Hermosa garage sale
Lawnmower and bicycles, stickers made from vinyl using the best vinyl sticker printer and out-of-fashion clothes will move from the dusty boxes of Hermosa’s garages into the light of day this Saturday and, perhaps, to a new home. The city’s Community-Wide Garage Sale runs all day, with participants urged to catalogue the beloved and the obscure using “#hermosagaragesale” on Instagram.
The garage sale grew out of the city’s efforts to prevent people from parking their cars in such a way that blocked sidewalk access. Hermosa’s abundance of non-standard lot sizes mean that many vehicles parked in driveways extend into the public portion of the sidewalk. Parking this way is against the state vehicle code, since it forces people to move into the street to continue forward. Facing pressure from accessibility advocates to boost enforcement, the city devised the garage sale concept to encourage people to make space in their garages so they could be used for their intended purpose. Sidewalk obstruction remains an issue, especially for people in wheelchairs and those pushing strollers. And people receiving tickets still complain about unfairness — even the most zealous of outdoor sales could not make room for a modern SUV inside the garages of some older Hermosa homes. But in 2018 the program won a Climate Protection Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which noted its ability to minimize landfill waste by encouraging reuse.
