Clarence Eckerson

Streetfilms: Excuses

By Aaron Naparstek

11:18 AM EST on February 28, 2008

Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson was walking around Manhattan one day last summer feeling what he describes as “a little sympathy for what it must be like to be a ticket writer in this town.” He turned on his ever-present video camera and began shooting illegally parked cars and the variety of placards, badges and hand-scrawled notes left on their dashboards in an attempt to avoid a summons. With City Hall getting ready to reduce official parking placards by 20 percent and reorganize the way parking government parking privileges are managed, this latest Streetfilm is worth a minute of your time.

Aaron Naparstek

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.