{"id":304,"date":"2005-07-20T10:54:48","date_gmt":"2005-07-20T18:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/07\/no_standing_literally_no_standing.html"},"modified":"2005-07-20T10:54:48","modified_gmt":"2005-07-20T18:54:48","slug":"no_standing_lit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/07\/no_standing_lit.html","title":{"rendered":"No Standing . . . Literally, “No Standing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two men were ticketed Sunday for stopping in a “No Standing” zone. Problem is, they were pedestrians<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Two men who had just disembarked from a thank-you cruise for gay pride volunteers were stunned when they were slapped with $50 tickets for “no stopping or standing” in a fire zone.<\/p>\n

They weren’t in a car.<\/p>\n

“It’s so ridiculous that it’s hilarious,” said a perplexed Jason Eng, 25, of Manhattan who received the summons Sunday evening at Hudson River Park.<\/p>\n

“I can’t believe this actually happened,” the software programmer said. “There’s no reason I should get a ticket. … We were walking to the subway.”<\/p>\n

Dennis Spafford, 27, an organizer with the Manhattan-based nonprofit group Heritage of Pride, and Eng, a volunteer for the organization, had just spent the day celebrating with fellow volunteers on the weekly Sea Tea gay party cruise aboard the Queen of Hearts riverboat.<\/p>\n

Eng and Spafford were among the last to leave as they said goodbye to other volunteers at Pier 40 in the West Village.<\/p>\n

About 10:30 p.m., the pair began walking north through the river-hugging park, which is open until 1 a.m., toward the Christopher St. subway station, they said.<\/p>\n

Eng said he and Spafford stopped walking and stood near a gated Port Authority vent in the park, where they talked for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

Two signs on the gate read: “No stopping or standing – Fire Zone.”<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a Parks Department patrol car pulled up behind them. “What are you guys doing here?” one of the two officers asked, Eng said, so he and Spafford decided they should resume walking.<\/p>\n

Then the Parks officer on the passenger side got out of the car and screamed, “Don’t you dare walk away from us!” Eng said.<\/p>\n

Eng said he and Spafford questioned why they were being stopped and the officer who yelled at them said, “I can arrest you.”<\/p>\n

The men handed over their IDs to the park cops, and both were given tickets for “failure to comply with signs,” a $50 offense, Eng said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You think your job is bad? Try being the spokesperson who has to defend this:<\/p>\n

Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston said the sign is aimed at keeping parkgoers away from “certain areas of parks that are service areas that we prefer the public not loiter at.”<\/p>\n

He insisted, “It doesn’t refer to cars.”<\/p>\n

But Eng and Spafford said the sign looks like it’s meant to keep people from parking by the gate.<\/p>\n

“It’s totally a road sign,” Stafford said. “If it were for pedestrians, it would say, ‘No loitering.'”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What can you say? At least they weren’t towed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two men were ticketed Sunday for stopping in a “No Standing” zone. Problem is, they were pedestrians: Two men who had just disembarked from a thank-you cruise for gay pride volunteers were stunned when they were slapped with $50 tickets for “no stopping or standing” in a fire zone. They weren’t in a car. “It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tragicomic_ironic_obnoxious_or_absurd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}