Parking

Alternate Side Parking

I am currently in the midst of one of the oddest New York City rituals, the alternate side parking shuffle. The shuffle is a daily event that spans about an hour and half on streets all across the city. The idea is that cars vacate one side of the street, allowing the street cleaner to come through. It's also a municipal money making machine. Every person I know who has a car gets more than a handful of street-cleaning tickets a year.

A bit more than a year ago I stacked up a fat pile of bright orange tickets, fat enough that I ended up getting towed. I spent very long Friday afternoon shuttling between unpleasant city agency offices shelling out large sums of cash (perhaps even more than this here rickety Volvo is worth) to even more unpleasant city employees who snarled at me from behind bullet proof windows, Once the shelling out of cash part was done, my brother most kindly escorted me to a lot somewhere in Brooklyn where the windows were bullet proof and barred and the employees were downright criminal. It's possible that even more cash was required then, and I'm certain that the car was somewhat worse for the wear, its bumper listing to one side and one of its headlights knocked askew. I then drove it out my parents' house in Queens, where it wasn't required to be moved, and borrowed cars on an as-needed basis for a good long time.

I do, however, like having the car handy for upstate jaunts and the perpetual schlepping art that makes my job oh so glamorous. I've been keyed up enough lately that I'm good to go on 5 or 6 hours of sleep - this allows me to indulge my misbehavior (it still feels like misbehaving even as an adult) of staying up way too late while still waking up in plenty of time to move my car for street cleaning. So, after a while away, I find myself reunited with my car-owning street-parking comrades. On my particular block the shuffle starts at 9am.

This is how it works: 8:58am, I scurry out, coffee cup in hand, in some weird combination of pajamas and street clothes, being tugged along by Ollie who loves cars probably more than life itself. (Her enthusiasm usually means I end up with a good deal of coffee on my already fetching ensemble.) The car gets moved across the street, double-parked. I pop a gallery postcard in the window on which I've scribbled my street address/apt # along with my cell phone number. This is a courtesy for the unfortunate people who don't understand the intricacies of this long-standing ritual that boxes them in to their perfectly legal spot for an hour or so two days per week. (Sometimes if I'm late, I might have a hard time finding a spot to double park in. Squeezing a station wagon into a small slice of pavement with a parked car on one side rather than a curb is not for the sleepy and under-caffeinated.) Once the car is parked, and the postcard is positioned thusly I'm free to return inside for more coffee and some email, listening for the damp thwap-thwap roar of the street cleaner.

When the street cleaner makes its appearance, all the double parked cars light up in unison and follow in its wake sliding directly into the freshly scrubbed spots. And then, we sit. If we don't sit, waiting for the clock to hit 10:30, we're ticketed. The fact that the ticketing happens after the street's been cleaned, not while the cars are double parked, has always been a mystery (and a major annoyance) to me. It's the sort of arbitrary rule that reminds me of elementary school cafeterias - the only logic is that it's the law, not that it makes any real sense.

The sitting part usually takes up an hour or so. It's a nice way to get to know the neighbors. In fact, my neighbor Stuart who lives next door and has a shop up the street, knocked lightly on my door at 9:05 this morning advising me that lately they'd been ticketing double-parked cars (scandal! greedy bastards!) and that I'd be well-served to either find a meter or resign myself to surrendering my schedule to the entire hour and half span of the shuffle. (I chose the latter, which is why this post is so damn long and rambling.) Shortly after the cars moved en masse to their final resting place, my other neighbor, proprietor of the delightful Podunk, came to my window and asked me how I take my coffee, returning a few moments later with a cup just for me (milk, one sugar). For her, the shuffle is a family ritual - she and her husband and their daughter sit snug in their Bug chatting and sipping til 10:30.

I usually listen to FUV or read a magazine, or lately since wireless is nearly ubiquitous, I bring my laptop out and tap away. It's nice to see the neighbors. Monty and Rebecca's daughter Lark has a new puppy named Chicken. The tree lady, a neighborhood activist who is the ferocious guardian of the lovely Gingkos that line our street, just strode by purposefully pushing a shopping cart laden with hoses and trowels and various tree-tending accouterment. The construction workers, a new and temporary addition to the mix, have big ass SUVs with flag decals on them and nice biceps. It's an added interest that doesn't quite make up for the fact that they're building an impossibly tall hotel on the corner of what has always been a somewhat sleepy and charming block. All of it's usually enough to keep me entertained 'til 10:30 when I can go back inside and start my day.

Comments

[Joe]

Wouldn't you know it -- alternate side parking stories draw the hugest number of comments! Now excuse me while I go read Calvin Trillin's "Tepper Won't Be Going Out" in my illegally parked car.

[Jim Strathmeyer]

It's good to know our government it doing what it should: making its citizens' lives easier.

