588 - Supreme Court
Today I found out I own the city of DC $8,580. And it all started with Korean tacos.
My day had been filled with the monotonous routine of delivering food to DC's finest, when I felt a rumble in my tummy. Not a particularly foreign feeling to me, but a noteworthy one. See, being a delivery driver is a job that makes you permanently hungry.
Your whole day consists of going in and out of the best restaurants in town, smelling hot food in your car for twenty minutes, then dropping it off. You're constantly surrounded by cooks, people stuffing their faces, and delicious, nose-canal invading, food. Pair that with my insane metabolism, a daily dose of cardio, and 5+ hours of rock climbing a week, and it's pretty much game over for me.
To keep up with the hunger, my rule was to go hard for lunch. Anywhere I can get 1,500 calories for under $15 was on the menu. Chipotle, Jersey Mikes, Five Guys to name a few. But occasionally, and emphasis on the word occasionally, I indulged.
Ironically, the word "indulge" probably means something completely different to you, because my routine goal of 3,500 calories a day wasn't exactly normal.
Indulging, to me, meant that I buy something bougee. Something gourmet and crazy, that's only going to keep me full for an hour or two. A cardinal sin in the world of delivery driving. But my never-ending exposure to other-worldly restaurants could only last so long.
Hence, the Korean tacos. A contemporary take on a Mexican classic.
I was in and out of the shop in 15 minutes. Satisfied, but not quite full from my $20 meal. But as I approached my car, my heart dropped. A lone ticket sat on the wipers, angrily fluttering in the wind.
How the fuck did someone ticket me in 15 minutes?
I suppose at this point I should confess that I didn't pay for parking. I never do. The microeconomics of a $20 meal doesn't pair well with a $5 parking fee. So I risk it. Every freaking time.
Well, it finally caught up with me.
My general philosophy with parking tickets is to pay them right away. Get that negativity out of your head, and move on with your life. No use in sitting on a $50 ticket for weeks, putting off the inevitable. Plus, this was my first ticket in years. I decided to get it out of the way.
The only problem was, when I logged into the DC ticket portal to pay it, I was confronted with $8,580 worth of unpaid tickets. My heart skipped about three beats. There had to be something wrong- I'd never gotten a ticket in DC before this. Let alone a single notification.
Well, as it turns out, there's speeding cameras located in just about every nook and crannies of DC. And I'd triggered them all, dozens of times. Suddenly these long days of delivery driving weren't paying so well.
I sat back in my car and exhaled. My life was about to radically change. I didn't have near enough money to pay these off. And getting your license revoked when you lived in a car wasn't exactly ideal.
FUCK. It was only a matter of time. I looked out the window and muttered something unspeakable. Then my mind began moving a million miles an hour. What now?
Let's just go take photos. Think this over behind a nice lens or two.
It felt like a fantastic day to shoot the Supreme Court. A honorary DC bucket list item, complimented nicely by the fact that I currently owed the government thousands of dollars.
So I skidded into a local neighborhood, found some parking, and walked into the Supreme Court. Surprisingly, it was open to the public five days a week. After that, I don't remember much. A blacked out blur of shutter angst.
A couple days later, after I'd finally calmed down, I edited the photos. These are what I came up with:
“Modern Empire”
Taken with Sony a7rIV + Sony 12-24mm f/4 G
[ISO 4000 ~ 12mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/100s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
“Five Square"
Taken with Sony a7rIV + Sony 12-24mm f/4 G
[ISO 4000 ~ 14mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/100s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
“Supreme Brand”
Taken with Sony a7rIV + Sony 12-24mm f/4 G
[ISO 3200 ~ 15mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/60s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Not bad for a day in the pooper.
But it was time to take control of the situation. Lawyer up, if you will.
Did I really have to pay these tickets? Or could I let it slide? I wasn't officially a DC resident after all... My plates were from Colorado, born and raised. Perhaps their was a loophole I could exploit.
Well, as it turns out, I didn't quite have to pay the fines- as long as I vowed to never become a DC resident. There was also a moderately low chance that I could get booted if I was caught by DC parking enforcement.
According to an article I read, the fines weren't enforced for out-of-state residents. This was because so many of the speeding tickets were from out-of-state cars. Noteably, Maryland and Virginia (DC's neighboring states.)
In fact, it appeared as though the speed cameras were targeting these particular out-of-state visitors, because cameras were primarily located at the entrance/exit tunnels of DC. Whoa... And the deeper I dug, the more I discovered.
Apparently there was over 1 billion dollars worth of unpaid speeding tickets in DC. An unreal amount of money. This constant build up of tickets began to cause issues in Maryland/Virginia states, to the point where they made a rule to not enforce DC tickets in their jurisdiction. This derailed the program, to the point where DC doesn't even send the unpaid tickets to collections... Making the whole program completely useless.
Phew. I closed my laptop and let out a sigh of relief.
That's the US government for you.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
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