Did you get a strange parking ticket? These Toronto pranksters say it was meant to ‘make you smile’

Thestar.com
Dec. 13, 2019
David Venn

Did you get a funny looking parking ticket this week, one that was oddly up-beat and said your fine was $0?

Maybe it said you were “doing a fantastic parking”?

If you did, don’t worry: That ticket “definitely did not originate from the city,” says City of Toronto media advisor Ashley Hammill.

The yellow citations were, in fact, a feel-good initiative from two hikers who told the Star they wanted to combat the sunken feeling of defeat they felt after getting a parking ticket in Milton.

It was an effort to “make people smile and to maybe snap people out of the mundane, routine day-to-day type thing,” said Zohar Berlyand, who handed out the positive parking slips across Toronto with his partner Erica Bota and 30 of their friends.

“The city can be a harsh place to live sometimes,” Bota said.

The faux parking tickets -- which appeared on 500 cars in Roncesvalles, the Junction, Kensington, North York, the Annex, downtown and Koreatown early Wednesday -- had a number of clues they were less than official:

For one, they were backed by the “Universal court of justice: Toronno Division” and written by officer “B. Loblaw,” a reference to the “Arrested Development” character Bob Loblaw (say that name out loud.)

And there was the fact your car’s licence plate number was listed as, “DA6IX.” And under “Make,” the tickets read, “your day :)”

Near the bottom, there was an inspirational message: “Some days just suck, don’t they? Some days suck, and then you get a parking ticket. Today isn’t that day. Today is a good day.”

And finally, a note: Instead of a fine, pay it forward -- place this ticket on another car.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the light-hearted prank received mixed reviews in a vibrant thread on the online forum Reddit, with several commenters asking, what’s the point? -- and at least a few saying they found it funny.

Pamela Smith, who lives in Roncesvalles, said her ticket set the tone for her whole day.

“I got out and grabbed it and my blood was boiling,” she told the Star, remembering when she saw the slip on her windshield -- “And then I started reading it and realized it was just a prank. And I started to laugh; I thought it was so funny.”

“(It) ended up giving you a really nice day when you thought you were going to be the crankiest person in Toronto,” she said.