What's not to love?
Posted on 09/04/2007 1:24:47 PM PDT by KingofZion
CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Founded in the 1920s as a fantasyland of Mediterranean architecture, this affluent Miami suburb, one of the nation's first planned communities, has a long-standing reputation for zealous aesthetic policing, ruling over everything from hedge heights to what colors residents may paint their homes.
Now a guy in a pickup truck is threatening the social order. Lowell Kuvin, 44, wound up on the wrong side of the local code one night four years ago when he parked his forest-green 1993 Ford F-150 outside the house he was renting.
The city defines pickup trucks, even those for personal use, as "out of character," and forbids parking them overnight within city limits. He got a $50 ticket.
"I thought, 'Now how silly is this?' " he recalled.
Now the fight over that citation, which Kuvin stubbornly pursued to a state appellate court, is raising ticklish questions about whether some of the city's longtime interest in municipal decor stems more from snobbery than aesthetics.
The central question in the ticket case has become: Are the city ordinances targeting pickup trucks, or are they, more sinisterly, trying to exclude the people who drive them?
MORE ***
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What possible rational basis can there be for barring pickups from city streets?
bump
Is this the place where Trump complained he would not fly his flag. I hope this guy sends the city his attorney bill.
There is no rational basis, who says liberals are rational?
They ban, or try to ban, pickups and other trucks all over Florida. Too many northeast liberals moving in. But as luck would have it, those very same liberals are afraid of hurricanes.
Snobbery, plain and simple.
i don’t know why they’d want to ban trucks. trucks cost as much as cadilacs do, and are every bit as nice.
What's not to love?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The fact that it’s a ford?
"This has to do with a certain class of people they don't want in the city -- people they see as being inferior -- the blue-collar guy, the laborer -- those people," Kuvin said.
Coral Gables doesn't want the riff-raff, the blue collar trash and the hired hands spoiling the image of its country club setting. After all, how exclusive can your city image be when the "wrong" kind of people start moving in there? Yep, its snobbery, plain and simple.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Actually, it’s a Dodge (I think!)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
You’re right... on all counts.
They don’t mind when the gardener shows up in such a truck to prune the hedges. As long as he is gone by sundown.
You talkin to me?
Kinda tough to “look down on” a pickup when you’re driving a car!
This reminds me of the story of the Ford Truck Engineering executive and resident of Grosse Pointe who was ticketed for parking a company truck in his drive one night!
On one of the rare occasions that he actually drove a vehicle that his lackeys were designing.
No, that one's not mine, but it's where I'm coming from if you get my drift.
I’ll take the Pickup Man over the Prius driving pansy any day.
On this basis, should their SUVs be banned, too?
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