Parking warden’s merry dance with performers
A Wellington parking warden has ticketed a group of dancers – but this is one parking fine that won’t be challenged.
It turned out the ticket was blank and the whole thing was the first verifiable proof of parking warden humour.
The ticket was to become the centrepoint of an art piece in yesterday’s Park(ing) Day event in the city.
The Wellington Sculpture Trust, along with the Wellington City Council, is holding Wellington’s third Park(ing) Day, providing temporary public open spaces, one parking spot at a time.
The day is an annual global event that started in 2005 when a San Francisco art and design studio converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco.
Since then, it has evolved into a global movement, with organisations and individuals creating new forms of temporary public spaces in urban settings around the world.
Tarrant Dance Studios took over a space on Cuba St just up from Ghuznee St, where dancers were dancing themselves into an ever-diminishing space during the day.
But not long after the group started dancing, a parking warden arrived, surveyed the scene and then – it appeared – was about to issue a ticket to the dancers, Deirdre Tarrant from the studio said.
‘‘She pressed the button, the ticket spat out.’’
As Tarrant started to protest, the warden laughed and Tarrant realised she was holding a blank ticket. ‘‘She said: Just joking.’’ The art piece features dancers throughout the day dancing into a diminishing space as tape gets added to the ground.
When the space is finally so small that a person can no longer fit inside – expected to happen at 6pm – the blank ticket will be stuck in the middle.
A Wellington City Council spokesman said interpretive dancers were ‘‘thankfully’’ not catered for under the Land Transport Act.
‘‘The fine for interpretive dancing varies depending on the quality of the dancer/s ... our officer Theresa will be back up there this afternoon to see if they’ve improved.’’