Anthony Clark tired of forgetting to move his cars on street-sweeping days.
The $42 tickets didn't help. He estimates that he and his wife paid more than $1,000 in annual fines for seven or eight years.
"That's pretty common for people on my block, in my neighborhood," Clark says, explaining that many of the citations doubled because he paid them late.
Clark and a group of neighbors would remind each other to move their cars in the 900 block of Newport Avenue, and on adjacent 10th Street, before the sweepers came on Thursdays and Fridays.
"That system didn't work too well because we kept getting tickets," Clark says.
Since knocking on doors wasn't the most reliable method, Clark launched TicketHaters.com at the start of the year to notify his friends and neighbors by pre-recorded phone message, e-mail or text that it was time to move their cars.
"It worked perfectly," Clark, 42, says.
So many people signed up that he worked out a few bugs and remade the site as a commercial business, which launched a few weeks ago.
About 45 customers have signed up, paying $4.99 a month for up to four reminders a week. Those who register can allocate $1 of their monthly fee to a Long Beach school.
Clark is a businessman but he is also a resident frustrated by the high costs of tickets. He plays to the ire of repeat violators like himself on his site.
"Every time you forget to move your car, the city gets richer and you get ripped off," Clark says in an online video clip.
Though a Web entrepreneur, Clark is a budding programer.
"Four years ago, I didn't even know how to check my e-mail," he says.
Clark and his wife work as dating and relationship coaches. He had learned to build a site for their primary business and then applied the skills to TicketHaters.
"I am a self-made geek in a way," he says.
Because it is online, TicketHaters works in any community, not just Long Beach.
The site could be in a niche unto itself; Clark knows of no competitors -- other than City Hall coffers fed by ticket revenue.
Long Beach wrote about 230,000 street-sweeping tickets in 2009, bringing in $7.4 to $8 million, says James Kuhl, director of the city's Environmental Services Bureau.
But none of the revenue from this year's take will come from Clark -- at least he hopes.
He hasn't received a ticket since January.
I'll have a bit more on TicketHaters in Monday's business section. Also check out the profile of Clark in The District Weekly at http://thedistrictweekly.com/2009/print/news/wake-up-call/
