If I am wakeful on Tuesday nights at ten o’clock, I will watch “Parking Wars” (on A&E), but if I’m already sleepy, it is not designed to keep me up. Last night, I fell asleep waiting for the premiere to start (the cats have been getting me up at five in the morning), and also dozed during the show itself. It was a relief to finally go to bed when it was over.
These parking wars, set in Philadelphia, are between the parkers and the enforcers; I was hoping for civil wars among the parkers themselves. There was a segment in the auto pound, with deranged people trying to get their cars back. It features a frustration meter, which is good, and another graphic shows how long the person spends trying to get her car out of the pound. None of the victims come off very well, and the bureaucrats seem cool and rational in comparison. Mostly what this did was bring back unpleasant memories of the Thanksgiving weekend when I was in graduate school, in Vermont, and visited my brother (at the time), who had a loft next to the Hotel Chelsea, from in front of which my 1965 Plymouth Fury II got towed. In those days, it was no mean feat to scare up a hundred dollars, and to complicate matters my wallet had just been stolen, so I don’t know what I was using for I.D. A classic catch 22: the registration was in the car, and I couldn’t have the car until I produced the registration. I did what any girl would do under the circumstances: I cried. A certain Sergeant McEvilly scolded me, shaking his finger in my face and saying, “You can’t get through life by crying.” But he did give me my car back. And Hillary Clinton did win in New Hampshire.
There was also a segment where they followed the booters around. The boot is a medieval-looking contraption that clamps over a front wheel and disables your car. The booters drive around in teams, one of them tapping license-plate numbers into a computer to see who has unpaid parking tickets. If the scofflaw owes hundreds and hundreds of dollars, he gets booted and then towed. One of the booters always has to watch the other’s back, so she doesn’t get clubbed while attaching the boot. The drama lies in seeing the Philadelphians emerge from their houses and beg not to have their cars towed, or curse the booters. People scrawl obscenities on the boots, pee on them. (The booters wear gloves.) The best was when a little kid watching with her father as a shiny yellow boot was being applied (NOT to her father's car) asserted her desire to become a booter when she grew up.
Obviously, these parking wars are going to be weighted in favor of the law. The producers will be hanging around with the enforcers, developing relationships with them. The booters and meter maids and tow-truck drivers will be the steady cast, and the parkers will be at a disadvantage, like guests on "Candid Camera." Maybe in one episode the producers’ cars should get booted or ticketed or towed. Or the cops could lose their parking permits. That would shake things up. Otherwise, "Parking Wars" reminded me of why I don't watch reality shows: too much like real life.
Showing posts with label "Parking Wars". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Parking Wars". Show all posts
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Beemer
The great excitement on the parking block yesterday morning was not the balmy weather, or the premiere of the new reality series “Parking Wars” (tonight at 10 on A&E), or the news that GM is developing a car that drives itself (sounds like a disaster film to me), or that the Catholic Church is fixin’ to exhume Padre Pio (the better to venerate him, or something, the ghouls). No, at my end of the block everyone was gazing at the car in front of me: a razor-blade-blue 1996 BMW Z3 roadster, parked by a tall dark man in a mustard-color puffy jacket and corduroys, who sat with the door open and one leg stretched out, working on a laptop. What was James Bond doing, parking on the street? At one point, he got restless—alternate-side parking is an hour-and-a-half exercise on this block (Mon. & Thurs., 8:30-10)—and got out, lit a cigarette, crossed the street, and came back with a discarded gift box from the recyclables, which he collapsed, laid flat on the sidewalk, and used as a backdrop for digital photographs of novelty metal street signs with the names of car races on them.
Behind me was the Puerto Rican who had witnessed the violence that broke out on this block, back in November. He came to my car door and said hello. It turns out he’s a super for a few buildings down the street. The tenants expect him to do everything, he says—plumbing, electricity . . . “I tell them, You got the wrong person,” he said. His cell phone rang. “I have to go—is an emergency.” He looked up and down the street. "I don't want to go." He didn’t want to risk getting a ticket. Then, “Nothing I can do. I gonna hope they don’t show up.”
Mine was the last car before the driveway for the parking lot, and cars turning into the lot were coming awfully close to grazing my vulnerable right headlight, so after the super left, I backed up a little. When I wasn’t ogling the man in the blue BMW, I studied the parking lot. A person pulls in in an S.U.V. and leaves on foot; the parking-lot attendant backs the S.U.V. onto a corrugated steel slab; he gets out and pushes a button; and a pneumatic lift levitates the car to the second story. Somebody invented this system: bunk beds for cars.
Everybody heading up the block—men, women, dog walkers clutching their leashes and their bags of poop—stops and looks back at the zippy little sports car. Finally, at about ten minutes to ten, when our time is almost up, I cannot resist stretching my legs in its direction. “That’s a beautiful car,” I say. “But don’t you worry about parking it on the street?”
