Here was the scene in Old Town the other day.

A lady was sitting in her vehicle, looking at her phone. This vehicle was parked alongside a curb on one of the lettered streets, just immediately south of Second.

Let me show you what I mean:

And there she sat, just tap-tap-tapping away, lost in whatever tale her phone was spinning out for her.

Here’s what happened next. A dude came around the corner in his own vehicle, spotted her sitting in her car and thought, aha, here is a parking space that will soon open up for me. So he waited there a moment, the back half of his car still sticking out into the Second Street crosswalk, idling, waiting, waiting …

But the lady was unaware of his designs on her parking space. She just tap-tap-tapped, on and on.

The ants in this guy’s pants continued to multiply until he could no longer bear it. He leaned on his horn and startled the lady out of her reverie. At which point she fired a WHAT? hand signal at him. He replied with several gestures of his own. LoCO felt that the story had reached its apotheosis and so exited the scene, stage south. We suspected there was likely another angle to consider.

And yes, of course: It being mid-day in Old Town, there were probably 10 empty curbside parking spaces available on Third Street, half a block in either direction, with more in the parking lot across the way.

But never mind all that. There are a lot of questions you could ask about this whole encounter, and here is the one we will focus on for purposes of this poll. Is it all right to just sit in your car while parked at a public parking place? Or are you doing something impolite when you do that?