NYC 311 System

There is something amazing in NYC that is only a few years old – the 311 system.

If you have any sort of legitimate complaint or concern all one has to do is dial 311 and boom, it gets taken care of. 

It worked the couple of times that I’ve had to call for the crazy super apartment building after being disgusted by the constant absurd amount of trash all over the sidewalk and now it has worked once again with a car parked at a fire hydrant.

I walked up the block on my way to work on Thursday and spotted a car parked at the fire hydrant – blocking it.  It happens often enough for it to not be all that noticeable, but that never takes out the annoyance inside of me by someone thinking that they are more important that the safety of having access to water in case of fire by parking and blocking a fire hydrant.

I know that someone out there is thinking I’m crazy for having such a gripe so let me tell you the story of Dumb Irish Guy…

The was a Dumb Irish Guy who was illegally renting out an illegal basement apartment for a couple of months in 1988 across the street from where I grew up. 

On his last night in Brooklyn before his flight back home to Ireland he decided to park his car at the fire hydrant thereby blocking it so that he could play cards with his friends all night. 

Dumb Irish Guy left his friends in the front portion of the basement apartment and went to the back of the basement for the bathroom – he must not have noticed the scent of gas leaking in the basement because he lit a cigarette and BOOM!

Dumb Irish Guy never got out of that basement alive, and the entire two story brick home was gutted thanks to flames that shot 80 feet up into the crisp March air at about 3AM while the FDNY had to work around his car.

Given this memory, cars parked in the fire hydrant spaces have since irked me.

And for the record, since it was the 1980s in NYC, that car remained illegally parked at the fire hydrant for months with dozens of tickets before finally getting towed.

Anyway, the car on Thursday morning had Connecticut plates on it and remained there on Thursday night, Friday morning and then again Friday evening.  So I up and called 311 to file a complaint to hopefully get the car towed Friday evening.

Now the whole filing a complaint isn’t good by itself if no action gets done, SOMETHING needs to happen otherwise it’s a useless system, and the cool part about the 311 system is that you can look up to find out what ended up happened with the complaint.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to find the car was no longer parked in the fire hydrant and this morning I was able to see that the car owner was issued a summons – WOO HOO! 

I love me my 311.