“It’s my wife’s,” the man says, less, I suppose, to explain why he doesn’t worry than to keep me from getting any ideas. (Have I said he's incredibly handsome?) “It’s a wreck.”
“It is?” It doesn't look like a wreck to me, although his front license plate is almost as mangled as mine, and his driver's-side rearview mirror is attached with duct tape. “Have you seen my car?” I look back at the Eclair: its right eye is held in the socket with transparent packing tape, and the passenger’s-side rearview mirror is down to just a plastic skeleton and some springs. When I was looking for a spot last Sunday night, I paused on my second-favorite block (Mon. & Thurs. 7:30-8), wondering if I could fit into a small space behind a van (it’s hard to parallel-park behind a van, probably because you can’t see), and a woman who was double-parked across the street honked, to tell me that there was a fire hydrant in that spot (which explained why she wasn’t parked in it herself). When I rolled down the passenger's-side window to talk to her—I have automatic windows, which I hate—the window would go down only about three inches. Luckily, it went up again. I guess when I got sideswiped that time and the door got dented, the slot the window goes up and down in got bent out of shape. Also, the keyhole on that door is gone.
James Bond pointed to the hood of his BMW and said, “They jumped on it.” It was true: there was a big dent in the middle of the hood. “It’s the only explanation,” he said. “The whole thing will have to be replaced. But as long as we are in the city . . .”
I understood. It would never occur to me to replace my passenger's-side door, and I have been thinking of not replacing the passenger's side rearview mirror again. The only time I miss it is when I'm watching for the street sweeper.
When we left, a woman cop was writing a ticket for a car at a meter across the street. The super's car did not get a ticket. At the corner, the man with the BMW stopped and turned back to his car. "I think I forgot to lock it," he said.
Behind me was the Puerto Rican who had witnessed the violence that broke out on this block, back in November. He came to my car door and said hello. It turns out he’s a super for a few buildings down the street. The tenants expect him to do everything, he says—plumbing, electricity . . . “I tell them, You got the wrong person,” he said. His cell phone rang. “I have to go—is an emergency.” He looked up and down the street. "I don't want to go." He didn’t want to risk getting a ticket. Then, “Nothing I can do. I gonna hope they don’t show up.”
Mine was the last car before the driveway for the parking lot, and cars turning into the lot were coming awfully close to grazing my vulnerable right headlight, so after the super left, I backed up a little. When I wasn’t ogling the man in the blue BMW, I studied the parking lot. A person pulls in in an S.U.V. and leaves on foot; the parking-lot attendant backs the S.U.V. onto a corrugated steel slab; he gets out and pushes a button; and a pneumatic lift levitates the car to the second story. Somebody invented this system: bunk beds for cars.
Everybody heading up the block—men, women, dog walkers clutching their leashes and their bags of poop—stops and looks back at the zippy little sports car. Finally, at about ten minutes to ten, when our time is almost up, I cannot resist stretching my legs in its direction. “That’s a beautiful car,” I say. “But don’t you worry about parking it on the street?”
“It’s my wife’s,” the man says, less, I suppose, to explain why he doesn’t worry than to keep me from getting any ideas. (Have I said he's incredibly handsome?) “It’s a wreck.”
“It is?” It doesn't look like a wreck to me, although his front license plate is almost as mangled as mine, and his driver's-side rearview mirror is attached with duct tape. “Have you seen my car?” I look back at the Eclair: its right eye is held in the socket with transparent packing tape, and the passenger’s-side rearview mirror is down to just a plastic skeleton and some springs. When I was looking for a spot last Sunday night, I paused on my second-favorite block (Mon. & Thurs. 7:30-8), wondering if I could fit into a small space behind a van (it’s hard to parallel-park behind a van, probably because you can’t see), and a woman who was double-parked across the street honked, to tell me that there was a fire hydrant in that spot (which explained why she wasn’t parked in it herself). When I rolled down the passenger's-side window to talk to her—I have automatic windows, which I hate—the window would go down only about three inches. Luckily, it went up again. I guess when I got sideswiped that time and the door got dented, the slot the window goes up and down in got bent out of shape. Also, the keyhole on that door is gone.
James Bond pointed to the hood of his BMW and said, “They jumped on it.” It was true: there was a big dent in the middle of the hood. “It’s the only explanation,” he said. “The whole thing will have to be replaced. But as long as we are in the city . . .”
I understood. It would never occur to me to replace my passenger's-side door, and I have been thinking of not replacing the passenger's side rearview mirror again. The only time I miss it is when I'm watching for the street sweeper.
When we left, a woman cop was writing a ticket for a car at a meter across the street. The super's car did not get a ticket. At the corner, the man with the BMW stopped and turned back to his car. "I think I forgot to lock it," he said.
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