When this post hits your inbox, I know exactly where I’ll be: sitting in my car, double parked on my quiet side street, reading a book, waiting to grab one of the 15 or so open spots on the southwest side of the street. I’ll sit in my car and watch for the streetcleaner to come by, then carefully wait as the meter maids plant tickets on the handful of cars that haven’t moved, and then I’ll wait for a vague but somehow communally-understood amount of time, after which others will reappear to move their cars to the open side of the street, and then I’ll strike. I may even get a spot right in front of my building, and if I do, I’ll have a spring in my step all day long.
As someone who lived in NYC, and took a kind of romantic pleasure in it all, exactly as you're describing - for me and most of the people I know who left that feeling fades incredibly quickly once you are out of it. And you are left, rightly or wrong, with a memory of long lines and inconveniences and grubby tables, things you either never noticed at the time or thought were charming and quirky and oh-so-worth-it.
I think I'd rather live in Newport than Brooklyn. It's right across the Hudson, proximity to the PATH means it's essentially just another subway stop connected to Lower Manhattan and parking is significantly easier. Of course the time to move there was twenty years ago.
I have never gotten it. There is an undeniable energy that comes with urban living and everything being in walking distance but at what point is the juice not worth the squeeze? If I vacation in a major city and do an Airbnb, after two days of dealing with the parking insanity I am ready to kill somebody. I will take a driveway and garage 100 times out of 100.
I've lived in Southern California all my life and been in and out of Los Angeles a million times, and I don't once remember ever seeing anyone double parked. Life on Neptune, I guess. (Whether you or I live on the alien planet I'll leave for you to decide...)
I think urban parking strategy is one of the best ways to gain insight into humanity.
In Philadelphia, where I live, parking is absolutely viewed as a right, so much so that you can park in the median in some places and the ticketing officers will do nothing about it. When the DNC came to town that median parking was temporarily banned, and you could just about hear the veins bulging all over the city. Seriously, if there is ever a populist uprising in the City of Brotherly Love, it will be due to some poor schlep at the parking authority who puts "tow" signs on the wrong cars.
Oh man. This definitely brings back some memories. I used to live in long island city (the part that's just south of Astoria) during the early 2010s. I had a high stress/high hours corporate law job that required my butt to be in a seat at a certain (early time) and I couldn't leave till late at night. The ASP was an amazing source of stress in my life; I think I worried more about it than I ever did about catching COVID. I had gone to law school in a rural-ish area so I had a car that I didn't want to give up, and I enjoyed being the "guy with a car" in my friend group.
After a few weeks it became so untenable I bit the bullet and ponied up for a parking spot in some dude's random garage. You had to navigate a crazy alley and it was almost impossible to do. It cost $275 month! But the peace of mind that came with not having to navigate ASP was worth it. I think it added a decade to my life.
I'm in D.C. now, and still park on the street, but thankfully street parking is a lot more plentiful. I have an EV and just installed a charging station to the side of my house and run the cord to the street. Urbanism at its finest!
In Montreal this game is played with snowplows instead of street sweepers and the penalty for not moving is having your car packed into a giant snow wall that will take 2 hours to shovel out.
"This is why there’s a little bit of a prisoner’s dilemma feeling to the whole thing."
It sounds more like musical chairs.
I've never been to NYC and have no particular desire to experience it (the ocean is on the wrong side, for one thing), but what I hear from those who live there is that it's better not to have a car. Though I suppose if you often leave town, going to places that aren't conveniently accessible from public transportation, or if you sometimes need to move more stuff than you can carry, it might be necessary.
In my general area, the closest equivalent to what you're describing would be San Francisco, where the streets are mostly narrow and in some neighborhoods you can drive around for a long time looking for a place to park. Or you use a commercial parking lot and pay $30 for the day. Since I don't actually live in The City, and it's currently full of drug addicts sleeping on the sidewalks, I go there as infrequently as possible.
We have alternate side of the street parking in my lovely little small town, but we're at a much lower density (single family homes mixed with some rentals and duplexes) so it's not a source of stress. It's mostly coordinated with garbage pickup, so every Tuesday night I take the garbage and recycling out and move the car. Occasionally, I forget and get a ticket, and even more occasionally, in a moment of grace, a police officer will knock on my door about 9:00. "Is that your car? I'm about to ticket it." and I rush out apologetically and move it over.
I do know that our town also uses it as a means of monitoring for abandoned cars. If you let three tickets pile up, you're at risk of a tow - as happened to my neighbors' college-aged son, who left his car at home one semester and his parents decided to teach him a lesson...
How I love New York. This bit evokes a shard of the edgy blend of zero-sum resource competition and almost collegial fraternity that characterize possibly the most kaleidoscopically blended city in the history of the world.
I lived in New York once, but now I am a Philadelphian. It's a whole other vibe here. In my part of Philly you - unofficially - "own" the spot in front of your home. Except you don't. And there are more cars than spots. And the houses were built at just such a distance that two cars don't quite fit bumper-to-bumper between houses without very slightly obstructing the driveways that they abut. Perfectly fine neighborly relationships are, as a result, routinely disrupted by various parking micro infractions that arise on a regular basis. Lawn chairs and orange traffic cones routinely pop up to reserve spaces that in no domain of law belong to anyone. I have never seen an actual fight break out over any of these informal arrangements or their disruption but - knowing Philly - fists and probably blood will have flown more than once. We lack New York's sense of humor about these things, or at least its short memory for grievance. I am a Philadelphian now, but I do love New York.
