Tag: alaska

The content below is from Episode #156 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you check out the YouTube Channel Ze Frank and their True Facts videos.
• They are mostly about different species in nature and have a TON of research to back what they show on their videos. However, they also sprinkle in a TON of humor.
  • These are educational videos with mind-blowing facts that just happen to be downright hilarious for adults.
  • The humor is not meant for kids and I think most kids wouldn’t get the majority of the jokes.
  • The voice actor is a pro and arguably makes the video.
  • Check out their video on beavers below.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• Once upon a time, in a land far to the north, there was a city called Anchorage Alaska.
  • Back in the 90’s it was a lot more common to come across a mom & pop gas station. While they still exist today, you are much more likely to happen upon a Sheetz, Wawa, Rutters, or any of the other big company gas stations than you are to come across a Bob’s Convenience and Gas place.
  • And thats where our story this week takes place, Anchorage Alaska in the 90s
• Today we learn the story of a woman named Carolyn Pacillo, everyone called her Linny.
  • Linny was born in 1959 and her family moved to Anchorage in 1988 and ran what would become Anchorage’s last independent gas station: Courtney’s Tudor Service.
  • It was a place with character. It had tacky pink decorations and held seasonal events like the most rotten pumpkin competition for Halloween and a beach promo that had the place filled with sand.
    • They were a family shop run by sassy opinionated sweet ladies on a street full of much better-funded competition.
• In the year 1994 Linny was out and about on the town running errands. When she returned to her car she found a nice little $75 ticket on her windshield.
  • The truck she parked with was newly purchased and the previous owner put the parking registration sticker on the wrong side. She appealed to the court, and they reduced her ticket to $25.
  • Linny got pissed and went to the local news giving an interview saying “So, I’m mad now, and I got a big mouth,” on the Anchorage Daily News.

Parking fairy Linny Pacillo prepares to plug a parking meter near a car in downtown Anchorage on July 19, 1994. Linny and her sister Susan Pacillo plugged meters as a protest against Anchorage parking enforcement. (Jim Lavrakas / ADN) from https://www.adn.com/alaska-life/2020/01/06/the-anchorage-parking-fairies-how-a-75-ticket-started-a-movement/ – Look at that woman… I wouldn’t want to mess with her LOL

• The APA (Anchorage Parking Authority) was known for being aggressive as hell in their enforcement of parking violations. They didn’t cut anyone a break and sometimes even blatantly gave out citations that weren’t necessary.
  • They are a parking authority, yet they gave out tickets for people having their snow tires still on out of the season… like, why?
  • They even ticketed people for cracked windshields.
• Linny, like her fellow Anchorage citizens knew about this bad rep that the APA had so she decided to do something about it.
  • Using her gas station as a means to reach the people she put a $75 reward for the best/worst APA story that was submitted.
    • From Anchorage Daily News’s ADN.com: In one submission, a woman was ticketed for parking in a handicapped spot. Her car was properly tagged for handicapped parking, but she was downtown for several hours while her children participated in a spelling bee at the Performing Arts Center. The bee was long, so, during the lunch break they left. They returned and parked around the corner from their morning spot. She was told it was “illegal to park twice in the same block in the same day.” In another submission, a man claimed he was ticketed for parking 10 inches from the curb — even though Anchorage code allows a gap of 18 inches.
• Linny’s sister Susan started to get behind Linny’s plight and came up with a genius plan: The Parking Fairies!
  • Apparently, the Pacillo sisters were known for being sassy, taking revenge, and not really caring if they embarrass themselves along the way.
  • You see Susan had worked in downtown in the 80s and was painfully aware of how bad the APA was and how unbending they were when it came to citations.
  • So Linny and Susan put out an old coffee can on the counter at Courtney’s Tudor Service gas station asking for donations to fill expired parking meters.
  • They received about $86 on the first day and the sisters pitched in to round up to $100.
• Now, My first thought was: wait a minute, won’t giving the $ to parking meters be like giving the money to the APA directly? Not really, you see most parking authorities make most of their revenue on writing people citations than they do on parking fees. It is in their best interest to catch someone breaking the rules.
  • Well here’s some info I found from TopViewNYC.com and their article How Much 25 Major Cities Make in Parking Ticket Revenue Per Capita:
    • While parking tickets can be frustrating for drivers, cities often apply the revenue to beneficial transportation projects such as improving bike and bus infrastructure. Unfortunately, some cities have leased their parking meters to private companies, eliminating profit that could have been funneled into city infrastructure.
    • Since private companies took over Chicago’s parking meter system, prices have steadily risen. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago’s parking meter system raked in $134.2 million in 2017, putting private investors on course to recoup their entire $1.16 billion investment by 2021 with 62 years left on the lease.
      • Unfortunately, Anchorage wasn’t one of those 25 cities, but it was enlightening to know that private parking authorities practically rake in the money from a city. It honestly sounds like a parasitic business model to me.
      • While a city government-run parking authority can take that revnue and put it to better use in the city and is kept in check by their voters, a private parking authority is incentivized to over-ticket the population and give none of it back.
        • Granted, governments don’t always run parking authorities in an ethical way, but at least they are supposed to.
• It sounds to me like the Anchorage Parking Authority had it good and was enjoying raking in all that over-ticketing money… until they messed with Linny.

