It was a case of now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it again, but not where you left it. Happens all the time.
Isabel Ezrati parked her car one frigid night on Riverside Drive and 76th Street, grabbed her belongings and her dog, a Pekingese mix named Happy, and headed a couple of blocks east to her home. She checked the parking signs for regulations and looked for postings announcing a movie filming. Everything looked good. Then, as has become her habit, Ezrati texted a friend and her mother with the location of her parking spot just in case she forgot.
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Cut to five days later. While walking down Riverside Drive from 92nd Street, what does she see? Her car … ten blocks north of where she parked it.
“All week long I was thinking I should check on the car,” said Ezrati, an Upper West Sider since 2012. “But I didn’t.”
It wasn’t even as if she went looking for her car and couldn’t find it. She didn’t walk the streets trying to use her fob to set off the car’s alarm. She just happened upon it. Her car … you can’t miss it.
“I have a 2003 Saturn Ion,” she said. “It’s very distinct. It’s between grass green and forest green with a custom gold pinstripe.”
She looked inside and sure enough, there was her water bottle and travel mug.
Welcome to the mystery of the moving car.
She’s positive she didn’t park at 86th Street for several reasons. First, it was such a cold night and she would have remembered the longer walk. Also, Happy might not have made it. Her car was found in front of a fire hydrant (hello, $230 worth of tickets), in a position where you couldn’t open the door without hitting the hydrant.
“I’d never park that close to a hydrant,” she said. “And, if I walked from there, my fingers would have froze.”
Plus she called her mother to check that she did, in fact, send her a text saying she had parked on 76th Street.
“I asked her, ‘Do you believe me?’” Ezrati said. “I’m not crazy.”
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Her mother totally understood, and explained that the same thing happened to her and her husband in the ‘70s. Must run in the family.
“She said my father called the police and asked ‘Was my car stolen or did you steal it?’” Ezrati told us. “They said, ‘We stole it.’”
Like many New Yorkers, her first instinct wasn’t to call the police. She decided instead to post her tale on the neighborhood message board, NextDoor. She has long found it a resource for information in cases like these and is a frequent contributor, both answering and asking questions.
“Lo and behold, it works,” said Ezrati, who is a personal trainer, a private tutor and a gifted artisan who works in ceramics. Her work can be seen on Instagram @Izyceramics.
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She got nearly two dozen replies, including one she found very helpful from someone who said she’s lived through the sequel of Dude, Where’s My Car herself. This neighbor wrote that the police had moved her car and that when everything was straightened out, the tickets were forgiven.
However, that wasn’t the case here. Ezrati called the 20th Precinct, the Department of Transportation and the Bronx Tow Pound, and none said they had moved her Saturn.
Her car wasn’t tampered with; it didn’t appear to be hotwired. She said the person who moved it didn’t use the parking brake, so maybe her car was pushed to its new temporary home.
So, what happened?
We may never know.
“The most hilarious thing is I didn’t panic,” Ezrati said. “At first I thought I had made a mistake.”
Could have been construction, could have been someone filming. She doesn’t know because she didn’t see the car for FIVE days. Five days sitting there doing nothing but taking up space and it would have been longer except it was moved unexpectedly.
One time my husbands rental was moved from a legal spot outside our building where we had parked it the night before. No ASP signage suggested moving, no construction signage, it was a legal spot. The next morning a ConEd crew moved it to an illegal spot around the corner where we received a parking ticket we had to pay regardless of appeal. Gotta love NY!
My math might be a little off but I believe 76 to 92 is 16 blocks.
Ok Einstein, feel better now that you solved a problem? Since you are soooo smart , why not solve the mystery of the moved car.
The same thing happened to me. If you solve the mystery I would love to know. Is this just a new way for the city to make money off car owners?
https://www.facebook.com/1385015562/posts/10226740363080258/?d=n
Con Ed moved mine across the street into a tight spot. How do they do it?! Also you need to know your plate # to call police (fyi).
Disorienting for sure! But Con Ed does this regularly as does any city construction if they need the space (like when they repaved in the fall). Often signs can be put up at the last minute or people rip them off….at least it wasn’t towed.
Con Ed moved cars in front if my house in order to gain access to man holes.
The Police moved it.
I have had my cars moved from parking spots on RSD. The first time the Police admitted that they moved it but had no record; I never got that car back.
This year it happened again, so when I pursued the Police on it, after telling of my previous car “gone missing” and persisting, I got a local cop to get a local tow to find out. That tow called his tows around the neighborhood and…lo and behold, it was located. It had been put in to an illegal spot.
Police did this to my sisters car without record of it. The neighbor has front door security cam so they saw where police did they just didn’t document it. Coned does this too. Not a big mystery at all…
There are three possibilities
A) AAA Towing realized they responded to the wrong service call
B) Cops realized they were impounding the wrong vehicle
C) Reeeaaalllly good weed.
I’m going with C. Yep, definitely C
This happened to me this weekend!! I got two tickets for being in front of the hydrant when I know I absolutely did not park there. This was on Riverside as well.