The thing I don't get is why, at this time of year with all the leaves on the ground, I still need to sit in my car when the street sweeper has already passed. Surely the ticket-writers must see who moved and who didn't.
I used to live in the South Slope, did for almost 9 years, and reading this I cringed so hard. It's like when I decided to loom at what kind of condos I could afford in NY just on a lark, just to see what it would be like if I got any ideas about moving back. I saw junked out 500 sqft units with HOA fees of $500 and the only thought I had was "I have no idea how I ever put up with that shit." It was a real "in what kind of world is that acceptable" moment. I then remembered how my 1000 sqft condo with a 1 car garage out here in MN seemed like a mansion, just due to what I'd put up with. People talk about NYC as some kind of leftist Mecca, but it has some of the shittiest living conditions for working and middle class people you'll find anywhere in America. I don't think there's a dollar amount that would make Brooklyn palatable to me again, and even if there was no one would ever dream of offering me that kind of salary in the first place.
My wife, who doesn't drive, is still amused when I stop during a walk in central Philly to coo over a perfect parking spot. I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
Philly, though, rather notoriously doesn't do the same kind of weekly street cleaning that requires moving. This has advantages--you move your car less--and disadvantages--some people NEVER move their cars, for months. I've seen cars in Point Breeze that have archaeological accretions.
I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's a different side of human behavior. If NYC parking is Mad Max, Philly parking is a Beckett play: glacially slow, morbidly absurd, full of rust and filth, prowling the neighborhood at 5 MPH with your flashers on, waiting for your neighbors to die as "Fresh Air" plays on the radio.
I can’t recommend mid sized cities enough. There are still completely walkable neighborhoods, culture, night life, you name it. But it’s a fraction of the cost and hassle that a place like NYC is.
Someday, in the not-too-distant future, we'll all have flying cars. And instead of dozens of cars idling away at the start of every street, waiting for a spot, they will instead be quietly humming away in the air all around our rooftops, also waiting for a spot...on the roof.
I can see it now: every building having a jumbling ring hover cars around their rooftops, like metallic rings of bumblebees all pining for the sweet nectar of an open stall; half-empty coffee cups periodically plummeting towards the unfortunate 'walkers' down below; and some guy in a boat-shaped 'hover-cafe' a-la Blade Runner style, merrily buzzing from car to car doling out pastries and egg drop soup.
A savvy clairvoyant might start buying up rooftop real estate right now.
As someone who lived in NYC, and took a kind of romantic pleasure in it all, exactly as you're describing - for me and most of the people I know who left that feeling fades incredibly quickly once you are out of it. And you are left, rightly or wrong, with a memory of long lines and inconveniences and grubby tables, things you either never noticed at the time or thought were charming and quirky and oh-so-worth-it.
I think I'd rather live in Newport than Brooklyn. It's right across the Hudson, proximity to the PATH means it's essentially just another subway stop connected to Lower Manhattan and parking is significantly easier. Of course the time to move there was twenty years ago.
I have never gotten it. There is an undeniable energy that comes with urban living and everything being in walking distance but at what point is the juice not worth the squeeze? If I vacation in a major city and do an Airbnb, after two days of dealing with the parking insanity I am ready to kill somebody. I will take a driveway and garage 100 times out of 100.
I've lived in Southern California all my life and been in and out of Los Angeles a million times, and I don't once remember ever seeing anyone double parked. Life on Neptune, I guess. (Whether you or I live on the alien planet I'll leave for you to decide...)
I think urban parking strategy is one of the best ways to gain insight into humanity.
In Philadelphia, where I live, parking is absolutely viewed as a right, so much so that you can park in the median in some places and the ticketing officers will do nothing about it. When the DNC came to town that median parking was temporarily banned, and you could just about hear the veins bulging all over the city. Seriously, if there is ever a populist uprising in the City of Brotherly Love, it will be due to some poor schlep at the parking authority who puts "tow" signs on the wrong cars.
Oh man. This definitely brings back some memories. I used to live in long island city (the part that's just south of Astoria) during the early 2010s. I had a high stress/high hours corporate law job that required my butt to be in a seat at a certain (early time) and I couldn't leave till late at night. The ASP was an amazing source of stress in my life; I think I worried more about it than I ever did about catching COVID. I had gone to law school in a rural-ish area so I had a car that I didn't want to give up, and I enjoyed being the "guy with a car" in my friend group.
After a few weeks it became so untenable I bit the bullet and ponied up for a parking spot in some dude's random garage. You had to navigate a crazy alley and it was almost impossible to do. It cost $275 month! But the peace of mind that came with not having to navigate ASP was worth it. I think it added a decade to my life.
I'm in D.C. now, and still park on the street, but thankfully street parking is a lot more plentiful. I have an EV and just installed a charging station to the side of my house and run the cord to the street. Urbanism at its finest!
