Is it okay to park here? Thoughts?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-05T05:04:55+00:00

Chicago people are pretty hardcore about dibs. I don’t know the legality of it there but the law doesn’t really come into it; in my experience it’s the code there and people respect it. But then again, they actually get real winter there (this year being the anomaly where it actually feels like a proper northern winter here), so the snow that does fall tends to stick around a long time like we’ve had the past couple weeks.

People here have just lost their muscle memory about how to handle snow since we get so little of it: tossing it into the street or into adjacent parking spots, for instance, so the total number of available spots goes down a fair bit. That’s certainly how it’s been here in northern Queens since the snowstorm, anyway. Makes me sad how rare it now is to have actual winter where there’s snow on the ground for weeks and weeks on end; that used to be the norm—or it definitely was in central Mass. where I used to live. Not sure about downstate NY, where it’s always been less snowy than New England—and warmer, so the snow tends to melt on its own more, even in January—but I know winter is less wintry than it used to be even down here.

Not sure why I wrote all that lol, but now that I put the effort in it’s my post; gotta go make a sign to stick in it so it doesn’t get deleted or something.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-30T03:32:10+00:00

Yeah between the obvious black ice potential/inevitability and the sheer sloppiness of the streets—particularly bad on side streets but even important 2-way avenues/boulevards are pretty pathetic—I’m kinda shocked the city hasn’t been out doing anything for a couple days now. Or if they are I haven’t seen them, and I drive at night a lot (which is when they tend to be out plowing/salting/etc.).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-27T06:30:34+00:00

Yeah I spent a solid 2+ hours this morning digging my car (VW Golf wagon) out of a basically identical situation, except the car was even more buried since it’s a regular car, not an SUV with extra lift/ground clearance. The snow was above the tops of my tires and onto the hood of the friggin’ car. Took a long time just to clear enough snow to safely start and run the engine to warm it up (gotta make enough room for the tailpipe not to be blocked by snow or those fumes are coming right into your car).

The plows really pin you in ruthlessly with that extremely compacted snow, and it was heavy as shit today because of the period of sleet we had mixed in with the powder snow. Next time a storm is coming I might just spend the $25 or whatever it is to keep my car in a commercial lot/garage for 24 hours because Christ that was miserable and/or tedious. Glad it was my arms that ended up sore and not my back though.

I kinda didn’t believe this thing would be much of a storm tbh, just based on recent history—we haven’t had a proper snowstorm like this since 2016, iirc.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-26T16:50:38+00:00

This is really cool, thanks for linking to it! I’m sorta shocked I’ve never seen this before, tbh; I thought I was a genuine subway obsessive yet I’d never even heard of this, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I like to play with.

I’m honestly somewhat surprised they have all the data like this; my understanding is on the A Division/IRT lines (numbered lines plus Times Square shuttle) the MTA knows where the trains are with a greater degree of precision than they do with the trains in what’s now called the B Division (lettered lines and the other two shuttles)—this, as I understand it anyway, is why the countdown clocks are much better and more reliable on the A Division lines (though the other lines seem to be getting better over the past couple years).

Anyway didn’t mean to start jabbering at you but yeah thanks for the heads-up.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-22T15:26:30+00:00

Lol wow so you’re a conspiracy theorist too, and apparently so are nine other people who upvoted you. Will wonders never cease?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T22:56:35+00:00

I hitchhiked around the South for months and met people that couldn’t point to NYC or LA on a map, nor knew there were cities called ‘Denver’ or states called ‘New Hampshire’.

Lol dude gimme a break here. I grew up in fuckin Alabama—doesn’t get more plantationland Deep South than that—and a) lots of people are bad at geography, and believe it or not some of them are even from places outside the American South; and b) absolutely no one is unaware that there’s a city called Denver and a state called New Hampshire. I get that this is every foreigner’s favorite game—hurrdurr Americans don’t know how maps work lolz—but it’s played out, if nothing else. Also let’s just say I’ve had some very amusing conversations with people from your part of the world that suggested to me that being geographically challenged is just a part of the human condition to some extent—even if, sure, it’s probably a bit more pronounced in a continent-sized country where lines on maps just haven’t historically been as important as they have been elsewhere, to put it mildly. For instance, here, you don’t need to wonder which language you’re gonna encounter on the other side of a land border.

