NYC Man Has A Dastardly Genius Parking Hack

Whatever your feelings about the ethics of driving/parking/double-parking cars in the city may be, you have to respect a good lifehack when you see one. The motorist seen here seems to have developed a particularly memorable parking hack—check it out below—in which he skirts the complex parking laws of the city by simply removing the parking sign. But there's a TWIST: it may not even have been a real parking sign to begin with?!

The video, which was posted on Reddit on Monday, shows the man unscrewing the parking sign from a pole in front of where he has parked his car. While that is in and of itself a pretty impressive display of craftiness to avoid a $50 ticket, commenters on Reddit have advanced the theory that the sign wasn't even real to begin with, and the man may have put it up to stop people from parking there in the first place, thereby saving his precious space when he's not using it. (Not everyone has access to their own personal Costanza, after all.)

One commenter claims that they know the man in question: "It’s Jackson Heights, 70th Street and 34th Avenue. How do I know? Well, because that’s my landlord."

Pressed to elaborate, the Redditor demurred via email, writing, "I’m not interested in getting him in trouble, since I do have to live here for another year and he’s really not a bad guy."

Yet another commenter noted that if it's a real city sign, the man could face up to three misdemeanors (possession of stolen property, criminal mischief and criminal tampering); if it's a fake sign scheme, he might face a charge of criminal possession of a forged instrument or perhaps tampering with public records.

But that assumes that he is going to get caught. Something tells us this guy is always one step ahead, and has probably already relocated his personalized parking spot somewhere else, at least until the Reddit heat dies down.