• With their $100 raised at Courtney’s Tudor Service gas station, they put on tights, tutus, and fairy wings before heading out to pay parking meters.
  • They were quickly called the Parking Fairies. Seen as civic heroes looking for parking meters that ran out of time. They saved their fellow Anchorage citizens from outrageous parking tickets and took money away from the APA while they were at it.
  • Linny and her sister Susan were having fun. They went out and bought a 3-wheeled 1973 Cushman vehicle… the same vehicle the parking authority used to get around back in the day. Except the Pacillo sisters painted their Cushman “Courtney Pink.” It was their Fairy Mobile. Nowadays the APA was too cheap to give their meter maids a vehicle and made them leg it every day so the Parking Fairies had an advantage over them.
    • I think it’s hilarious they went out and bought the vehicle the APA used to use and were driving it around to legally take money away from the APA.
    • Linny said, “We went downtown, and we weren’t allowed to leave until the money was gone.”

• The APA’s head honcho Dave Harbour thought it was cute… at first. He thought it was no threat to the APA public relations and nothing but a mere advertising campaign for their gas station. He, like most, thought the donations for the Parking Fairies would dry up within a few weeks… but he was wrong.
  • The media caught wind of the Parking Fairies and put the spotlight on them. USA Today, a national news source, did an article about them in 1994.
  • The donations flowed like a river.
    • People on the street would run down the fairies just to give them cash. Cars stopped in the middle of the street to donate.
    • Office workers would hear the Fairy Mobile coming down the street and would throw donations out the window.
  • When a community feels it can make a difference in a universally supportive (and peaceful) way it is a beautiful thing.
• In less than a year they collected over $100,000…
  • I can see how most people would be willing to donate to this cause, but with a number like $100K in under a year… those Pacillo sisters must have been persistent.
  • David Harbour, the APA head honcho was feeling the pressure by 1995. He knew he had to make changes, but refused to acknowledge the Parking Fairies.
  • He said “We are doing different things now. Some of them came up during the dialogue with the Assembly.”
  • By 1996 David Harbour resigned from his position at the APA…
  • By 1997 the citizens of Anchorage had spoken. Their votes left the parking enforcement in their city with sworn police officers only.

• In 1996 the fairies gathered some volunteers outside the Town Square. They still filled meters, but their main goal was to raise money for hungry children in less fortunate countries.
  • After David Harbour’s departure, a one Charles Wohlforth tried to appeal to the Fairies in an attempt to bring back the Parking Authority, but he failed.
  • In 1998, the fairies ended their time in Anchorage. There was a ceremonious burning of their wings outside City Hall.
  • State Representative Fred Dyson officially recognized the good work the Pacillo sisters did under the name of the Parking Fairies.