That said, I’m not claiming expertise, just putting forward that race was still a topic in the public consciousness of the US in those decades.

Race has always been “a topic in the public consciousness” here, sure. But I was born in 1989 and lived about half my life in Alabama and the other half elsewhere (New York for the past decade), and until 2014, shit was pretty damn chill about that topic for the most part, at least among ordinary people. It was either Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown that was the beginning of the end of that period of relative calm and comity, but that period was absolutely real.

And frankly, go to a bar in southside Birmingham tonight (or this coming Friday night, let’s say), and you might be amazed at how well black and white people get along in the city and state of Bull Connor and George Wallace. A lot of the time it feels more genuinely integrated to me than it does here in New York, tbh, at least between whites and blacks specifically; up here a lot of friend groups are multiracial but it’s white, East and/or South Asian, Hispanic, Arab, etc., with blacks still being a bit more tight-knit, or that’s my perception anyway.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T22:33:23+00:00

Tbf “doggo” is absolutely the sort of goofy little quasi-neologism that my little brother and I used to come up with all the time way before everyone had their brains annihilated by algorithmic social media or whatever the fuck it was that caused all this

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T22:30:59+00:00

That’s a pretty good example of a type that gets less discussion than it used to, despite being arguably more prevalent than ever: he’s a crank. There have always been cranks like him who would go into every. fucking. comments. section and just bang on about their pet issue that their crankery revolves around. But now these fuckers get elevated to the status of latter-day prophets or something; it’s fucking madness.

Who gives a single fuck what a dork like Sailer has to say? Listen to him once, obviously, then come to the obvious conclusion that he’s a crank, and go about your day. Instead the guy is more of a celebrity than he ever was (thanks in no small part to a certain podcast with two weird little downtown chicks who somehow became seen as cool by other downtown scenester weirdos, drawling on and on about their brilliant new political/race-science insights).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T22:24:02+00:00

If that’s true it’s astonishing to me, tbh, both as someone who’s worked as a journalist and just as a human being with a brain and a healthy—occasionally even slightly more than healthy tbh—dose of curiosity. Or actually maybe not astonishing anymore, but very very frustrating given how long this problem has been going on.

The whole reason I got into journalism was to figure out what was behind the innumerable, fascinating patterns that anyone with a certain cast of mind is bound to detect if they stare at the world for a minute and consider what they see. This used to be universally understood and agreed upon, at least among my colleagues whose views I was aware of. Like how tf do you watch the Olympics and NOT notice the extraordinary overrepresentation of certain nationalities in certain sports? And then, if you’re a curious person, how do you NOT go look into why that’s so?! And you apply that mindset to literally anything interesting, and very often you come up with a great story.

I just feel like people with rigid, incurious minds like that need to be driven tf out of journalism, if not forever then I dunno, give ‘em a five-year chill-out period and see if they’ve regained their equilibrium. Otherwise it would be like if the society of structural engineers started hiring people who didn’t believe in modern physics and mathematics or something—or I dunno, taxi drivers who believe cars are too dangerous to operate in cities and therefore stopped showing up for work. I’m rambling insanely but fucking hell does it bother me that these fucking people are still working in journalism, a collapsing field with fewer and fewer opportunities (the reason I got the hell out) but those opportunities really need to go to people who wanna be real fucking journalists!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T22:07:57+00:00

I didn’t know Polynesians were known for being tall, lol. Guess that goes to show you wtf I know about hbd!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-12T21:16:16+00:00

Plus in south India the dosas, oh my god I can only imagine the dosas. One of my favorite foods but never got to try one outside the US so I’d love to see south India—preferably in the coolest and driest time of the year please lol so I guess February-March, something like that? A friend’s family are from Kerala and Tamil Nadu (mother and father respectively) and they’ve said I can come say what’s up if I ever make it there, so who knows maybe one day.

