There is a certain car in my neighborhood, a sporty silver Mazda with Thule bike racks. I would have no interest in it if not for its owner’s insistence on taking up two spaces every time he parks.  Day after day, it’s the same thing. He nudges his car into a parallel space, nestling it about four feet from the bumper in front of him, as if this is going to protect his precious vehicle from errant dings, or make quick escapes easier. The effect for the rest of us is one less space that could have gone to a parent juggling children and groceries.  Send your screeds, tirades and rants — no more than 500 words, please — to: metropolitan@nytimes.com.  We have a lot of parking peeves in our little enclave at the northern edge of Manhattan. Softball players and picnickers flood into the neighborhood every summer weekend to relish our lush fields along the Spuyten Duyvil, taking up every bit of spare curb space.  Camera crews for the television show “Law & Order” regularly gobble up long stretches of roadside for their trucks.  But the park revelers and film crews come and go. An off-duty police officer and a Buildings Department employee live in the neighborhood and park illegally every day in front of fire hydrants or in No Standing zones, while the rest of us circle the block searching for a legal spot. They place city placards on their dashboards claiming to be on official duty.  As official abuses of power go, this is fairly harmless, I know. But I consider it a gateway to bigger crimes, the way some people say marijuana leads to heavier drugs. Today it’s illegal parking; tomorrow, payoffs from the mob.  But let’s say I reported it, and the city actually cracked down on its employees. That would be just two more cars circling the block with the rest of us. I’ve discussed this with my neighbors, and we all agree that silence is the best course, even if it makes us passive conspirators.  There are other discourteous parkers in the neighborhood, but they are mostly these old-time New York characters who are so overly protective — or just plain bad drivers — they really shouldn’t own cars to begin with. I can rationalize their behavior the same way I could that of a late friend of mine who grew up in the Great Depression and for the rest of his life saved unused napkins from every restaurant he ever visited. It’s eccentricity born of self-preservation.  But Silver Mazda Guy has no excuse. We have left notes on his windshield explaining that many of us have children and finding close parking is a huge convenience, to no avail. What other recourse is there? I’m certainly not going to key his car or flatten his tires. Not because that would be wrong, but because he might know what I drive.  What I’d really like to do is plaster his car with those annoyingly sticky green notices the Sanitation Department uses when you forget to move on alternate-side parking days. You know — the kind you can never fully remove, even with hot water and a scraper. I would find the company that manufactures them and have them make me a big boxful of giant scarlet P’s or maybe a wordy discourse on parking etiquette. I would walk around the neighborhood under cover of night issuing written warnings for first-time offenders and the full-on papier-mâché treatment for repeat violators.  As a reporter for a major newspaper, I could probably find out who makes these sanitation notices pretty easily. Then I could begin my secret vigilante career battling ill-mannered parkers, starting with the owner of you know what. I don’t know, would that be an abuse of power?  Ray Rivera is a reporter for The New York Times. He won’t say what he drives.  Read all columns in this series.
Complaint Box: Some people park discourteously out of habit. Perhaps letting them get away with it encourages them to commit more serious transgressions.