It's Black Friday, maybe 2010. My siblings and I go out for a drink somewhere downtownish. Street parking is tight. So we pull into parking for a corner business center (anchored by a bank, with a few other retail stores, all closed for the evening). There's some tiny "no parking here unless you're a business patron" sign that we genuinely don't see.
After our very happy evening drinking reasonably-priced Chicago beverages, we return to the car.
It's got a boot on it. The guy who installed the boot is just sitting there in his truck, waiting for us to get back. He tells us that we parked illegally and need to pay $150 (maybe more? at least that) to get the boot off.
Something about it felt like society was eating itself alive. Just funneling money into some cynical investors' bank accounts while restricting us from making use of totally available, no-cost resources (an empty lot) that are themselves supported by ux taxpayers.
Why do we do this to ourselves?