Vince in Burnaby can still remember the weird feeling last year when he got behind the wheel of his car and sensed that something was off about his vehicle.
“I was getting ready to start the engine but I decided to take a look at my car,” Vince told me after reading some of my recent series on parking issues in Burnaby neighbourhoods. “So I get out and realize that my hubcaps were gone. Like all four of them.”
At first, Vince thought he had been victimized by criminals in the Metrotown area. Some of his friends had had their vehicles broken into, with small items and change taken.
But then he realized who the actual culprit was – even if he couldn’t prove it.
You see, Vince had been warned before by a “busybody” neighbour who acted like a self-appointed “parking cop” on the street where he rented a basement suite.
“She did not like people who weren’t homeowners parking on the street,” Vince said. “She felt parking should be for homeowners and their guests. I’d see her all the time barking at people as they were getting out of their cars. Just beaking off about how they needed to keep the spaces free. And these were at homes that she didn’t own. I don’t think the other homeowners even gave a crap about this. But the worst would happen if you actually parked in front of her house. Then she’d just lose her s**t.”
The “busybody” yelled at Vince a couple of times, warning him about “consequences.”
Then one day his hubcaps went missing.
Vince said the incident happened about a week after his last confrontation with the “busybody” and he was sure it wasn’t a coincidence. But, like he said, he couldn’t prove anything.
“I looked up and I could see her looking at me through her window,” Vince said.
There wasn’t anything he could do about it and so Vince continued on with his life. Then, three days later, something just as weird happened.
“I went to my car in the morning and the hubcaps were sitting on the hood,” he said. “Someone had returned them. That’s when I was sure that it was her. A thief wouldn’t have done that. She was just sending me a ridiculous message … Someone in the neighbourhood told me the same thing had happened to someone else the year before.”
Vince ended up moving in with his girlfriend late last year in a building that has underground parking.
“I’ve never been so happy to have my own parking spots,” he said.
For the record, homeowners don’t own the street parking and can’t lay claim to any spots so just mind your own business.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
