New York City left a bad taste in my mouth:

I'm driving into Manhattan for a class, and parking is expensive. I paid $26 the first time. The second time, I parked at a meter that takes old-fashioned quarters on Columbus at 62nd street. There were 14 minutes on the meter. I added four more quarters to run the total up to 54 minutes. When I returned to my car, I had a ticket, written EIGHT minutes after I had put my quarters in the meter. Now I believe in Mayor Bloomberg's Congestion plan, but this is ridiculous. The meter seemed to be working, so either a policeman ignored the time I had on it, or he was incredibly careless.

The parking ticket cost $65. I could not see how it might be worth my time and effort to contest it, epecially since I live out of town. In fact, I thought that the crime I was ticketed for was actually DWJ (Driving While Jersey) since the cars at all the other meters had NY plates. From now on, I regard parking at a meter in NYC as strictly for chumps.