Today I went with an old friend for sushi in Bloor West Village. I took the car. I parked the car. I proceeded to the ticket machine, popped in my credit card at 7:12pm, and bought time until 9:00pm. Dinner and conversation were lovely.

At 8:47pm, I returned to my car and found a dreaded yellow parking ticket on my windshield. My reaction was most certainly of the WTF!? variety. This was the second time in one month that I'd gotten a totally bogus parking ticket! Apparently parking officer _____ thought I didn't pay for parking, even though my stub and expiration time were placed visibly enough on my dash. There's absolutely no reason why someone who is trained in this job shouldn't have seen my stub, and I'm starting to think that they either don't care or they're doing it on purpose.

I looked around hoping to see a parking vulture nearby, but none were to be found. Calling the phone number on the back of the ticket only frustrated me further. So what do I do now?

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I have to arrange to appear in court to protest the infraction, but I'm almost inclined to just pay the fine (even though I did nothing wrong) rather than waste time trying to protest my case. Maybe this is what the city is hoping might be the response? None of the four trial locations are particularly close to where I live, and I would have to take off time during working hours to appear in court. There's a quick $30 for you, City of Toronto.

The kicker is that In late August the same scenario happened to me downtown. "Failure to display receipt in windshield". Bogus.

Is there a parking blitz still in effect? Are the officers getting sloppy, or is there a greater conspiracy to dig up here? I don't know. All I know is that I'm out $60, illegitimately. I can't possibly be the only one that has been wrongfully fined, am I?