The Flip-Top Menace

Just a mention of the subject makes police chiefs turn purple and starts manufacturers pleading for secrecy. But there is no longer any hiding the fact that an epidemic of parking-meter jamming is sweeping the nation. Behind it are the flip-top cans now being used for beer and soft drinks. Each comes with a small pull-ring, which, when twisted free, is near enough to the size of a nickel to fit into a parking meter, either turning it on or jamming it.

Chicago reports that of the 108,628 slugs pumped into its 30,000 parking meters last month, 74,524 were flip-top rings. Some 4,000 San Francisco meters were jammed by rings in the same period, and in New York, the traffic department is collecting about 20,000 rings a month. Elmer Ploof, in charge of parking-meter collections for Detroit, has stored in the city treasurer's safe two overflowing bushel baskets of rings taken from meters--out of sight perhaps, but not out of mind.

The can companies blame it on meters so unselective that they accept anything from religious medals and $5 gold pieces to washers and bent paper clips. They are planning, however, to change the size of their flip-top rings before the end of the year, at a cost they claim will run to millions of dollars. Until then, the police are resigned to garnering an ever-growing crop of flip-tops with a loss in revenue running into the tens of thousands.

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