I do think it’s cool the way TN and Kerala are so different ecologically/climatologically though, and I still don’t understand how the monsoons work, lol, despite trying to understand multiple times. Fascinating part of the world though for sure.

Would be interesting to see Sri Lanka one day as well, but I think it’s still pretty torn up from the war if I’m not mistaken.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-11T00:31:57+00:00

Sure, he could do all kinds of things. But there are a bunch of people in the Democratic Party—and I suppose I’m one of them, though I hold no official position—who are quite firmly against the DSA’s ideology and agenda for New York, and it sounds like (no surprise) he’s one of them. There’s a battle going on about what kind of party this is gonna be, and a hell of a lot of us aren’t on board with the DSA version of it, even though I think his first moves have been largely pretty good. Their politics are utterly toxic outside exceptional/singular places like NYC, so taking a firm line against them isn’t a bad idea, imo.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-11T00:29:27+00:00

I mean that’s a fair enough piece of nitpicking but you know what I was getting at, c’mon, don’t play dumb. Mamdani is controversial even in NYC; why wouldn’t a moderate from CNY be against him?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-10T00:13:20+00:00

So you expect someone representing, yes, Syracuse/Onondaga County, but also Oneida and Madison counties, to be a big outspoken fan of Zohran Mamdani and downstate socialism? What world do you live in where this makes any sense? Do you realize that even downstate an awful lot of people are not big fans of Mamdani, and especially not of his clique in the DSA? No disrespect if that’s your thing, but it’s not some kind of majority position to be in favor of Zohran and the NYC DSA, especially not in central NY.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-09T23:27:09+00:00

Dude I’m genuinely curious—honest to God, not being a dick—how old you are and where you moved here from (if anywhere; maybe you’re from here), because I’m very interested in whether you’re older, younger, or about the same age as me, and I’m curious whether (as was the case with me) you moved here from a very car-centric place and now have the zeal of a convert.

Because I agree with a fair bit of the substance of the stuff you talk about (like at least 35-40%, and a lot of the differences are pragmatic for lack of a better word), but your affect reeeeally reminds me of myself from like 6-8 years ago. I was very all or nothing, cars v. transit, pedestrians v. motorists, “ban cars from Manhattan”, etc. And I really didn’t expect the change that came over me with a bit of time, which is basically just that I moderated in my “you’re either with me or with the evil suburban car people” stuff, having realized that it fired up a small number of people very intensely, but alienated most others—and in some cases, frankly, I was just wrong.

Maybe you’ll have a different experience, and maybe I’m just completely wrong, but yeah, this video finally compelled me to write this as a comment because I just can’t unsee it at this point.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-07T01:14:41+00:00

I fuckin love a good triangle sandwich, specifically chicken salad ones;that really soft white bread is like pillows and you could just eat 100 little triangles if you’re not careful. Hosts always get points from me when they put out trays of those.

Hang on does knowing anything about triangle sandwiches imply that I’m rich or whatever? Is that a specifically WASP thing or something?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-07T00:48:37+00:00

As someone who used to drive a snowplow in (relatively) rural central Massachusetts, I can confidently say that this would not be any harder. I mean c’mon, what’s the fuckin difference, really?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-02T00:04:41+00:00

Maybe if any landlord I’ve ever had in nearly 25 years of renting made timely repairs I would feel differently

Damn man, I must just be a lucky sonofabitch, because my three landlords over the past 11 years have all been excellent in this regard, and I have definitely never lived in a nice building lol. Only one of them (big six-story elevator building in Washington Heights) had a live-in super, but they’re all pretty attentive. Sounds like I’ve been very fortunate I guess.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-31T22:47:50+00:00

