Clifton: the edgy part of the city

Saturday's Evening Post front page covers a spot of bother in Clifton. Our local correspondent, the Green Bristol Blogger, set out to get some pictures of the area, which is in the "unionist quarter" of the city.

Apparently the residents of Cornwallis House, Clifton, were unhappy about someone parking in the keep-clear bits outside their driveway/access point, complained to the driver and took some photos to pressure the council to do something.


The person who was photographed appeared to think that the photographs were some attempt to persecute him or take paedophile photographs of his kids, chased the (now deceased) photographer into a nearby pub, fetching some friends and saying  "I'm going to burn your pub down and smoke him out." As such conduct is apparently unusual in a Clifton pub on a quiz night, the police came out and the relevant driver now sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment.

The E.P. appears shocked by this behaviour, which means they haven't noticed parking issues in Clifton are as sensitive a topic as parking in Southville, or the who-gives-way-to-who protocol of Montpelier.

The Cornwallis House complex has a large private parking area, all signed up with a "private road no turning" sign to make clear no use of it by outsiders is permitted at all. Every parking space is numbered and actually appears to be followed: cars are only parked in marked spaces. We have no data on whether the residents voted for or against the Clifton Resident Parking Zone; it is not in the catchment area of the forthcoming Brandon Hill zone, looking at the voting map it's on the boundary between the ward that voted 49.4% yes and 25.7% no.


Alongside the entrance is hint of a pavement with at least the front two cars (KR08FYA and and CE58-) seemingly parked on it. If you don't park on the pavement, or you have a wider vehicle: you block the road.

The road curves round a bit to Hensman's Hill, which has some keep clear markings to protect the garages and make it possible to turn in/out of the road. We don't know precisely where the vans were parked, but the photo in the web site implies it was around where the mini was -it's the only place here where the road curves.

There are different ways to view this conflict

1. A dispute about parking, in which someone parking wider vehicles broke the local rules on who can park on the road (probably on the pavement) without blocking access for everyone else.
   
2. Evidence that the near-total absence of Bristol Parking Services is forcing locals to come up with solutions to such problems themselves.
3. People are very sensitive about being photographed in public, and feel that anyone who takes a photo of anyone under 18 is some kind of criminal.
4. Civilisation is a thin veneer over humanity, and when the Coming Collapse occurs, the battle for the last packet of twiglets in stock in Somerfield Clifton will be as brutal as it will be in Asda Bedminster.
   

Whatever, its' a bit of a mess.

In our limited experience, photographing cars without drivers causes less trouble. Taking photographs of cars outside schools is less controversial if you are on a bike and using a small compact camera rather than walking around with a big camera. Even so, it's better to avoid confrontation. After all, these car drivers/owners haven't actually done anything wrong, merely come up with their own solutions to the challenge of driving and parking round our fair city.

Discretion when photographing

No piccie with this post as I was 'forced' to delete it. A brief run down of what happened: Cycling up Redcliffe St when I spotted a badly parked car, half on the pavement, half on double yellow lines, close to the corner. I took a pic and was about to cycle away when an irate little guy came running out of a building demanding to know why I was photographing his car. I stood my ground, half expecting a fight. I pointed out that he was parked illegally but he tried to justify it by claiming that it was a sunday afternoon with no-one around and it was doing no harm. Funny though, as being a sunday, there were loads of free parking bays, so he was ignoring his own laziness. He also said he was a bus driver and you'd think they would know better. He moaned about cyclists on the pavement and I said that it annoys me as well, but he was using the lame argument that if others misbehave and break the law, somehow it's okay for you to do the same (???).

Anyway, what could have been ugly, turned out okay as I asked him to at least put his hazard lights on to show that he would only be there for a few minutes (I bet he turned them off when I was gone) and he did fundamentally accept that he was breaking the law by badly parking. For my end of the 'deal', I agreed to delete the pics, which is why there aren't any.

But he did make one important point: He could have had a baseball bat or knife and attacked me. So when you're out and about and you spot some crappy parking, be discreet folks. As a matter of interest, has anyone else who contributes to this blog had abuse from irate drivers?.