Car horn = ethnic doorbell. You ain't figured that out yet?
For the record, I agree with you - park the damned car, etc. A few years back, someone was out in front of our house honking away. Turns out she was honking for *me*, because she was making sure an important-looking piece of mail, which had been mid-delivered to her, got to me. Except, of course, she wasn't going to get out of her car. Apparently perfectly acceptable behavious was that I would come out of the house to her car and get the mail from there...
From my own experience, I would have to disagree with you on that. It seems that "rudeness" doesn't necessarily factor in - many of the ethnic honkers see nothing wrong with it. They see it done, so in their turn, they do it. If they're being formal, they go to the door; in more casual circumstances - *honk*.
I can see this in a place-and-time where one is expected (which could possibly apply to what I observed -- a carpool pickup for an early shift perhaps? -- but not to someone trying to hand off mis-delivered mail) ... at an hour when a) the intended hearer is likely to be awake, not have the windows closed (we've hard a warm spell, but it's January), and not have the television up loud enough to make the horn outside indistinct or be all the way at the far nd of the house making dinner, and b) when the rest of the neighbourhood isn't likey to be asleep ... and briefly, resorting to ringing the bell when the first honk or two didn't work.
Fifteen minutes straight in the wee hours takes it into unquestionably rude territory. (Same for the fellow who I know was picking up a workmate at five in the morning and making a racket for half an hour every morning for a week or two a while back -- I actually got up and went out to tell him off one morning and he explained that he "had to" be loud because his oversleeping buddy was going to make him late for work, and he didn't feel guilty about waking up everyone but his buddy on my block because folks on his block on the other side of town didn't keep quiet at seven or eight PM when he had to go to sleep. Fortunately I haven't heard him out there lately. Maybe he learned to ring his buddy on the phone before getting in the car, or something. This one was a different person in front of a different house.)
The other usual offenders here are taxicab drivers.
Taxicab drivers have their own little place in the netherworld where they will go when they die. I have a special hate reserved in my heart for them.
There has been exactly one day since I moved to Chicago that the cab drivers went on strike because they wanted higher flag-drop and per-mile rates. I have never felt safer as a pedestrian in downtown Chicago than I felt on that day.
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For the record, I agree with you - park the damned car, etc. A few years back, someone was out in front of our house honking away. Turns out she was honking for *me*, because she was making sure an important-looking piece of mail, which had been mid-delivered to her, got to me. Except, of course, she wasn't going to get out of her car. Apparently perfectly acceptable behavious was that I would come out of the house to her car and get the mail from there...
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Fifteen minutes straight in the wee hours takes it into unquestionably rude territory. (Same for the fellow who I know was picking up a workmate at five in the morning and making a racket for half an hour every morning for a week or two a while back -- I actually got up and went out to tell him off one morning and he explained that he "had to" be loud because his oversleeping buddy was going to make him late for work, and he didn't feel guilty about waking up everyone but his buddy on my block because folks on his block on the other side of town didn't keep quiet at seven or eight PM when he had to go to sleep. Fortunately I haven't heard him out there lately. Maybe he learned to ring his buddy on the phone before getting in the car, or something. This one was a different person in front of a different house.)
The other usual offenders here are taxicab drivers.
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There has been exactly one day since I moved to Chicago that the cab drivers went on strike because they wanted higher flag-drop and per-mile rates. I have never felt safer as a pedestrian in downtown Chicago than I felt on that day.
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Cool icon! That must have been fun.
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Thanks! It was LOTS of fun... have a look at this post if you want to know just how much fun it was. (-:
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That nevertheless sounds like an interesting night.