HAIF poster Htowngirl, who lives near the new Ei8ht nightclub at the corner of Roy St., complains about . . . uh, parking difficulties in her neighborhood. And posts a few photos of an early Sunday morning scene from a few weeks ago:
The parking for Ei8ht in the neighborhood is already horrendous, I can’t even imagine what it will be like when Taps, Busty LaRoue’s, and this new “country” bar open…
Sample of the parking issues… I live a few blocks off Washington, near Ei8ht…the scene outside my house at 3 AM Sunday Morning a few weeks ago. Drunk suburbanite 21-year-old drove into our ditch.
Still there in the morning…
***
She claimed that she thought it was a one way street and that a car was coming towards her, so she pulled over (into a ditch that was JUST the size for her car!)… despite the fact that 6 feet behind her was a street, and 3 feet in front of her was a driveway.
A couple weeks later, we added the giant rocks along the grassy side of our property, and already one has been run over (cracked in half), and another one knocked over…
- ANOTHER bar on Washington? [HAIF]
Photos: Htowngirl
Serves the dumb driver right for trying to drive while drunk. :-)
I just assumed the first picture was a new valet parking tactic. Drunk 21-year-old is less than surprising. Jeez, htowngirl, you guys have some serious ditches.
I would have been tempted to start a small fire in my ditch. Where/what is the country bar? Down on the east end we just. can’t. wait. for Sawyer Park to open in the old Pig Stand location. Hopefully the Old Sixth Ward parking permit request goes through soon.
This picture makes me happy, and also makes me wish I had a big nasty ditch in front of MY house. Perhaps I will dig one.
give it a year or so and the kids will move on (Richmond, Shepard, DT, Midtown, etc) leaving the building owners to seek new tenants/uses.
cross, probably true. I wonder what will become of the pay-to-park lots the Urban Living guy is putting up? :-)
This is hilarious!
I hope you called HPD to complain about the illegally parked car. And may the tow truck driver who gets it out be truly incompetent, causing horrendous damage..
Way to go Htowngirl! It has surprised me that it does not happen more often. I should think that the bar ditches of 77007 would be fully lined with cracked axle yup-mobiles by now.
I parked like that once, back in the day, and though I argued unsuccessfully that I had a valid reason for doing so, I will tell you today that I was blind drunk and had no business driving a tricycle, much less a car. I thank God every day that I never killed anyone.
I don’t get all the Washington corridor residents complaining, no, make that constantly whining about parking. If you want parking, leave the loop!
Ditch diving can happen to any of us. My boyfriend and I dropped one of his car’s back tires in one of those ditches not too long ago – and we were stone cold sober, trying to parallel park before dinner at Catalan. We wanted to park on the street to avoid the forced valet and save a few bucks – ended up having to pay for a tow. It was a great night.
I just assumed that photo was the result of a Houstonian attempting parallel parking, no alcohol required.
I’ve done the same with my formerly ugly ditches, but have landscaped the area between the sidewalk and one side of the ditch’s retaining wall. Long ago, I put large rocks in place to keep people from parking there. Occasionally, some moron will drive over one of the rocks and I’ll have to dig it back out of the crushed granite and reset it.
We also have open ditches in front of our house, and have on several occasions watched our neighbor fire up his tractor in the middle of the night to pull a car out of the ditch. I’m sure Rice Mil/Wash Heights residents see a lot of crazy stuff, but I bet they don’t see a lot neighborly tractor extractions.
This happens relatively often on our little street (Gross, off W. Dallas just east of Shepherd). It’s one of those cut-through streets that for some reason attracts SUVs in a hurry, and it has a nasty ditch right at that corner. When we nab one, neighbors all gather around it with plastic cups of whatever and chat merrily. Sort of an impromptu celebration.
Montrose, it’s not the parking. 2 neighbors nearly shot 2 seperate drunks trying to enter their homes on 2 consecutive nights. It’s not funny when a blackout drunk 20 something miles from his home is trying to get in through the window where your 3 year old sleeps. The nightclubs that have access to parking will succeed, the others are in trouble, the permits are coming. My area loved Garden in the Heights and their events. They put HPD officers into the neighborhood when their events let out to expedite everyone leaving relatively quietly.
Yeah, the parking situation, or lack thereof, is crazy for all the new washington hipster clubs and restaurants. Tow trucks now park regularly in the area, just waiting for someone to slip up and park where they’re not supposed to.
Good question about the pay per lots too. I’ve actually been talking with an investor about a similar idea closer to Yale and Washington, but the lifespan of all the new “stuff” going up on Washington is questionable.
Definitely a boom going on right now on that strip, with a parking nightmare to go along with it.
I would have tried to tip that car all the way over. I think it’s pivoted at just the right angle.
Used to live @ Asbury & Washington, the “ditchers” were a weekly occurence near Cova, we used to get entertainment value out of it, watching some group of guys think they could get thier car out without a tow, quite comical, at least the girls were smart enough to immediately call a wrecker. The neighbor put in a pipe and filled the ditch and took all the night time fun away!
I vote comment 16 as a comment of the day.
Wow, my pics made swamplot!
@Brad – I hear the warehouse across from Ei8ht (in the parking lot) is going to be a country bar – haven’t had it confirmed though.
@margo – LOL.
@Ross – actually the tow truck drivers that showed up at 4AM wanted to use their flat bed tow trucks to try to get it it out, and they ended up getting mad and leaving when they wouldn’t let them. The next day a guy with a wench showed up to get it out. I wasn’t there to see the actually removal, but it did mess up our grass some… luckily it was the week BEFORE we had our ditch re-landscaped.
A wench or a winch? Was the wench watching while the winch worked?
In advance of Ike a neighbor’s boyfriend wrongly decided that her car would be safer from flooding on the next-door neighbor’s front yard than protected in the driveway between the two houses. With the patient neighbor’s blessing he drove it up there and parked. Of course after all that rain the yard turned to mud and the car got stuck when boyfriend went to move it back down into the driveway. Neighbor on the other side has a big truck with a winch and saved boyfriend’s butt by pulling his girlfriend’s car out of the grave of mud he had spun the wheels into in his pathetic attempts to move it off the grass. See “plastic cups of whatever” above.
Winch, wench, whatever.