In Montreal this game is played with snowplows instead of street sweepers and the penalty for not moving is having your car packed into a giant snow wall that will take 2 hours to shovel out.
"This is why there’s a little bit of a prisoner’s dilemma feeling to the whole thing."
It sounds more like musical chairs.
I've never been to NYC and have no particular desire to experience it (the ocean is on the wrong side, for one thing), but what I hear from those who live there is that it's better not to have a car. Though I suppose if you often leave town, going to places that aren't conveniently accessible from public transportation, or if you sometimes need to move more stuff than you can carry, it might be necessary.
In my general area, the closest equivalent to what you're describing would be San Francisco, where the streets are mostly narrow and in some neighborhoods you can drive around for a long time looking for a place to park. Or you use a commercial parking lot and pay $30 for the day. Since I don't actually live in The City, and it's currently full of drug addicts sleeping on the sidewalks, I go there as infrequently as possible.
We have alternate side of the street parking in my lovely little small town, but we're at a much lower density (single family homes mixed with some rentals and duplexes) so it's not a source of stress. It's mostly coordinated with garbage pickup, so every Tuesday night I take the garbage and recycling out and move the car. Occasionally, I forget and get a ticket, and even more occasionally, in a moment of grace, a police officer will knock on my door about 9:00. "Is that your car? I'm about to ticket it." and I rush out apologetically and move it over.
I do know that our town also uses it as a means of monitoring for abandoned cars. If you let three tickets pile up, you're at risk of a tow - as happened to my neighbors' college-aged son, who left his car at home one semester and his parents decided to teach him a lesson...
How I love New York. This bit evokes a shard of the edgy blend of zero-sum resource competition and almost collegial fraternity that characterize possibly the most kaleidoscopically blended city in the history of the world.
I lived in New York once, but now I am a Philadelphian. It's a whole other vibe here. In my part of Philly you - unofficially - "own" the spot in front of your home. Except you don't. And there are more cars than spots. And the houses were built at just such a distance that two cars don't quite fit bumper-to-bumper between houses without very slightly obstructing the driveways that they abut. Perfectly fine neighborly relationships are, as a result, routinely disrupted by various parking micro infractions that arise on a regular basis. Lawn chairs and orange traffic cones routinely pop up to reserve spaces that in no domain of law belong to anyone. I have never seen an actual fight break out over any of these informal arrangements or their disruption but - knowing Philly - fists and probably blood will have flown more than once. We lack New York's sense of humor about these things, or at least its short memory for grievance. I am a Philadelphian now, but I do love New York.
The thing I don't get is why, at this time of year with all the leaves on the ground, I still need to sit in my car when the street sweeper has already passed. Surely the ticket-writers must see who moved and who didn't.
I used to live in the South Slope, did for almost 9 years, and reading this I cringed so hard. It's like when I decided to loom at what kind of condos I could afford in NY just on a lark, just to see what it would be like if I got any ideas about moving back. I saw junked out 500 sqft units with HOA fees of $500 and the only thought I had was "I have no idea how I ever put up with that shit." It was a real "in what kind of world is that acceptable" moment. I then remembered how my 1000 sqft condo with a 1 car garage out here in MN seemed like a mansion, just due to what I'd put up with. People talk about NYC as some kind of leftist Mecca, but it has some of the shittiest living conditions for working and middle class people you'll find anywhere in America. I don't think there's a dollar amount that would make Brooklyn palatable to me again, and even if there was no one would ever dream of offering me that kind of salary in the first place.
My wife, who doesn't drive, is still amused when I stop during a walk in central Philly to coo over a perfect parking spot. I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
Philly, though, rather notoriously doesn't do the same kind of weekly street cleaning that requires moving. This has advantages--you move your car less--and disadvantages--some people NEVER move their cars, for months. I've seen cars in Point Breeze that have archaeological accretions.
I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's a different side of human behavior. If NYC parking is Mad Max, Philly parking is a Beckett play: glacially slow, morbidly absurd, full of rust and filth, prowling the neighborhood at 5 MPH with your flashers on, waiting for your neighbors to die as "Fresh Air" plays on the radio.
I can’t recommend mid sized cities enough. There are still completely walkable neighborhoods, culture, night life, you name it. But it’s a fraction of the cost and hassle that a place like NYC is.
What!? Park Slope and South Slope are the same continuous neighborhood like protons and neutrons are basically just the same particle.
Someday, in the not-too-distant future, we'll all have flying cars. And instead of dozens of cars idling away at the start of every street, waiting for a spot, they will instead be quietly humming away in the air all around our rooftops, also waiting for a spot...on the roof.
I can see it now: every building having a jumbling ring hover cars around their rooftops, like metallic rings of bumblebees all pining for the sweet nectar of an open stall; half-empty coffee cups periodically plummeting towards the unfortunate 'walkers' down below; and some guy in a boat-shaped 'hover-cafe' a-la Blade Runner style, merrily buzzing from car to car doling out pastries and egg drop soup.
A savvy clairvoyant might start buying up rooftop real estate right now.