City and housing community municipal codes seem to focus on individuals who like working on their vehicles or parking them in plain sight, but one Seaside, California man found a creative method to flip a figurative bird to those frivolous codes. Etienne Constable received a notice from town requesting he comply with a municipal code restricting parking for non-passenger vehicles, and he needed to store his boat behind a 6-foot-high fence so it wouldn’t be visible from the road. Constable found a creative method to comply while still conveying distaste by having a neighbor and muralist paint his latest fence to seem invisible.
Constable has lived in Seaside for 29 years. He’s parked his current boat in his driveway for 4 years, and a previous boat for a few years prior to suddenly receiving this code compliance notice. Constable was forced to pave his driveway so as to install the fence that town of Seaside required he store his boat behind, so the endeavor was more labor intensive than simply moving the boat behind a pre-existing fence. The Los Angeles Times reported,
He [Constable] said he was surprised and unaware of town code about non-passenger vehicles.
“We’ve been here for a very long time,” Constable said, “and no one had ever said anything before.”
Last yr, town hired a community enhancement staffer to discover code enforcement violations throughout town that needed to be remedied, said Nick Borges, acting city manager and Seaside police chief.
If the boat wasn’t concealed, the notice stated noncompliance was punishable by a primary offense of a $100 fee, based on Constable.”
Feedback from neighbors and social media users has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive of Constable’s artistic boat storage solution, with other neighbors reportedly asking for similar murals on their fences. The artist behind the lifelike masterpiece is Constable’s next-door neighbor Hanif Panni, a multi-medium artist. Initially, Panni and Constable were tossing around ideas of what to color on the fence when the boat mural was mentioned as a joke, nevertheless it ended up becoming a reality.
Borges isn’t offended by the mural, saying the creative response to town’s municipal code helped create a greater relationship amongst neighbors.
“It does help cities like us recover” and discover whether some city codes must be enforced a certain way, he said.”
This type of respectful disobedience brings me a whole lot of joy. I actually have a troublesome time respecting illogical and inconsequential rules, so I’m glad to see that Constable and Panni got here together to make a press release about their community’s frivolous rules through the ability of art.
This Article First Appeared At jalopnik.com
