Remember Andrew? His car was towed from Starbucks while he was inside sipping a latte. He isn’t alone. In mid-August, a predatory tow-truck driver set up shop outside a retirement community and waited for local meals-on-wheels driver Marie Phillippi to leave her car. As she made her deliveries, the tow-truck driver latched on and prepared to tow. He was stopped only when a retiree ran out and splayed herself across the car’s hood until the Marie could return. The tow-truck driver’s actions were entirely legal under Oregon law, although that may soon change…
news from the parking lot
Oregon To Consider Predatory Towing Ban After Meals-On-Wheels Is Almost Towed During Delivery
By 2.1.09
Live Nation To Challenge Ticketmaster, Sell Fans More Junk
By 1.6.08
The nation’s largest concert promoter, Live Nation, is ditching Ticketmaster to build its own ticketing system. Live Nation may not be as soul-crushingly evil as Ticketmaster—we hear they issue refunds!—but their goal in breaking away is to squeeze more profit from customers by hawking “additional merchandise.”
StubHub Releases Names Of 13,000 Ticket Resellers To Patriots
By 10.22.07
The New England Patriots last week received the names of 13,000 people who bought or sold Pats tickets through StubHub. Season ticket holders are rightly concerned that the Pats may now revoke the subscriptions of those who circumvented the Pats’ own Ticketmaster-run system.
StubHub Becomes Official Scalper Of Major League Baseball
By 8.2.07
Private ticket sales will emerge from the shadows under a five year agreement signed by Major League Baseball that will make StubHub the only official site where fans can buy and sell baseball tickets amongst themselves. 25 of the 30 MLB teams already run secondary ticket trading sites, but starting in 2008, they will consolidate under a StubHub-run, MLB-branded site. Some teams are less than excited.
Teens Prefer Liquor To Beer, Hate Wine
By 7.29.07
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report claims that teens prefer bourbon, rum, scotch, whiskey, and vodka to beer. Why should you care? Regulators and policy makers use the statistics to develop beverage-specific measures to combat underage drinking, “including increasing alcohol excise taxes and increasing restrictions on the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages.” The CDC studied high schoolers in Nebraska, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and found the following:
