Plan C (continued)

When I woke up this morning, the Éclair was still way across town in a spot that was good till nine. I wanted to get over there early so I could get back to my side of town in time to snare an 8:30-10 spot. I left the house at about 8:20, and, I must say, my timing was perfect. I got to Penny Lane just in time to pull in behind a white S.U.V., in the first spot on the block. I had to ask the driver, a woman (a skier, judging by her vanity plates), if she would mind pulling up a foot—my rear end was sticking out a little too far beyond the pole with the sign for metered parking. “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I said. “I know the parking lot is right there.” (Someone has put a splotch of yellow paint on the curb to communicate the need for clearance at the parking-lot entrance.) The woman was very nice: without interrupting her cell-phone conversation, she started her car and pulled up two feet.

A Mack truck turned the corner and I watched in my sideview mirror as it stopped and the driver got out and moved two garbage cans into the crosswalk, blocking the street. This was not anarchy but a thoughtful (if wasted) civic gesture: the truck was delivering oil to an apartment building, and the street would be impassable for a good half hour. A delivery truck went around the garbage-can barriers and parked behind me. The stuffed animal strapped to its grille was a camel, I decided. Then a U-Haul went around the barriers, followed by an off-duty cab, the silver truck that picks up dry-cleaning from the Chinese laundry, and several cars, a few of which squeezed into the parking lot. Soon cars were lined up all along the street, honking. Finally, the cabdriver got out and motioned for everyone to back up and the street cleared—until a garbage truck turned onto the block, and the whole exercise began again.

The skier left her car at 9:20; I noticed that she had a parking permit. It occurred to me to pick up a few shirts that I had left at the Chinese laundry weeks ago. And then there was nothing to do but sit in the car. I haven’t sat on this street for a long time. I meant to try to notice whether the Mack truck circled around and the driver moved the garbage cans back to their respective curbs. But I got absorbed in the jacket of an audio version of “Crime and Punishment” that I found last weekend in a funky little store attached to an orchard in Massachusetts. Books on cassette are almost obsolete now, and my technology for playing CDs with a converter on my car’s tape player has broken down, so I was delighted to come across this used two-dollar Dostoevsky. When I ran out of radio stations in Connecticut, around Hartford, I slipped Raskolnikov into the tape player. He is a strangely compelling travel companion.

The book, in a translation by David McDuff, is abridged, a literary act that I usually don’t hold with, but in the case of a Russian novel on a short trip it was a good idea. Raskolnikov commits his crime right away—none of this sitting around gassing till page 400, as in “The Brothers K.” There is a riff on the difference between being poor and being destitute (Raskolnikov is destitute), and a long letter from Mom. When the reader, a British actor named Alex Jennings, who is excellent, does a woman’s voice, he sounds hilariously like one of the “Monty Python” troupe playing an old frump. I broke off on Tape 2, Side B, in which R., who has been ill and delirious (uh-oh), is taken by a friend to a party and overhears gossip about the murder of the old pawnbroker and her sister …

I will have to plan another trip to resume my adventures with Raskolnikov. Meanwhile, here is his garage.

Wit’s End

My Friday-morning strategy went all to hell this morning when I made the mistake of sleeping in. I got to my car at eighty-thirty and found it surrounded by orange cones; notices posted on both sides of the street announced that they would be shooting an episode of “Nurse Jackie” today. O.K., no problem, I’ll drive around. Jeff Spurgeon was playing excellent music on WQXR—something Spanish, a Mozart Horn Concerto, a souped-up version of Vivaldi’s Autumn . . . As it turned out, I got to hear quite a lot of music.

I made my usual rounds, even visiting the Sanctuary, though I had little hope of finding solace there, and after a half hour I gave up and headed for the parking lot by the river. A woman there said she had nothing for me and directed me down the road to a section of the lot that has to be entered through a toll gate. She said it was the same price—fifteen dollars if you get there before ten-thirty. I have never liked this lot, so when the attendant said it was full and I would have to double park and leave my keys, I said no thanks and headed out again.

It was necessary to stop at a deli for coffee and a muffin before implementing Plan C: Drive across town and poach a spot in someone else’s territory. By the time I got over there, the street sweeper had passed, and I pulled into a very luxurious spot, all town houses, playgrounds, and yellow leaves. At ten, I got out of the car, and the man in front of me also got out of his car, a black Lexus. “Is it ten or ten-thirty?” he asked me. “Ten,” I said, looking at my watch. “I mean the sign,” he said. Oh my God, he was right: the sign said “No Parking Tuesday & Friday 9-10:30 A.M.” I certainly was in foreign territory. “I wish it WAS ten,” he said. “I’m tired of sitting here. But you just know as soon as we leave the meter maid will come along.”

As long as I was out of the car, I went to a diner on the corner and got another cup of coffee. Then I resumed my vigil. Fortunately, I had bought a copy of the Times and it had this great article on lobstering by Charles McGrath.

Otherwise, it was the kind of morning that makes a car owner's thoughts turn fondly toward garages.

Alternative Candidate

I drove into the city from Rockaway just before sunset on Halloween, determined to find a Tuesday-Friday spot, to take advantage of the suspension of alternate-side parking for Election Day. I felt out of practice, almost as if I were in a foreign country; my strategies are all geared to Monday-Thursday. I went all the way to the outer limits of my cruising range, and saw a band of Mexicans in sombreros walking up the street—and Marie-Antoinette in the crosswalk—before I gave up. Luckily, I had a plan in place: enough quarters to buy an hour at a meter, after which parking was free. A woman wearing a painted paper cat mask and a kimono stood on the corner, waving one white paw up and down. In downtown Manhattan, Halloween is for grownups.

We set our clocks back, and on Sunday morning I spent my extra hour cruising for a parking place. Actually, I spent less than ten minutes. Down the street, a left on the avenue, a decision not to turn right at the first block with Tuesday-Friday street-cleaning hours, because the car in front of me turned right, and I knew it would beat me to any spot on that street. Instead I took the next right, watching on the south side of the street: hydrant, driveway, hydrant, driveway, metered parking only . . . nothing. I went around the corner and up the next block, watching on the left: double-parked van, hydrant—there were a couple of spots on the Monday-Thursday side, but I was holding out for Tuesday-Friday—another hydrant, and, finally, up ahead a van pulling out of the last legal spot on the block. Yes! I nosed in to claim the spot while through traffic flowed past, then pulled out and did a proper job of parallel parking. All set for Election Day.

Mayor Bloomberg has been pretty friendly to the parking lobby, ever since he riled up so many car owners in Queens by implying that they were too lazy to get up in the morning and chip out their cars, which were embedded in the ice like mastodons in the Swiss Alps. Over the weekend, a friend was trying to talk me into voting for Bloomberg's Democratic rival Bill Thompson. What Thompson has going for him, according to my friend, is that he has two cats. (She seemed pretty desperate to find common ground between us.) I have to admit that there are a couple of reasons to stick it to Bloomberg: the term-limits thing (he was very much against an exception to term limits when Giuliani was so popular, in the wake of 9/11), and the cynical assumption that with his vast wealth he can simply buy New York City. Also, I am tired of getting junk mail from him—there’s another pamphlet every day—and his telephone campaign stepped over the line by calling me on Sunday.

So I ask myself the eternal question: What would Dennis Kucinich do? And I remember that Bloomberg and Thompson are not my only choices: I can vote for Reverend Billy, of the Church of Not Shopping. Actually, now it’s called the Church of Life After Shopping, but Reverend Billy really is on the ballot, as the candidate for the Green Party. He has about as much chance of being elected mayor as my cousin Dennis had of being elected President, but it will still be fun to vote for him (check out this video of him dissing Bloomberg), and better than not voting at all—a truer expression of patriotism.

Some flowers for All Souls' Day:

Last Friday

Last Friday, not relishing the idea of sitting out in the car for an hour and a half, I left the house early, strongly motivated by the need for caffeine (it seems I accidentally tossed the basket component of my espresso pot in with the recyclables). Friday mornings one can sometimes find a spot that is good right away, because people give up prime spaces to get an early start on the weekend. Sure enough, there was a man with dress shirts on hangers draped over his shoulder, opening the back of an S.U.V. “Are you pulling out?” He nodded yes. “Great. Thanks.” We were on a marginal road, with cars parked on both sides, and I shamelessly blocked traffic until he moved.

Come Saturday, Diwali, I was off to Rockaway to begin the great experiment: lending my neighbors T. & T. my car in exchange for their parking it. I am hoping this will be a win-win proposition. So far, so good. They get to use the car to take Little T. to the doctor. Little T. is fine and healthy, and looks contented enough in the Éclair, though I hope they take him someplace fun in it, too, so that he doesn’t associate it solely with doctors. I am going to move the moose bobblehead so he can see it from his backward-facing car seat.

Then T. the Dad put me onto a whole new parking scene in our neighborhood: just two blocks away is a street with a Thursday-Friday street-cleaning schedule, which nicely complements the Monday-Tuesday schedule on our block. Furthermore, this block has a median strip, which doubles the number of spaces available. I already knew about the street around the block, where the city has not yet put up signs; if you can find a space there, theoretically, it’s good forever. T. the Mom assures me that the car is fine, but I don’t think she understands the alternate-side-parking ethos. I am not content to know the car is fine—I want to know exactly where it is and how long it can stay there.

If I had had to sit in the car this week, I would have enjoyed reading about the Vatican’s reaching out to disaffected Anglicans. Good luck with that, Your Holiness. Why do you think they formed the Church of England, anyway?

Perfect Plan

My plan was to get to my car by nine this morning—I had parked in a Tuesday-Friday 9:30-11 A.M. spot, having buzzed with no success my two favorite spots when I got home last night at eight. I made a brilliant U-turn on a major crosstown thoroughfare (saving precious minutes), and peeked into the Sanctuary, where an S.U.V. had just scored a spot, and a van was trying to squeeze into a space in front of two motorcycles (I could see that no good was going to come of that). When I turned down the street that was my main chance, on the block ahead I recognized the flashing lights of the street sweeper. So far, so good. Traffic was blocked ahead, in part, no doubt, because of my fellow-parkers, and I sat through two red lights before traffic started to flow again. I might have had to slow things down by creeping along on the Tuesday-Friday side, hoping there was still room for me, but, joy of joys, the first car on the left had generous space behind it, and I was able to coast into place, right in front of a doorman building. Perfect.

Strangely, while I was sitting in the car I got a call on my cell phone from a man I talked to last summer at the ferry meeting in Brooklyn’s Manhattan Beach. He kept apologizing for taking my time, but he couldn’t have called at a better moment: for the next hour, I had nothing but time. It seems he will be offering an alternative ferry ride at some point. I told him I was definitely interested, and I am (even though I am not commuting from Rockaway right now). When we were through talking, I turned to the Times and read about the big sticker crisis: apparently the glue was defective on two million registration stickers that the Department of Motor Vehicles sent out, and on another two and a half million inspection stickers, and people are getting ticketed for not displaying their stickers properly, and complaining bitterly.

Later, walking up the block, I noticed that more than half of the vehicles with New York State license plates did indeed show, as the Times reporter Danny Hakim put it, “signs of profound registration sticker distress.” I recommend transparent packing tape, the same kind I used for holding my right headlight in place, until my new mechanic refitted it with a judicious screw. It never occurred to me that the glue was defective. I thought it was my windshield.

I hope it is not against the law to have a moose bobblehead (upstaged in this picture by the street art in the background; I'll have to remember to take a picture of that when I go back to move the car on Friday). The moose is good company on a long trip. He bobs his head in time to the music and agrees with everything I say.

Friday Morning

This morning I went off to the car with my new bobblehead moose (a souvenir of Maine from my friend T.) and gave up my spot for a trip to the mechanic’s, to get a new headlight and an oil change, and maybe to see about fixing that shudder over 60 m.p.h. (wheel alignment? tire balancing? one bad tire?). The radio was tuned to 105.9, and I was about to change it to 96.3, but it was playing such nice music that I left it alone. Then I remembered: WQXR moved last night, and the familiar Nebraska voice of Jeff Spurgeon moved with it. This was his first day on the new job.

