Unholy Wednesday

I tried to fix the words in my mind: “That fucking idiot, you bastard”—words uttered (in my direction) by a white-haired woman at the wheel of a white S.U.V. first thing this morning. My offense: I had held up traffic, first to determine whether the guy who was opening the back door of a parked vehicle was going out (he was!) and then to claim that spot by backing up into a space alongside a fire hydrant across the street and letting the traffic go by as I waited for the guy to leave. A line of maybe four cars had built up behind me. It’s not nice to block traffic, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

This was a rare Wednesday that found me out cruising for a spot. No one moves on Wednesday, because, at least in my neighborhood, no one has to move. Last Sunday night I went to check up on the Eclair, parked on K.’s Street, and ended up moving it across the street into a Tuesday-Friday spot, for the sole reason that I was fed up after the break-in and wanted Monday off. I checked on it again Monday on my way to work, and the car was O.K. (the seal of duct tape had not been breached), but there was a lime-green sign on a pole that said “No Parking Wednesday.” I might have been tempted to ignore it, or tear it down, but I had a errands to run this morning anyway, so I resigned myself to moving the car, possibly even to the $15 parking lot. But before it came to that, I went on my usual rounds.

The only hope of finding a spot on a Wednesday is to happen on someone who is just going out. I was held up on one narrow street while someone five cars ahead of me blocked traffic waiting for a spot. Did I yell obscenities at him on my way past? I did not. I said to myself, Oh, that explains it. Clearly the lady who cursed at me keeps her car in a garage.

The new spot is a Tuesday-Friday spot, and I spent a lot of time going back and forth in it, nudging the car closer to the curb, so I was somewhat dismayed to notice, just as I had achieved perfection, a sign saying “No Standing—Temporary Construction Zone.” Then I noticed that the car behind me had a permit saying “Active Fire Fighter.” Above me, a guy in a cherry-picker was adjusting a street light. I got the attention of one of the workers in the construction zone and asked if this was an O.K. spot. He said yes. So the signs must have applied to the other side of the traffic island.

On the walk home (I was at least a half mile away), I noticed one of the city’s dying breed of parking meter revenue collectors at work. He has a little safe on wheels that he pulls along, and a ring of keys. “I’m not trying to rob you,” I said, coming up behind him. “I just want to see how this works. You can’t take any quarters?”

“Nope,” he told me. He turns a key in the meter and unlocks a cylinder that looks like a bright-orange Campbell’s soup can. He screws it into the safe and dumps the quarters. “Can’t get to the quarters.” He showed me how the cylinder can’t be removed until he has twisted it into position again. “See? No quarters.” He was a white guy, in a jacket and hooded sweatshirt, and he worked fast.

I found myself checking out the various parking permits on dashboards throughout the neighborhood. There sure are a lot of them! 142,000, according to the Times. There are handicapped permits, of course, and in Loading Zones and on blocks where there is no parking 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. there are lots of cars belonging to policemen working out of the local precinct. Some of them say “Authorized Parking” or “Official Business” or give the precinct number. Some cars just have a Policemen’s Benevolent Association insignia lying on the dashboard. There was one unusual-looking permit, and I went into the street to get a closer look at it: it turned out to be the takeout menu from a restaurant called Fatty Crab.

Early Signs

In my madness, rather than double park today, I left the block where I had an 8:30-10 spot and drove to a secret place where you have to move your car only once a week. Sadly, this tactic failed to produce a miracle, so I parked temporarily in a 9:30-11 spot, took a walk by the river, bought coffee on the street for 65 cents (all I had on me was 70 cents), and miscalculated how long it would take me to return to the car and get in position for a legal 10 o’clock spot. I got back at 9:20; the Broom had passed, and on the first block I cruised, there was nothing. As I turned the corner to the next block, I found myself touching the evil-eye worrybeads that hang from my rearview mirror. There is nothing like needing a parking spot to make me fall back on religion.

This block had filled up, too, but there was a space I thought I could fit into between a pickup truck and a Nissan Maxima. I hopped out to ask the driver of the pickup truck, east of a fire hydrant, if he would mind moving back a little. “I’m already at the yellow line,” he said. I checked and reported to him that he had two feet. Then I approached the Nissan, hoping it didn’t belong to that young woman whose license plate I accidentally crumpled last week. No, this was an older woman, on her cell phone, who fumbled to roll down her window—she had to turn the key in the ignition first; damn those automatic windows—and who was very agreeable.

However, as I am extremely careful, for the moment, not to bump the cars of my fellow-parkers, I got wedged halfway into the spot and couldn’t complete the maneuver. I left the car there, half in, half out, and ran ahead to the two cars in front of the Nissan and asked their drivers to please pull up a little. After what seemed like an eternity, all three cars complied, and I slipped into my spot. It was 9:23.

The rearview mirror offered the best view today: the familiar neighborhood storefronts, their signs reversed, receding into the distance: copy shop, TV repair, Chinese laundry, barbershop, parking lot with concertina wire. A black Mitsubishi Eclipse passed, went around the block and reappeared in the rearview, its driver entreating the person on the other side of the fire hydrant to give him an inch. I recognized the Eclipse owner as one of the waiters at the Greek diner on the corner. He was in that spot so snug that you couldn’t have dropped a slice of toast between the two cars.

There was a front-page article in today’s Times following up on the Mayor’s plan to rescind parking placards for employees of various city agencies (here). I was not surprised to see it, because I seem to recall that something was going to happen in March. I did not find much new in the article, except that some of the placards out there belong to ex-Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani (it must be hard, once you’ve enjoyed full mayoral parking privileges, to go back to being an ordinary citizen). The biggest whiners are auxiliary police, who volunteer and don’t think it’s fair that they should have to pay to park if they are not getting paid to patrol. Plus, they have to buy their own doughnuts.

So far, the only sign of parking reform in my neighborhood is the appearance of pedestals for Muni Meters. The Muni Meters, which are electrified (they dug up the sidewalk to lay wire for them), have yet to be installed, but when they are, they will make street parking more expensive and more sophisticated. They will also make the old parking meters obsolete.

I wonder what will become of the old parking meters. Will they chop them off at street level and dump them in the ocean? Create an artificial reef? Or donate them to some country where the parking technology is a generation or two behind—say, Cuba? And what will happen to the people who collect the quarters from the parking meters? I have seen them on the street, mostly black guys, trundling buckets with special cylindrical spouts that clamp on to the meters to receive the quarters. Actually, it doesn't look like a bad job for someone who likes to be outside and not have anyone looking over his shoulder. Wouldn't hurt to have a fetish for small change. The Muni Meters will take coins, and issue little slips to lay on your dashboard. So perhaps we needn't worry yet about the decline of the parking meter revenue collector.