To the naked eye, this looks like an innocent enough “No Parking” sign. But as is often the case (at least in this series of posts), politics lurks in the background….
Tip O’Neill famously said that “all politics is local”:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomaspo212119.html, and the story behind this No Parking sign, located on a small street leading up to a beach in a town on Cape Cod, certainly proves the point. As I understand it, the town government had wanted to put No Parking signs up on this street, out of concern for whether emergency vehicles could reach the beach. However, the unofficial “mayor” of the street had long assured the town this was unnecessary, and he personally made sure that the street remained largely clear of cars and the signs stayed away. Sadly, the “mayor” of the street recently passed away, and a series of No Parking signs duly went up on the street.
But here’s where things get interesting. The signs went up only on one side of the road, which immediately divided the residents of this street into two constituencies. Let’s call the side with the signs the right siders, and the side without the signs the left siders. A number of the left siders became worried that the presence of the No Parking signs on the right side of the street would lead to cars always parking in front of their property. So some of the left siders requested that the town put up No Parking signs on _both_ sides of the street.
This, however, immediately created a new set of constituencies: the big driveways vs. the little driveways. The big driveways apparently were leading the “No Parking on both sides of the street” movement, because they could still have people come visit them and park in their, well, big driveways. The little driveway constituents, however, were worried that their friends would have nowhere to park when they came to visit. So a petition was circulated to _block_ the posting of No Parking signs on both sides of the street.
For now, the status quo seems to be holding: there are still No Parking signs on the right side of the street but not the left side of the street. As a political scientist, my gut instinct is that the little driveways rarely beat the big driveways in the long run, so I suspect there may be more to come…