Visitors to Los Angeles -- or even longtime residents -- may have noticed a curious phenomenon in our city. People will stand on sidewalks or in the gutters, for long periods of time, gazing upwards at nothing particularly interesting. They look as though they’d just asked a question of a tree and are getting a long, convoluted answer in return.

But that is not what is happening. The people are straining to understand the parking signs. They are straining because the signs can be confusing, and parking tickets have a way of materializing without warning, even to those who are careful to heed the law. Some unfortunates get too many of them too fast and become traumatized or enraged. They can’t take the time off work to fight them in an administrative hearing. Failure to pay can result in substantial late fees, vehicle impoundment, attachment of outstanding fees to car registration, and even withheld tax refunds.

As a representative from the Department of Transportation wrote to me in an email, “Traffic officers provide a myriad of services to the community and are dedicated to providing parking solutions for the safe and efficient movement of people and goods in a manner which enhances and promotes the economic vitality of the city and the quality of life of its residents.” A widely held consensus among residents here is a little different: Parking enforcement is a racket.

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If you don’t think our city’s parking enforcement has a rich and interesting history, you’ve clearly never studied the subject. The first parking law was enacted in 1887, addressing the issue of horses -- and whatever vehicles they were towing -- that were clogging up downtown streets. Leave it to Los Angeles to come up with parking laws before the car was invented.

Our city’s trend of keeping people confused began immediately. The law was not posted on any sign. People were expected to find out about it in the local newspaper. Even as more laws were enacted, covering more streets, the city didn’t put up signs until the early 1920s. Drivers probably didn’t mind because up to then the laws had hardly been enforced anyway. Even after rigid enforcement began, the laws had no teeth. In order for a ticket to stand up in court, the issuing officer was essentially charged with catching the driver in the act of getting into or out of an illegally parked car before writing the ticket. If that doesn’t make you nostalgic, nothing will.

In the decades that followed, the tide turned against the car parker. The “caught in the act” part of the law was changed in 1939, when a California law was passed (and upheld in court) that granted police officers the prima facie assumption that any car parked illegally was done so with the car owner’s knowledge, thereby making him liable for the ticket. A fee schedule was standardized, civil servants were hired to take the workload off police officers, tickets started coming with envelopes for convenient payment by mail, and all processing and collection services were outsourced to Lockheed Martin. What began in 1887 as a practice confined to a dozen streets and netted about ten scofflaws a month at one or two dollars a pop is now an efficient, leviathan monster that routinely grosses well over $100 million a year.

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The unofficial capitol of confusing parking laws is West Hollywood. Make no mistake, WeHo and vicinity is a great place. It is one of the regions that puts the “greater” in “greater Los Angeles.” But not only is parking around there a bit of a scavenger hunt, it’s not even that simple to drive down your street of choice. There is a long stretch of Melrose Avenue where it is illegal to make a left turn during rush hour. So serious are they about this law that there are not only huge signs at each intersection saying as much, but neon “no left turn” signs turn on and off during rush hour, just in case you aren’t sure. It is even more challenging during the graveyard shift; in some neighborhoods, you can’t make any turns at all between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

After you’ve navigated your way through the labyrinth of when and where you can and can’t turn, then you have to find legal parking. Like with other parts of town, West Hollywood is so popular that residents naturally complain about not being able to park on their own streets. Fair enough. But street parking is in highest demand in the evenings, so exceptions to the parking laws are made. Generally, two-hour parking is available during the days, but none at all at night, unless you live on the block and have the proper permit -- except for a weekly one- or two-hour stretch during which no one can park due to street sweeping. (I have friends who live on one of these blocks. They have a bitch of a time having people over for parties.) And these laws, days, times, and permits seem to vary slightly from block to block. I don’t want to accuse parking enforcement officials of purposely being confusing, but it takes longer to decipher the signs than it does to read this paragraph.

The most confusing spot I found was just off Melrose near Robertson. This column of signs took up about eight feet of sheet metal: “No parking nighttime 7 p.m.-7 a.m. and any time Sunday, 1R permits exempt / 2HR parking daytime 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon-Sat, 1R, 1C permits exempt.” That last sign had an arrow pointing to the left. Below that was, “2HR parking, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. except Sunday and holiday.” (No explanation as to which Sunday and which holiday were the exceptions.) Oh, and that sign had an arrow pointing to the right. Finally, “No parking 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thursday, street sweeping.” The punch line? The spot below the signs had a parking meter.

My instinct when reading these signs is to ask what the point of each law is. For instance, on at least one residential block near Fairfax High School, there is no stopping allowed between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on school days, except for school buses. This law may have had some rationale behind it when it was enacted, but it seems pointless to have both sides of an entire block empty all day. And, in fact, I’ve never seen any school buses there, even when school is getting out. Another sign in the area has a P with a circle and a line through it followed by “any time / vehicles over 3/4 ton load capacity or over 24’ length.” (How does a parking enforcement officer determine if a car has a load capacity over 3/4 ton?) These are just a couple that seem so odd that I’d welcome an explanation in small print. But the signs are already marvels of syntactical efficiency. I suppose explanations would just make for a slower read.

As with many city departments, one hand doesn’t always know whom the other hand is screwing. In front of my apartment building are signs outlawing parking every Friday between noon and 2 p.m., ostensibly for street cleaning. My landlord Ken tells me that years ago, the city’s parking enforcement would come by every Friday to ticket parked cars that were flouting this law. The only problem was that the street cleaner never came at all. Over the course of months (maybe years), Ken made a series of phone calls and wrote letters to one buck-passer after another until he eventually reached State Senator Alan Cranston’s office. Only then did the Department of Sanitation finally start dispatching a goddamn street sweeping truck to our block once a week. But the Department of Transportation never missed a Friday.

The laws can also be a great source of revenue for the private sector. It is not uncommon for people to park in parking lots of businesses that are closed at night or on weekends. Seems reasonable, but the lots belong to their owners. Even if they don’t need the spaces during non-business hours, and don’t want to hire someone to rent them out, they’re entitled to keep them empty if they want. There is no shortage of independent tow truck operators who are happy to oblige them, with towing habits that can fairly be described as vigilant. One has to wonder if the property owners have more of an incentive than the aesthetic satisfaction of an empty parking lot.

Then there are the parking enforcement officers themselves, who bear the butt end of an entire city’s wrath every day just for doing their jobs. While there are probably stories about incompetent and corrupt ones, I have never known of one. I’ve even chatted with a few of these people. I always approach them slowly before talking to them because I figure they’re prepared to recoil whenever they see a stranger coming at them. And when I talk to them, they seem like personable, decent folks. I even know of one who passes my local coffeehouse and sticks her head in to warn everyone that she’s about to check meters.

Personally, I think parking tickets can be infuriating. But generally, they’re warranted. In fact, I’m straining to remember stories of unfair parking tickets. And if we didn’t have parking laws, people would be screaming about inconceivably horrible congestion caused by parking anarchy. I didn’t always think that way, so I’d park in violation of the law -- and on the reliance of less-than-diligent enforcement. Of course, I’d get parking tickets regularly. But the fines kept increasing. At risk of sounding like the victim in an abusive relationship, it gave me the incentive to shape up.

But my snark never fully abated. My last ticket was about three years ago in the city of El Segundo. I was in violation of the posted sign, guilty as charged. Still, there is something about a parking ticket that causes indignation, so, just to make some clerk’s life difficult, I overpaid it by five dollars. They actually sent a check back for the difference. I was amazed that any local government could be so honest and decent about such a thing.

Then I waited three months to cash it, just to fuck with their books.