Secret Boston

View Original

Midnight Mission 🚗 How Tufts Art Students Turned Parking Tickets into Positive Vibes

📸 Ethan LeBlanc

In the dead of night, a squad of Tufts art students hit Boston's streets, their mission: to flip the script on the dreaded parking ticket game. Led by Collin Serigne, these rule-benders replaced the usual headache-inducing fines with a badass twist — 800 cars woke up to fake tickets that packed a punch of positivity.

Picture this: you're approaching your car, spotting that notorious orange envelope, your heart sinks, expecting a nasty fine. But wait, it's a curveball from Serigne and his crew! Instead of a fine, you're hit with uplifting vibes like "you are kind" and "I believe in you." Talk about a mood flip!

📸 Ethan LeBlanc

This whole stunt was a brainchild of Serigne and his pals, Ethan LeBlanc, William Casey, and Aden Malone, all Louisiana natives and art students. They meticulously crafted these mock tickets using their own parking fine woes as a template. The result? Super legit-looking tickets printed on fancy cardstock, complete with a word search on the back for an extra kick.

From midnight to dawn, they blitzed through Boston neighborhoods — Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Medford, Somerville, you name it, leaving their mark. The idea? Jolt people with something jarring like a ticket, then hit them with a wave of good feels.

They blasted their project on LeBlanc's Instagram, half-expecting a few DMs since they cleverly included LeBlanc's social handle on the tickets. But boom, the internet exploded — Instagram blew up with comments, Reddit debated it, and local media were all over it. It was a hit, mostly.

There were haters, sure. Some folks on Reddit grumbled about the fake tickets, saying it's a tease in a city where parking is a battlefield. A few even threw shade at the "please send cash" joke on the tickets. But Serigne shrugged it off, saying the snarky comments just fueled their fire to spread some joy in these tough times.

Their motto? "We just wanted to spread positivity." And that, they did, in the most unexpected, edgy way possible.