• Sadly, in 2003 the Courtney Tudor Service closed down as Anchorage’s last independent gas station.
  • and in 2006 Linny died at the age of 47. She had been battling with muscular dystrophy for a while on top of injuries from a car accident.
    • Her sister Susan Pacillo said: “When she’d come into the room she’d charge every ion in the room.”
      • Wow, what a great compliment.
  • The very next year in 2007 they named the new parking garage the Linny Pacillo Parking Garage in her honor. It opened in 2008. The parking garage has a nice glass mural of the Parking Fairies putting money in parking meters. They also made a plaque that has the history of the Parking Fairies on it.
  • Surprisingly the parking garage won an architect award, the 2010 American Institute of Architects Merit Award.
    • An award almost unheard of to be won by a parking structure.
    • The people who voted on the award winner said “It’s not easy to do a beautiful parking structure — but this one manages to reach a very high level of design.”
• Before she died, Linny saw a vote to revive the parking authority again. The votes keep the APA dead won by a landslide.
  • Today Anchorage parking is run by a couple private companies competing with each other. They are only allowed to enforce actual parking regulations and not the huge range of offenses like cracked windshields.

Linny Pacillo Parking Garage

• While the parking garage named after Linny may have beautiful architecture, the authority running it seems to overcharge with a $20 fee.
  • But that isn’t the only legacy they Pacillo Parking Fairies left:
  • From ADN.com:
    • A better honor for the parking fairies is the score of imitators across the country. The Anchorage parking fairies appear to be the first to receive national attention in America. There were similar meter maids in Australia dating back to 1965, but they dressed in tiny, golden bikinis. In other words, they weren’t exactly making the same point. One of the most colorful successors was a clown street performer in Santa Cruz, California, named Mr. Twister. He garnered national media coverage in 1995 after he was ticketed for putting a quarter in an expired meter.
    • Business associations in Canada and America have seized upon the idea of parking fairies. In 2004, a group of Coconut Grove, Florida, business owners hired an actor to work as a parking fairy, hoping to make customers feel more comfortable about parking in the area. The Coconut Grove fairy’s wings and tutu borrow directly from the Pacillos. In 2013, the city of Keene, New Hampshire, sued a group of meter maids, there called the Robin Hoods. The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in 2015 in favor of Keene Robin Hoods, allowing them to continue. Linny would have been happy.

CREDIT:

• https://www.adn.com/alaska-life/2020/01/06/the-anchorage-parking-fairies-how-a-75-ticket-started-a-movement/
  • A Special thanks to Achorage Daily News as their articles are the best source for this story.
    • I tried to find other sources, but a parking story doesn’t seem to have many sources. I couldn’t find that 1994 USA Today article… but I did find a weird website LOL (see below)
• https://www.parkingtoday.com/articledetails.php?id=2831&t=fighting-the-parking-fairies
  • There is a website for parking enthusiasts and parking professionals called ParkingToday.com LOL
    • In my opinion, they take themselves and parking way too seriously. The article suggests parking authorities should put emojis on parking tickets to seem nicer to the people they ticket and appeal to the millennials LOL.
    • Here is what they said about the Parking Fairies:
  • “I know this isn’t a happy story for the parking authority, the municipality or the meter manufacturer involved. It’s probably a horror story to anybody within the parking industry. I can see how disruptive, antagonistic and damaging this kind of behavior would be to an organization that is doing difficult and necessary work. So, I’m not condoning it, even though I find the story entertaining. I especially like the part where they dressed up like fairies. I appreciate people with that kind of self-confidence.”
  • “I wouldn’t wish the parking fairies on any city. I am trying to imagine at what point in the story the Anchorage parking authority could have placated these angry imps. I think it’s safe to say, a friendly gesture made pretty early on in the scenario could have changed everything.”
• https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2006/11/20/Anchorage-parking-fairy-dies/49901164079481/
  • “When she’d come into the room she’d charge every ion in the room,” Susan Pacillo said.