If making a case to local legislators won’t change weekend parking rules in Adams Morgan, maybe a YouTube video with circa-1998 techno-rock will:

You know the fifty-color fliers and postcards good neighbors leave on your windshield? The ones inviting you to those exclusive afterhours parties and special events? The ones that would make Luther Campbell nod in approval?

While I’m not sure who actually responds to this spam and goes to these things, I do know that they constitute an annoyance. How many of these cards have I tossed into the backseat of my car? Too many!

It’s not a shock that people have complained. Southwest residents have been up in arms over them for a while. They’ve started calling them “Booty Cards.” Kinda perfect.

And they got Councilmember Tommy Wells‘ attention. After months of effort, Wells—along with the D.C. attorney general’s office—has been able to at least banish one company from distributing them. Wells, in a press release, calls this a “partial victory” for Southwest residents—and D.C. citizens in general.

Although he considered them pornographic, Wells knew he couldn’t fight them on indecency issues. Instead, his office went after the company over the trash they produce. A smart move!

-”This is just one battle in a much larger effort,” explains Wells’ Chief of Staff Charles Allen.

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The infamous green/brown space behind Garrison Elementary is once again in the news. We’re talking about the field at the northwest corner of R Street and Vermont Avenue in Shaw. You remember–that’s where all those parishioners from Metropolitan Baptist Church used to park back in the day, before their parking became a huge civic issue in the late ’90s.

Every Sunday, the faithful would drive their big, shiny cars with Maryland tags onto this patch of land and leave them there for the service. Over time, the traffic essentially ruined what was supposed to be a baseball field for the neighborhood. The neighborhood started making noises about the injustice–how can all these out-of-towners trample precious play space for city kids.

Metropolitan Baptist preacher H. Beecher Hicks went divisive in response. Here’s what he said from the pulpit: “This conflict has to do with whites who come into black communities and who desire to take over. If the arrangement doesn’t suit white folks, it has to go.” The pews went wild.

That was the grace with which Metropolitan agreed to stop parking at the ballfield. Divisions notwithstanding, the hope was that the field would become a place where children would come and play ball, or something.

But no. It’s been taken over by the dog people, and according to this week’s issue of the Current, there’s pressure to make it an official dog park. Count me as an opponent.

The trappings of office for an advisory neighborhood commissioner are few, but one nice thing is that you can get a little placard for your car announcing that you’re “ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS,” allowing you to park in certain places off limits to the hoi polloi.

This afternoon, official parking was scarce outside the Wilson Building, so one commissioner decided to put her placard to use. A blue Mercury Capri, belonging to former 5B10 Commissioner Kathy Henderson (mother of current 5B10 Commissioner India Henderson, who was along for the trip), was parked in the median of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in front of the building. Seeing as today was the judiciary committee’s oversight hearing on the Metropolitan Police Department, there were also a few police vehicles parked in the middle of the street, too.

The authorities apparently have no respect for the Hendersons’ “OFFICIAL BUSINESS”—which was to attend the police hearing:

“It’s ridiculous,” says Kathy Henderson, who says the ticket was issued by the D.C. Protective Services Department. She called the department up and explained that ANC members with a placard are allowed to park in official spaces. “They said, ‘We don’t know anything about that.’”

Four-term mayor Richard Cohen got booted out of office yesterday by the voters of Agawam, Mass. That’s the home of Six Flags New England. Cohen lost in an upset to Susan Dawson, a substitute teacher whose campaign centered on a parking ordinance pushed by Cohen and Six Flags that was straight out of the Dan Snyder playbook.

Just as parking rates at FedExField skyrocketed when Snyder took over control of the Redskins in 1999, parking rates at the nearby theme park have tripled since Snyder took over as chairman of the board at Six Flags in late 2005.

Up until this summer, visitors to Six Flags New England had been able to save some money by parking for $10 or less at private lots owned by small businessmen on Main Street in Agawam. But Cohen’s measure, passed in June, banned parking in those lots and forced parkgoers to use Six Flags lots and pay Snyder’s rates.

Cohen, shown here at the park with the Wiggles, initially told the city council that the measure was needed for traffic and pedestrian safety, and Six Flags CEO and Snyder partner Mark Shapiro traveled to the small burg to back up the mayor’s claim at hearings that the primary issue was safety, though the parking ordinance guaranteed Six Flags additional income of tens of thousands of dollars per day and created all sorts of havoc for city residents. The safety argument originally swayed the council even though there had been no injuries or accidents related to the private parking lots in the 20 years since these private lots offered the alternative parking option.

The council and townspeople turned on Cohen and against the parking ordinance, however, when they learned that Snyder had used the exact same safety argument in 2000 to get Prince George’s County to ban pedestrians from walking into FedExField on games days. The FedExField prohibition was overturned after a lawsuit on behalf of season ticket holders, and during that litigation the safety claim was shredded.

In September, the Agawam council voted unanimously to toss out the parking ordinance, and several councilmembers publicly apologized to residents and the local business community for having fallen for the safety pitch. After Dawson’s win, local media were quick to attribute her upset win, which came by a margin of just 44 votes out of about 1,100 cast, to the parking ordinance.

UPDATE 11/08:
Turns out that Dawson’s campaign was managed by none other than Michael Palazzi, owner of a business that was prevented from parking cars by the Six Flags ordinance and the focus of the City Paper story. Palazzi says he got involved in the effort to defeat Cohen because of the control he felt the theme park was exerting over local politics and its cozy relationship with the mayor.

“The parking was it,” says Palazzi. “[Cohen] shot himself in both feet with that. He never thought anybody would beat him. He thought all he had to do was make Six Flags happy. Now, the SOB is out. I laid in bed last night, from 3 o’clock to 7 in the morning, just smiling. It’s totally amazing. We fought a multibillion dollar corporation and the corruption in this town, and we won. Good triumphed. The SOB is out.”

Palazzi says he’s now trying to find out if Six Flags paid for the ballroom Cohen rented for what was expected to be an election night victory party.

I was in a doctor’s office at the corner of 25th and M Sts. NW yesterday morning for an 8 a.m. appointment. Post-visit, I returned to my car on the 1200 block of 25th Street NW at 8:48 a.m., one minute after parking ticket #370563863—for violation “P039 Expired Meter,” which comes with a $25 fine—had been issued and left on my windshield.

The ticket writer—identified on the ticket as Officer M Cook, Dept. 15, Badge #00195—was only a few feet from my car when I picked up the pink slip, so I pointed out to her that the meter, identified on the ticket as 251204NW, says it is only in use from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. No street sign to contradict the meter’s language was anywhere visible, and parking on the block isn’t affected by rush-hour restrictions. She quickly agreed: The meter indeed listed those hours of operation.

But then Officer M Cook, Dept. 15, Badge #00195 added, “They’re going to change that to 7 a.m.”

What?

“They’re going to change that meter soon. It’s going to say 7 a.m.,” said Officer M Cook, Dept. 15, Badge #00195.

I took the bait and asked, in a psychotic squeal, how could I have known to feed a meter that tells me not to feed it.

“You can fight it if you want,” responded Officer M Cook, Dept. 15, Badge #00195, walking away. “I’m just doing my job.”

Up against this sort of civil service, what’s Joe Citizen to do?