So I get to the mechanic’s, leave the car, and decide to explore the High Line, the park built on the old railroad elevated over Ninth and Tenth Avenues in Chelsea. It’s spectacular! The landscapers have retained a lot of the weedy effect, and the views are great: segments of the Hudson River, Chelsea Piers, monstrous modern glass buildings in the swooping Frank Gehry style, New Jersey, parking lots . . . I ran into an Australian tourist up there—she sounded like Nona Appleby. (Nona should visit the High Line.) I got her to take a picture of cars parked on elevated risers in front of the back of a billboard. “Is that aesthetically pleasing to you?” she asked. I swore it was.

Then, on my way across town, I saw a black dog being pushed down the street in a stroller. The street cleaner was just coming along, and cars were shifting to claim spots. (It looked like there was a fair amount of space over there, on a 9-10:30 A.M. block; I’ll have to remember that if I get desperate in my neighborhood.) Finally, just before getting on the subway, I heard music and saw a woman sitting on a stoop practicing the banjo. At least, I think it was a woman. It was definitely a banjo.

I wish I had thought to stop in the flower district for potting soil. Just now I asked around the office, where there are lots of gardeners, and got enough soil to pot my alternate-side-parking aloe in a styrofoam cup. I hope it survives. It’s on my desk with the bobblehead moose, which I forgot to leave in the car and carried to work, where it has been greatly admired.

Unexpected Gift

I could not be fussy when I got back into town last night, after driving the five hundred miles from Cleveland. I took the first spot I found, a Tuesday-Friday 8:30-10 A.M. spot, which meant sitting in the car for an hour and a half this morning. It was not an entirely unpleasant interlude. I was outside a building with a beautiful old wooden door and a wrought-iron gate, daisies and vines, and a stone lion. I’d had a passenger on the trip, a twenty-year-old cellist who works in one of those fancy soap shops in SoHo. The car was still fragrant from his clothing.

Soon after eight-thirty, all the cars shifted to the other side of the street and double parked. A white Maxima backed in ahead of me. It was the first time I ever saw anyone parallel double park. The broom came at around nine, and there was the usual back-and-forthing, with the Maxima humping up onto the curb, to get in position. When we were all settled in, a legal spot unexpectedly opened up on the other side of the street, and the Maxima moved again. The spot in front of me was vacant for thirty seconds.

I could have taken the Eclair to the mechanic’s this morning instead of just sitting there. My left headlight blinked out on this trip. The other big event was that the odometer turned over to 65,000. When I pointed this out to my passenger, I could feel him doing the math: the car was as old as he was—didn’t I mean 165,000 miles? I explained that the car had less than 30,000 miles on it when I bought it. It had belonged to a woman who drove it only to Dunkin' Donuts on Saturday afternoons. Its next owner may have to explain that I used it only to chauffeur my cats to the beach and drive to Cleveland twice a year.

At 9:40, a black Jeep with New Jersey plates stopped across the street, and a man jumped out and looked around. Finally he came to me and said what sounded like “Veel o stop dat? Na veel in cruising?” I said no. (I was pretty sure he was asking if I was going to pull out.)

At ten to ten, the guy behind me, a healthy, public-spirited sort who drove a Subaru Forester with a Bowdoin decal, suggested that if he moved back and I moved back, there would be room for another car. I was willing to go along with that, although I didn’t want to have to watch as whoever parallel parked in front of me crushed my license plate. Two cars tried and couldn’t get in. Just as it was time to leave, Bowdoin said that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. “You move up and I’ll move up.” He had been talking to a guy on the street who looked like a cook, probably because he was wearing white and clutching a thick bunch of greens. This guy now approached and said he’d seen it many times: a truck comes along, determined to fit in the space, and pushes the little car to make room. “It ruins your transmission,” he said. The greens he was holding turned out to be an aloe plant.

“Would you like an aloe plant?” Bowdoin asked. “I have some extras.” And he reached in a black tote bag and gave me an aloe. I could pot it in the car on Friday.