An old joke by deadpan standup comedian Steven Wright ponders an amusing twist in the English language. He asks “Why we drive on a parkway, but we park on a driveway?”
Well, a Homeowners Association in Frisco, Texas may have solved half that riddle. Homeowners can no longer park on their own driveways in the Stonebriar Village HOA. All cars must be concealed in garages because they make a neighborhood look so ugly.
There are other things that make a neighborhood much uglier. Fascism. Bullying. Property values that never rise because Americans are waking up and paying attention to warnings about life in an HOA.
(link to Dallas News story on Stonebriar Village parking rule)
And just for fun, a link to more really offbeat humor from Steven Wright:
All you need to wreak havoc in an HOA is one person on the Board who is obsessed with their idea of “perfection” and that is determined to get everyone to comply. This story is about not parking cars in the driveway, but here on NAW we’ve also featured other ridiculous rules such as not displaying “unauthorized objects” in a flower pot on your front porch, or using only white lights but not colored lights to decorate for Christmas, or requiring everyone to have the same kind of mailbox. Or how about the HOA Board member who was so obsessed with trash cans being stowed out of sight after pick up, that she had all the garbage cans hauled away to the recycling center! Where I used to live, there was an obsession with paint color for the garage door — it had to be the same color as the house, never a contrasting color. The list goes on.
All I can say is, if you’re that concerned about such trivia: GET A LIFE!