Coral Gables: Hide your filthy, low-class pickup

Beginning August 8, Coral Gables will once again enforce a ban on parking pickup trucks in driveways overnight, after the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of pickup-truck crusader Lowell Kuvin, who started his fight after a $50 ticket in 2003.

Though $50 sounds stupid enough, tickets will now cost as much as $500 — that's no small parking ticket. Here are four things you can do for less than it costs to leave your F-150 in plain view in the Gables overnight:

1. Get high and roast an illegally slaughtered pig. An ounce of weed, enough to get all of your friends higher than Manute Bol in a hot-air balloon, costs around $350, based on estimates at priceofweed.com and not at all on personal experience. And you can buy that pig and have it killed in a back alley for 130 bucks.

2. Take an escort out for a two-hour gourmet dinner. Sasha, a "mouth-dropping Spaniard" who advertises with New Times, charges $150 an hour, and a six-course meal at Romeo's Café on Coral Way will set you back $90 a person.

3. Skip high school. Doral diploma mill InterAmerican Academy will sell you a certificate and transcript for $399. It's money well spent — Miami Dade College accepts Inter-American "graduates" without reservation.

4. Drive as fast as you possibly can through a school zone. The fine is capped at $250 but doubles if you're in a school zone. Yes, it costs the same to leave your pickup in your own driveway as it does to drive it at 100 mph past an elementary school.

So think twice before you park that truck of yours. If Coral Gables has its way, you might as well just get high and kill a pig, solicit a prostitute, drop out of high school, or blow back some kids in a crosswalk.