woman of few words, "You need to go back and get another letter specifically saying that you are authorized to remove plate and take the car out of the pound."  Isn't that what I was there for!?   I started to say something.  "You need to..."  I knew there was no use.  So I went back...     Another 45 minutes later, I got my letter.  Took another cab back to the pound.  Waited another hour to get my name called.  When it was finally called, I had to go through the backdoor to the security area before the garage.     Chapter III -  Lost Cause So I waited, again, at the security office.  This place was even worse.  Not a single piece of equipment that you would consider "modern," meaning nothing you would recognize in the latter half of last century. There was a huge ledger on a desk, with a lady officer sitting behind.  10 minutes into my wait, I began to look in her direction.  She took my gaze, and finally said, "Oh, I'm just waiting for someone to come so I can escort you to your car." Hmmm... This was interesting news, because there was nobody else in sight!    Finally, after some minutes, she decided that she couldn't wait any longer as well.  So she led me out the back door to the garage.  We were joined by another lost soul looking for her car.  And the officer lady decided to look for her car first.  Except no one seemed to remember or know where her car was.  Oh boy...  We searched half the garage, which was huge by the way, before we found it.  It was covered in dust because the lost soul lady came to finally claim it after a month.  And she promptly started a cussing match with the officer lady because her car was dirty.  I was broken in and demoralized at that point.     Now, after the lost soul sped off with us left suffocating in her dusty wake, we finally made our way to my car.  The tow truck that I called earlier had arrived.  Tow truck?  As you would recall, I needed a tow truck to get the car out of the tow pound.  Ok, so all I had to do was to remove the plate, pay, and get the heck out.  Piece of cake.     Wrong answer.  The officer lady and I stood over my car, and she pulled out a couple of screwdrivers of choice.  Except there was a minor problem.  All of them are way too big for the screws on ANY license plate.  So I said, "What do I do now?"  She pulled out a ranch...  Oh please.  Have some mercy.  "Can I go find my tow truck guy?  He must have screwdrivers I can use.  Or can we go look for screwdrivers in this garage?"  Her response was:  "Nope.  You can't go anywhere without supervision, and I can't move anywhere until after I supervised you to remove the plate."  "Can you walk with me to the office then?"  "Nope."  So I stood there and tried to pry the screws loose with the ranch.  Took me half an hour.     When I had succeeded in removing my plate, sun was about to set.  I made my way back to the office to pay.  The tow truck guy was shaking his head, and I was paying him by the hour.  To pay?  How about waiting for my name to be called.  Tick Tuck.  Another half an hour flushed down the toilet that held all the lost time.  "Howard Tsao, please come to the window."   Ok, as soon as I got in front of the window, the piece of manure of a computer from the 80's broke down right in front of my eyes.  The tow truck guy was there as well; mortal sighs from the both of us.    The lady at the counter started to try to do this manually.  Task 1:  Figure out how many days my car has been in the tow pound.  Let's see...  Friday morning 10am to Tuesday afternoon 4pm.  4 days and 6 hours maybe?  After straining over the form for a while, she turned around to look at the calendar on the wall.  Not a good sign.  After another while, she went to the back office, disappearing for 5-10 minutes.  When she returned, she had a minor epiphany of sorts.  "3 days!"  Great!  I'll take it.  Ok, now, we just had to add up the totals.  $180 for the tow pound + (3 days x $20/day storage) = $240.  She busted out her calculator, wrote her math on the back of the form, crossed it out, rewrote, and $240!     She felt more comfortable with her computer on still, so she switched over to another terminal and booted the computer up.  Then, after a 80's style boot up, it was time to pay.  I took out my credit card and handed to her.  "Sorry, no credit card."  What!  "Why is that?"  "Oh because you're not the official owner of the vehicle."  "But I'm just paying for get the car out!  And I got two notarized letters saying that I'm authorized to do pretty much whatever I want!"  "Sorry, cash or debit."  Like I had that much cash on me, so debit it was.  After punching in my pin number 3 times, the ordeal was over.  Just like that, it was over.     Epilogue:  The Math Towing fee: $180 3 days in the pound: $60 2 days of rental car:  $200 Gas total: $60 Cab fare:  $50 Parking ticket:  $120 Towing out of the pound:  $175 (he gave me a deal because I ran out of cash) Cost to replace my plate: $50 All day rotting at the tow pound for $900:  Priceless