And they get towed all day every day... the fine for towing from a sidewalk is $400 last I checked, plus towing fees, plus nightly storage. Pretty soon you'll owe $10k on each scooter, and if you want to operate as a business within city limits you have to pay the fines.

Actually, if the city went after them as moving vehicles they would be collected by the towers in hours.

You have to realize that those parking spots are explicitly intended for car storage, no? The city even marks many of them --- even charges for their use by the hour.

If you were going to claim that our allocation of city resources to parking is excessive, I'd agree, but you can't reasonably claim that parking a car there isn't using the space for it's intended purpose.