you really don't want to know

As kind of a follow-up to my post about the parking situation at work, I’ve got to say that the aftermath left me scared, and then completely impressed with Oakland’s ability to solve a problem.

The city’s response to the “park however the hell you want” problem was to finally paint diagonal lines on the street. While one might think this would make everything hunky-dorey, the fact is it makes things infinitely worse for guys like me…I ride a motorcycle. I’ve been relying on people who park poorly, so I can grab the narrow spots between cars. But if I’m parked on a line, I’m that much more likely to get a parking ticket. Fuckin’ YAY!

On top of that, the city started putting up 4-hour parking limit signs where it used to be unlimited. And, of course, now that there are distinct lines to divide the spaces, it actually turns out that there are fewer spots per block. A perfect storm, which really made me feel like all the city cared about was revenue from tickets.

So, cut to a few weeks after the parking restrictions were enacted, and an amazing thing happened. Suddenly, every single day, there were dozens of parking spots open. Every time I went out to move my car, there was no trouble finding a spot. Apparently, most of the motivation for putting up the 4-hour limit was because there’s a BART station just a few blocks away. People were dropping off their cars and leaving them there all day. Now, not so much.

I can deal with moving my car every few hours, as long as there’s a method to the madness.

About a two weeks ago, I noticed that someone had parallel-parked their Honda Insight in front of the building next to my office, where parking has always been diagonal (like the rest of the neighborhood). Mind you, there are no lines painted on the pavement, but I’ve worked here for a year and it’s always been diagonal parking.

Here it is, two weeks later, and every single day there has been a handful more cars that have also decided to parallel park, thereby taking up at least two spaces each. I don’t know if these people are just showing up in the wee hours of the morning when no one’s around, and just deciding to park as the other long-term cars had parked…but I really would think that, in a neighborhood like this, enough of the cars would be “locals” that the original trend would snap back into place. Besides, the street is freakishly wide when there aren’t diagonally-parked cars on this side.

Yesterday, in the green zone (12-minute parking) right outside our front door, I saw a minivan parallel parked amidst a sea of diagonally parked vehicles. I’ve seen this minivan hundreds of times. There’s an old hispanic dude who’s always sitting in the driver’s seat, always in the green zone, every morning. I’d always assumed his wife was down the street returning their recyclables or something. But this dude, who clearly knows the drill, comes in and takes up three parking spaces with his parallel-parked van.

There are no signs. There are no placards. There are no notices that parking rules are changing. As far as I can tell, one outsider came here and parallel parked in the wee hours of the morning when nobody was around, and left his car there for a day or two. And others followed his lead because there weren’t any lines on the road.

We are ants. And we’re lost without guidance.
Too bad the parking situation already sucked ass before this started.