Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi gets the boot for parking in his own spot at City Hall

Mike Bertino

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• Ross Mirkarimi
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The truly insidious Us Weekly has a nifty little photo feature titled "Just like us!" featuring famous people caught in the act of jogging, ordering at Del Taco, buying handbags at Prada — just like us!

We're not sure whether San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is "just like us" — most folks don't have anecdotes at the ready about charming the hell out of a Venezuelan soap opera queen at a Brazilian meet 'n' greet (and starting a family with her). But Mirkarimi can ostensibly better commiserate with hundreds of the city's more unfortunate souls now that he knows, firsthand, the joy of walking to his car and discovering parking control officers have fitted it with an immobilizing boot — a story we broke online last week.

"I'm doing my part to support the [Municipal Transportation Authority] budget," deadpanned Mirkarimi, who admitted he'd let "some tickets pile up." 

You need to amass five outstanding tickets before getting a "booting" from parking control officers — but the District 5 supe said this is all a big misunderstanding. He claims he's been hit with several tickets for parking in his own designated City Hall spot. In at least one instance, he claims parking enforcers didn't see the pass on the dashboard of his 1993 Jeep ragtop; that pass, he adds, was subsequently stolen out of his car, leading to more tickets. Mirkarimi says he'll appeal those tickets — and, perhaps, get back the $205 the city charges to remove a boot.

On the plus side, Mirkarimi can claim that he's bucking a trend: SF Weekly reported in April that the number of bootings administered in San Francisco has dropped 20 percent since last year.

No one knows why bootings are down — it doesn't make sense in a bad economy. Now, possibly, we have an answer. Perhaps scores of people have eluded a booting by stealing Mirkarimi's pass and parking wherever they please, with impunity.

Finally, it warrants mentioning that at last week's special meeting addressing the aforementioned MTA budget, Mirkarimi bemoaned the social and environmental ramifications of prioritizing cars over public transportation. Surely, he noted, it serves the city's best interest to encourage people to not drive their cars.

We don't think this booting was what he had in mind.