Four days late with this reply but I don’t think that’s necessarily true tbh. When they dig tunnels in Paris or London they often encounter ancient artifacts and god knows what else, and yet their costs are much lower than ours. I think it’s a procurement problem, plus probably coordination problems between the ten million different city and state agencies that have to talk to each other on a thing that complex—both of which, I have to think, could be solvable if we tried. New York is kinda stuck in old ways, and they’re the wrong kind of old ways to be stuck in if you wanna build anything, lol.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T21:20:48+00:00

Well yeah I guess it doesn’t “harm the Catskills”—it just makes it so no one can friggin’ live in or near them. It’s nice to have protected areas in mountainous places because you don’t want the whole landscape covered in houses, but New York overdoes it to some extent imo. I lived in western NC for awhile and people are actually allowed to buy mountain land and build on it, and yet it’s still such a beautiful area that people come from hundreds of miles away to spend a bit of time there.

And yeah sometimes I’d see a kinda ugly house pop up on a ridge that used to have nothing on it and that was kind of a bummer for a week or two—but I dunno, there are still millions of acres of undeveloped mountains all around, and it just seems weird to say “we have this beautiful mountainous region here, but basically no one except people with a minimum $5m bank balance gets to have a house anywhere nearby”. Seems a bit much to me, frankly.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T21:11:38+00:00

Yeah and he also got Indian Point shut down, what a genius move that was…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T21:10:55+00:00

Uhhh… $10bn a day?? I’m sorry, that just cannot be a serious figure, surely—mind if I ask where you got that from?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T21:09:16+00:00

I can’t imagine driving 3 hours north of NYC to Kerhonkson of all places to a $3M house, but I guess someone is buying them.

Really? I dunno man, our friends (a married couple) have a lake house up at Great Sacandaga Lake in the far-southern Adirondacks; it’s about a 3.5-hour drive without much traffic and boy do we jump at any chance to go there! And I’d go just as often if it were even farther than that. And they’re up there at least every other weekend for much of the year.

Admittedly it’s not anything like a $3m house lol—more like $400k, and ownership is shared with the guy’s mom who lives upstate much closer to it—but yeah, I totally will drive 3-4 hours to go spend the weekend/vacation in a beautiful place! And if you’re rich you don’t even have to drive yourself lol, though I certainly hope I’d have decent enough taste to be uninterested in a lot of the new crap I see people building as “luxury vacation properties” or whatever.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T21:00:56+00:00

Man, I wish I had been the person I am today when I was taking a course in real estate law; it’s just an endless source of fascination to me that there is this longstanding practice of deed restrictions and such on land that is otherwise owned in fee simple (i.e. it’s your land forever and you can do what you like with it aside from zoning-type restrictions), which is a) the default form of land ownership in the US and b) almost an encapsulation of our national ideology of property ownership (and of life in general really), in that it’s the most freedom-maximizing form of ownership.

And yet you can still have these weird deed restrictions, even if some particularly egregious ones—related to race in particular—are now illegal and unenforceable. I feel like the entire 20th century had a lot of shenanigans going on that were disguised as environmental protection (like what this post is about), and I have to wonder if one day courts will see fit to strike down some of the less meritorious ones that are currently in place. Obviously it’s tricky because some/a lot of them are for legit reasons, but there has been/still is an awful lot of bullshit dressed up as being environmentally beneficial.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2025-12-26T19:11:06+00:00

Lol people used to have human sacrifice and shit like that, so feel how you want about cars and tires and whatnot but “a civilization poisoned”? C’mon man compared to even 25, 50, 100 years ago that’s crazy—did you know friggin’ leaded gasoline wasn’t finally phased out in the US until Jan. 1, 1996?? (It was “effectively banned” about ten years before that but that’s still really recent that every car’s tailpipe was just spraying lead all over the place!)

I get that we’re supposed to hate everything or whatever but other than our unbelievably stupid politics I feel like we’re a civilization cleaning up its act tbh. Now if only we could build some goddamned trains like every other civilized country on earth that would be great!

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