Let’s Answer Reader Email.

On weekends, I like to reply to all my friends’ emails with “unsubscribe”.

But a reader of my blog named Carlo hit me up the other day with a few questions, and I was happy to answer them. He’s an actor, planning on moving out here, and one of his questions involved a topic I hadn’t blogged about before: parking in LA.

Carlo said parking back east is a nightmare, and wondered how it was out here. Short answer: not bad.

For all of the cars that are on the road in LA, there are many free lots, or garages for which places will validate. There’s lots of street parking as well, often with meters that you need to feed until 6 or 8 p.m. All of them take credit cards, which is super convenient, but here’s where it gets tricky:

This is more rare than common in LA, but you have to read signs, because parking enforcement in LA will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. Check the time listed on any ticket you receive, and it will be less than two minutes after your meter expired. That’s ninja shit.

After a designer named Nikki Sylianteng received several tickets, she came up with a solution – a graphical grid that clearly indicates when parking is permitted:

Clear and simple. Which is why the city would never go for it and cut into its cash cow. (LA takes in $250 million a year from parking violations, second only to New York City’s $534 million.)

A better solution: just remove your windshield wipers. Hope this helped, Carlo.