A wiseguy for parking?

This short post was inspired by two things:

1. Reading Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy, the famous nonfiction work that became the basis for Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. 
2. Spending some time in the city this weekend, trying to win lottery tickets to see Newsies for thirty bucks. 

I was fascinated to read Henry Hill's account of all the privileges the mobsters he associated with were able to attain: front row seats at the Copa, bypassing the line at first-class restaurants, access to quality food even when in prison, etc.  The wiseguys may have hustled a lot of cons, but they did seem to live the good life. 

Me, I just want to have one perk: I'd be a wiseguy if I could park any place I wanted to in the city. Really. 

I'd like to just put my car across the street from any fine restaurant or theater and stick a tag in it, and BAM! I'm protected from tickets and tows. 

I'm pretty smart about parking, and I know where and when's a good time to park in the most crowded space in America, but there's nothing like the thrill of parking where you're not supposed to and getting away with it. 

I'm not into running numbers or selling dope, or hijacking trucks, or transporting cigarettes across state lines (which is illegal because of the differences in state taxes on them).  I just wanna park.

Sadly, I did have a friend who had a special handicapped tag that allowed her to do what I want; she could even park in places where you were not allowed ever, like in front of churches. But she suffered from MS, and has since passed on.  (I'm pretty sure the parking perks and her death were not related.)

One more thing about Henry Hill: it seems pretty clear from Pileggi's book -- let alone the life he led after the book's initial publication, when he was still in the Witness Protection Program -- that Hill had absolutely no feelings of remorse for living the life he led.  As far as he was concerned, guys like his father, who worked hard and never really got the American Dream, were suckers.  If you wanted to really get the good life, you had to be willing not only to work hard, but to work hard doing things that were not always on the level.  Hill may have had some compulsive need, even after he ratted out his buddies, to keep doing illegal things, but he clearly made many choices that he simply lived with.  (And like a lot of other wiseguys, it was never his fault; he is angry at getting caught, at those who helped him land in jail, forced to rat out his associates.)  Hill gave the impression of being a smart man to Pileggi, but he clearly had a blind side too. 

Anyway, more on this topic when I write about Goodfellas, which I'll get to eventually, as I'm showing it in my class in a coupla months.  Unless of course I'm spending some time for trying to operate a crooked parking pass scam.