OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The Press-Telegram’s so-called special report Sunday on street sweeping in Long Beach—which contrasted the miles of roadways the machines clean against the millions in revenue the parking tickets glean, just like the many not-special reports that have preceded it over the years—made me marvel again at the enduring attraction of this topic. I wrote pretty much the same story for P-T editors back in the early 1990s; Paul Eakins updated the stats this time. But did you catch the on-line comments? Hateful.

And that reminded me of a version of the Long Beach street-sweeping story I wrote in May 2009, about a guy named Anthony Clark, who hated street-sweeping tickets so much he went pro. Here it is again:

Anthony Clark came out of Brooklyn as a basketball player, dresses like a blues man, makes his living as a relationship coach and has been transformed by Long Beach’s overcrowded—albeit well-scrubbed—streets into the leader of the city’s newest hate group. “And I haven’t gotten a street-sweeping parking ticket since January,” Clark adds, finally getting my attention.

No street-sweeping tickets since January? In a city that issues more than 180,000 of them per year–at $42 a crack, and twice as much if you don’t pay fast enough–that claim establishes Clark as a man worth considering. His hate group, too.

“I started TicketHaters.com because I’ve been paying $1,000 a year in street-sweeping parking tickets,” says Clark, who has lived on the 900 block of Newport Avenue for 10 years. He waits, eyebrows arched, while I do the math: wow, that’s 10 grand! “I love Long Beach,” Clark resumes, “but I don’t love the parking situation.”

Almost nobody does. The lack of parking affects neighborhoods in every part of Long Beach, and the issue has become one of the rare places where people throughout the country’s most-diverse city can truly seek common ground. Clark hopes they’ll look for it on his website. He envisions turning TicketHaters.com into an organized movement—that movement occurring sometime, somewhere, once a week … the precise times and places depending on your particular street-sweeping schedule.

Bottom line: for $5 a month, TicketHaters.com will warn you when the street sweeper is coming.

“I’m not looking to make a killing; I’m trying to solve a problem,” says Clark, and in his low, slow baritone—his sheeny sport coat and the hip hat on his bald head don’t hurt, either—those words come out sounding like lyrics to a three-chord heartbreaker. “I found a way that works for me and I want to share it.”

This philosophy seems to underpin almost everything Clark has been involved in during the 20-some years since he came out west to play junior college basketball in Fresno, including most recently the relationship coaching that he and his wife do to promote a style of loving they call “luxury relationships.”

“The luxury has nothing to do with material things,” he says. “Instead, it’s a way of looking at a relationship as a luxury, based on enhancing the fulfilled person you have already become on your own–rather than looking for someone out of need, someone you expect to fulfill you, which is a terrible thing to expect of someone.”

Speaking of terrible: parking tickets. Clark has avoided them for nearly five months by developing a computer program that reminds him—via phone call, e-mail and text message–to move his car an hour before the street sweeper is scheduled to arrive. Subscribers to TicketHaters.com get the same service and the same variety of options, up to four warnings a week.

Why would somebody so fulfilled need so many reminders?

“Where I live, I am literally moving vehicles four times a week,” Clark explains. “One side of Newport is posted for street sweeping on Thursday from 12 to 4, and the other side is Friday from 12 to 4. But because the neighborhood is so crowded I often have to park on 10th Street, where on one side the signs say 4 to 8 a.m. Thursday and on the other side they say 4 to 8 a.m. Friday.”

Got it. I think.

“It gets very confusing, which is part of the problem—and not just because of the tickets,” Clark says. “In fact, the city says the only reason they issue tickets is to motivate people to move their cars; I found an article about that in American Sweeper magazine and put it on my website. But the different times and days and sides of the street are why so many people forget to move their cars.”

And that’s a bad thing, says Clark, no matter how much the parking tickets cost.

“I’ve done some research on this,” says Clark. “The thousands of tons of trash the city of Long Beach cleans from the streets would otherwise go into storm drains, then out to the ocean and onto the beach. I have a little girl who is 10 years old, and she likes to go to the beach, so I know the importance of moving my car.”

That’s why Clark took his TicketHaters.com concept to the city.

“From what I’d read, we have the same goal,” he says. “We both want to keep the oceans and beaches clean. It looked like a win-win for everybody—us being a green business, working with the city toward its goals. Or so I thought.”

Clark says his collaborative proposal was brusquely rebuffed by city officials, and the quick finality of the rejection has hit him pretty hard. “I walked away with ‘Screw you,’” he says. “I walked away with ‘They’re trying to screw us.’”

 Bottom line, Clark walked away believing the city’s street-sweeping tickets are about the bottom line. At $42 a pop, the 180,000 tickets it issues every year multiply into more than $7.5 million—not counting the ones that double in price and the ones that accumulate into tow-aways, not even considering the ones that keep drivers from renewing licenses and registration or getting insurance.

“I at least had respect for the city’s program when I thought the intent was to keep the city clean,” he says. “But I believe the intent is to make money—and to do it by taking advantage of some of the poorest people; they’re the ones least likely to be able to pay those tickets before they turn into bigger problems. I believe the city sees my little business as a threat to that.”

The whole thing bothers Clark so much that, well, let’s just say it’s given a whole new dimension to the TicketHater name.

“No love, no love,” Clark groans softly, shaking his head. “No love, whatsoever.”