Here are a few poor-quality photos I took with my phone last night at a public sports complex not far from my house.
It’s hard to tell, but none of the three cars in that shot are actually parked in, you know, parking spots. The last set of parallel lines in this row belong to the car just out of the left side of the frame, beside that minivan. (The blurry photos are due to my being quick with the camera, before any of the owners of these cars came along and got testy with me.)
This next photo was taken from the other side of the same row. The black Golf (centre of the frame) and the Maxima to its left are the “creatively” parked cars in this shot.
In photo number three, an earlier creative parker has left, making it more obvious that the grey Chrysler to the left is also colouring outside the lines.
Someone took the opportunity to etch his or her opinion of said Chrysler owner’s parking job into the road salt caked on the trunklid.
All of the cars pictured here are in the parking rows closest to the building’s entrance, so the impetus was obvious. This sports complex houses two indoor hockey rinks, and is a busy place from October through to April. However, there were more than enough free spots to accommodate all of the poorly-parked vehicles, only much further away from the doors. Laziness and selfishness trump the desire to avoid acting like an ass, evidently. This scene was captured in Barrhaven, a deep, dark suburb of Ottawa, so I could also have commented about urban sprawl, as I watched hordes of kids wheel their hockey bags (I had to carry mine (*gasp*) when I played the game as a kid) out to mom or dad’s car for the drive home. But I’ll leave that commentary to the urban planning bloggers.
Chris Chases Cars 
Barrie
February 22, 2012 at 5:05 PM
I always get a laugh from the ‘athletes’ who go to various gyms for exercise, and have to park as close to the doors as possible.
Such “creative” parking as you recorded can be found everywhere, and undoubtedly predates cars themselves, although wagons, surreys, and other horse-drawn rigs probably didn’t have much pavement, much less marked slote in parking lots. Come to think of it, there wouldn’t have been many lots themselves, other than churches and community halls!
I recall an incident in Saskatoon, in 1969 or ’70, when I pulled into a small shopping centre parking lot on a Sunday, when, at the time, 7-11 hadn’t moved into Canada, and only drug stores were likely to be open.
As I moved toward the store, a Volkswagen van pulled into the lot and pulled to a stop directly across all the marked stalls he could possibly have covered with his car. As I passed his car (on foot), I said something like, “Nice park job,” to which he responded, “Asshole,” and got back in the car and moved it! I suspect his wife had done a Marge Simpson sigh when he first stopped, and he wanted to avoid further commentary later.