Following an online petition against the parking spaces in front of the Evergreen Cafe that garnered more than 700 signatures, the City of Pittsburgh turned the once-legal spaces into a a 30 minute loading zone.
Now, the Pittsburgh parking menace camp has responded with an effort to convince the City to reinstate the former parking regulations by issuing its own online petition, which claims that if the lack of parking continues, “the business will collapse and a man that grew the business for over 50 years will lose everything.”
“If they listened to a petition, why shouldn’t we start one?” Evergreen Cafe owner and proud jagoff Phil Bacharach tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “If they listened to one, why shouldn’t they listen to two?”
The petition, created in late April by Bacharach’s daughter has, as of publication deadline, more than 100 signatures on Change.org. The petition makes a case for the City reinstating the former parking sign, which allowed for parking any time other than between 2:30 and 6 PM on weekdays.
The petition states that Bacharach has no longer been receiving any communication with anyone in the City and reiterated Bacharach’s disappointment with the result of his Right to Know Request, which largely contained screenshots of email communication between City officials about the parking spaces. Bacharach tells City Paper he calls an individual who works with the City’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure every day. A spokesperson for the City did not respond to a City Paper request for comment by press time.
“I’m gonna bother them and see how many people will sign,” Bacharach says. “And then if enough people sign, I’m gonna see why they won’t do anything about it. That’s why they changed it in the first place, because of a petition, right?”
The petition also lists several points billed as responses to “on-going lies being spread on the internet.” Evergreen Cafe customers and separate food truck businesses also used the parking, not just Bacharach, according to the petition. It also claims nobody used the parking during rush hour and that nobody parks there “out of spite.”
Some believe this ongoing dispute, which, locally, has gone viral, distracts from larger, necessary reforms to Penn Ave. — a high-speed road and the site of multiple, sometimes fatal collisions. District 9 Councilman Khari Mosley told City Paper as much in March.
In a text to City Paper, Jennifer Makovics, who started the petition to restrict parking in front of the cafe, responded magnanimously to the new petition.
“I’m happy to hear they are looking to engage with the local community on this issue,” she writes. “I suspect they might not get the outcome they’re hoping for but that’s all part of the democratic process.”
