So this is my San Francisco Towing story. I was in my car on Saturday running around doing errands. I had to go to Fed Ex Home Delivery in South San Francisco to pick up a package, then since I was in that part of town I decided I needed to go to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshalls to look for things to buy. I found the cutest Spode Christmas plates at Marshalls and some really cool storage boxes, when the lights in the store went out. Talk about scary! The clerks made everybody get out of the store, and I was so bummed because I finally found items I wanted to buy. It had been raining all day and I guess something happened with the section of the mall stores. Then I headed over to Nordstrom Rack and ended up picking up some undershirts for $8 a piece. I drove back to the city and went shopping at Andronico's for groceries and when I came back, some jerk had parked his car so I couldn't get into my driveway to park my car.

I was so freaked out. I've lived in this place since 2004 and no one had ever blocked my driveway before. I knew they were new neighbours living next door so I buzzed their door bell thinking it was their car. No one came out. After about five minutes, I got so mad I just started screaming for them to open up. Still no once came out. Keep in mind that it's still raining a little and I'm getting soaked despite being under an umbrella.

I guess I was so loud my downstairs neighbor heard me and came out to see what was going on. He told me I needed to call San Francisco Parking and Traffic to get the car towed. So I go upstairs call SF P&T and thinking that they would get here quickly. In the meantime, some guy who lives two houses away comes over and talks to me about the parking offender. He had seen the car before and told me about his own getting cars towed out of his driveway stories.

Of course, SF P&T doesn't come right away and I had to call them to find out if someone was being sent. The neighbour guy felt sorry for me and called again for me. I think SF P&T didn't come right away because I kind of felt bad about getting someone's car towed, so I told the dispatcher that I wanted the vehicle cited but not towed. Neighbour guy told me I needed to get the car towed because the vehicle owner had parked in his driveway once before.

A SF Parking and Traffic person finally shows up an hour later, and talk about being in small world, neighbour guy recognized the P&T person as some he had met a party 10 years ago. How weird was that. The P&T person ran a license plate check and told us that the car was registered to someone in Santa Ana. I was like thinking that if the car was local, meaning the owner lived in the neighbourhood, then I didn't want to get the car towed because I didn't want to get hassled by my neighbours. But once we found out the car was from Orange County, we called for a tow.

Then downstairs neighbour guy from my building came downstairs and asked me if I was getting the car towed, because if I wasn't going to do it then he would. Honestly I still feel so bad about towing that person's car. How freaky would that be to go to the spot where you thought you parked your car, and then seeing your car gone. I know my first thought would be "OH MY GOD, someone stole my car." No way would I think that I got towed, unless of course I was parked in a very iffy spot like this dumb jerk who parked in my driveway.

And it's not cheap to get your car from out of San Franciso Towing. Besides the $75 blocked driveway ticket, I think it costs about $300 to get your car out. Talk about welcome to San Francisco for someone from Orange County; block a driveway and get your car towed and pay around $400 to get your car. That's an expensive lesson in San Francisco park etiquette, don't you think?