Parking notes

About a month or so ago, the landlord's dad came by to put a new screen door on the back door and at the same time, he took away some rotting timbers that had been part of a raised garden bed in the front. The raised bed was next to the house sitting on the sidewalk pavement, and as he removed them he mentioned that if we got rid of the soil we could park there in the winter. Both Studyboy and I thought the idea of deliberately parking on the sidewalk was a little strange but we let it pass. In fact, it was the second time someone had mentioned the possiblilty of using the sidewalk as a driveway. The landlord had mentioned it too, when we moved in. We live in an area called Rabbit-town, and mostly the neighbourhood is comprised of row houses sitting directly on the sidewalk of a narrow street. Our house is an infill house, it is detached and is set back a little more than the others next to it. Our sidewalk is 5 feet wide instead of three. If we got rid of the raised bed soil we could just about fit a motorcycle in that space, but not a car, let alone the truck, unless you were planning on exiting the vehicle out the sun roof, which neither Erica or Casper have.
We let the idea pass without comment because we assumed the landlord and his dad were missing the obvious point that people would need to use the sidewalk for walking. Silly us. Now that we have had some snow, I understand that snow removal is, at best, just a suggestion in St. John's. The city gives the streets a lick and a promise when it snows, but sidewalks are not cleared by city workers unless they are close to schools or hospitals. Fair enough, but most cities have a bylaw stating that people are responsible for clearing sidewalks adjacent to their house. St. John's apparently does not have this bylaw, so people don't. In fact, people who do have driveways shovel the snow onto the sidewalk, creating undulating King of the Castle hills all the way down the street. This means, between the mounds and the iced packed footstep tracks that the sidewalks all over the city are impassable and dangerous. Everyone just walks in the streets, which is also dangerous but easier. So we were silly to assume that people would need to use the sidewalks for walking.
It turns out, people do pull their cars up onto the sidewalks for winter parking. It's like the city version of a front lawn during a summer barbecue. Now of course, the left over soil that we didn't remove is frozen solid until April, so no chance of extra parking space for us.