Last week, she joined the expanding list of people whose cars Tapella has had towed from the lot behind his pool hall. Ritti had dined at OD's Kitchen, which according to signs posted in the lot, shares the parking area with the pool hall.

Ritti's car was OK in the lot while she was eating at OD's, but she ran afoul of Tapella's unwritten and unforgiving parking regulations when she left her vehicle there beyond the diner's 2pm closing. When she returned to the lot from some downtown shopping at about 3:30pm, her car was gone.

Tapella, who had arrived at 3pm to start preparing the pool hall for its 4pm daily opening, gave her a grace period before calling the tow truck company. She was perplexed and frustrated since her car had been the only one in the lot.

"Customer parking only means a patron of the business," Tapella explained. "Once somebody leaves, they're no longer a customer. I show up at 3pm, I want that lot cleaned out because I don't know where these people are. I went over and knocked on (OD's) door and asked 'You got anybody in here?,' and he said they're closed. I went back over and waited another half hour and called (the tow truck company) at 3:30pm."

Ritti calculated her lunch in downtown Gilroy cost more than $200 after the cost of towing.

"Our afternoon in Gilroy was downright stinky," she wrote in a letter to the Dispatch, "and there was no trace of garlic in the air."

Tapella had little guilt over a lesson he has spent the last 12 years hammering home.

"Many years ago, I used to come here Friday and Saturday night and my parking lot was full," Tapella said. "And I didn't have a person in the pool hall."

But instead of rolling over, Tapella fought back. He spent $4,000 putting up signs and railings to mark his territory. He installed video cameras in the parking lot and hired a night-time watchman for $15 an hour.

Tapella doesn't discriminate when it comes to violators. He has towed customers of area bars, the bowling alley, the new gym that has opened up a few doors down. He has towed a Gilroy police officer's personal car and Congressman Mike Honda's (D-San Jose) vehicle.

"I went out there with him and when he saw the sign, he said he was in the wrong," Tapella said of the congressman, whose car he towed about two years ago. "But he was really nice about it."

Police agree that Tapella has every right to remove cars from his lot.

"He's a frustrated business owner," Police Sgt. Kurt Svardal said. "He was having a huge problem because he wasn't having any parking for his customers. That's why he had the signs posted."

People are finally catching on that when it comes to his lot, Tapella means business. Yet he worries that the opening of a new health clinic and upcoming downtown renovations may tempt non-customers to creep into his spaces. Although he may have to go on training the public, for the moment he thinks the rules are clear - a customer is "a customer" only as long as they're in the diner or his pool hall.

"When I first did the lot, we had to tow quite a bit there until people finally figured it out," Tapella said. "We barely tow anymore because people got the message."

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