That’s where Zipcar comes in. I’d known about the company for a while, but today was the first time we’d actually used one. Zipcar lends cars by the hour. When you pay a nominal registration fee, they send you an access card in the mail (I got mine only a day after I registered).

After making a reservation, you show up at the car, hold your card next to a little box behind the windshield (as I’m doing in the picture), and it unlocks the doors. The key’s hanging by the ignition, but it doesn’t work if the car has been locked (though I wonder how many would-be car thieves have made that discovery only after breaking in).

It’s pretty rare for a product or service to give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. If something works well, I usually feel the pain in my wallet, and if it’s inexpensive, then I can expect spotty performance or bad customer service. For me, Zipcar is one of those rare services that makes my life better in an intuitive, inexpensive manner. Their cars are parked all over the city, meaning in my case to pick one up I have to walk only across the street. They pay for gas(!) and cover insurance. Their web interface is easy to use, automatically showing when and where the nearest cars are, with a Google Maps pinprick to make it really obvious. I keep thinking, “what’s the catch?”

This poor guy has about ten tickets. Someone should let him know this isn’t the dream parking spot he thought.

What do you do if you’re a semi-trailer driving through the narrow streets of a residential neighborhood, and you can’t make a turn because of an illegally parked car? (The white Cirrus shouldn’t be parked on that side of the sign.)

First, you try having the people across the street move their cars.

When that doesn’t work you call a tow truck, who drags the car to the side . . .

. . . so he can tow it away.

Coke to the people!