After driving for three hours, they located the car and waited for an hour before the police showed up. San Francisco's finest were not interested in catching the thieves and didn't search the car before releasing it. The thieves had put 1,000 miles on the car, but otherwise kept it clean. The city claims "parking control officers," who don't work for the police department, aren't expected to figure out which cars are stolen. "Their handheld ticket devices store auto theft information only from San Francisco's database — not the entire state." Ah, well that's good to know.

[via Jalopnik]

(Photo by salimfadhley)

Yup, market rates for parking spaces. To quote, "In the idea's simplest application, people would have to pay more to park where demand for spaces is high." Translated another way, "Screw egalitarianism." It also means that the clown in the leased BMW who helped shut down that crusty punk club you liked because the noise bothered him in his SOMA loft and who also stipulated in his 6-figure project management contract that he get two weeks off for Burning Man (no, really — people do this), will happily pay for all the decent spots while you get stuck effectively without anywhere to park and/or at the tow yard. Of course, SF has a long and storied history of flipping the bird at the little people. Why stop now? I mean, who knows when city hall will need another billion dollar restoration? If the City really wants to make up the lost revenue it thinks it's owed, don't price out the poor. Simply do what I've been advocating for years: pay-per-view executions of meter maids. [sfgate.com]