[DC1974]

New York has not figured out the way to really make money from this. Chicago has street sweeping, but no one actually knows the schedule and it isn't posted until the day before. So let's say (as many do) that you don't check your car everyday. And you only later discover that street sweeping came and happened and you got ticketed. If you've got the time, you can appear in court and get the ticket waved -- by saying I hadn't been to my car in a few days and was caught off guard -- but for those that are too busy or too lazy or some odd combination there of -- you just go ahead and pay. Posting the schedule really gives a heads up that would seem to benefit the driver and not the city -- silly city.

[Mica]

A video interpretation
http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=2253

[Bill Amstutz]

As a guy with a day job, I always move my car the day before. I have found that the earlier you try the better. Up where I live in Morningside Heights by 8:30 - 9:00 on a Monday night there are plenty of Tuesday spots, but zero Monday spots and plenty of people driving around looking. So I move my car the moment I get home from work when I am walking the dog.

I'm pretty new to this (I used to use the car everyday to drive to work in the 'burbs), so I am not sure if I pay more in tickets than I would to just get a friggin garage. Recently I got two $125 tickets for being in a crosswalk that I didn't think I was in.

My pet peeve with parking is people who park with plenty of room between their car and the other cars often taking more than one spot in the process.

[Jen Bekman]

Yep, I think you have to move it the night before. It's always a bit of a mystery to me actually - if you come to my block past 9pm on night-before-street-cleaning you can usually slide right into a spot, no circling required. (Thursdays can be a bit tricky since it's a big going out night and God knows people love to go out in the East Village.) I don't know where all these cars go, because on Tuesday nights both sides are usually full-up. (There's no street cleaning on my block on Wednesdays.)

I just assume that the people moving their cars around are self-employed like me. My comrades in shuffle that I can think of: Kim, who owns Podunk and Stuart, who owns White Trash up the street, both of whom I mentioned above and also: my friend Susan, who has her own catering business, Monty, a freelance photographer and Pierre, who's a clothing designer.

Being able to double-park and leave it 'til the cleaner comes made it a lot less time consuming. Having to be out there a full hour and a half is a big chunk of the day, but like I said, I can usually pick up a wireless connection and work. The alternative is renting a garage spot, which runs about $400/month in my neighborhood. Not an option for me!

Of course the real alternative is not having a car at all, which probably makes sense for most people. I use mine quite a bit for gallery related stuff, and mass-transit for out of town trips is unfortunately not an option since I like to bring Ollie along whenever I can. She's 50 pounds of dog, so I can't pack her in a little tote that I throw over my shoulder. It's too bad actually, because I love taking the train.

[Chris Mear]

"you pretty much can’t do the shuffle if you’ve got a day job."

So, how are you expected to move your car out of the way? Or are you supposed to move it the night before to somewhere completely different? Or what?

This seems like a huge waste of human time and effort just for the sake of sweeping the streets.

[Ryan]

Fascinating. This is just begging for some time-lapse videos...

[John]

This is so foreign and bizzare. What are all of these people doing at home on Mondays and Thursdays in the middle of the morning? Do you not work those days just to avoid parking tickets? Weird.

[northerner]

We've got a similar ritual in downtown St. John's, but it happens at night, during the winter... to allow for snow clearing.

[Jen Bekman]

Andrew, was nice to see you too! I am just a wee bit to the West of you, where I've been for more years than I'd care to admit.

Meg, your West Village parking situation sounds particularly challenging. I don't know that I could've dealt with that. We have it relatively easy over here on 5th St., for now at least. All the new development is changing the neighborhood a good deal and I'm sure that the block will be quite different once the 23 story (gasp!) hotel opens on the corner.

John, I work pretty much all the time, but my time where I actually need to be sitting at a desk is minimal. It's true, though - you pretty much can't do the shuffle if you've got a day job.

[mdj]

Fascinating. I had no idea. Here in the outlying 'burbs of Salt Lake City, there's plenty of room for me to park wherever I like, whenever I like, with impunity. I'm in 'n' out of my car so fast I don't even have time to SMS, let alone blog.

[Todd W.]

Good gravy, talk about synchronicity! I just got ticketed for this very thing yesterday morning. A $45 ticket for getting to the car 2 minutes late.

[leo]

That was fascinating and entertaining, thank you for that. I live in Chicago, and we have street cleanings as well, but it's the better part of 6 hours long, so we just circle the block(s) until we find a kosher spot, and resign ourselves to parking 18 blocks away.

I particularly adore that everyone in their cars are so neighborly towards each other. "We're all in this together, so lets make the best of it!" That makes me smile.

[Noelle]

When I lived in Washington Heights, I sometimes borrowed my parents' extra car from Jersey. I would make sure to time my arrival back to the city for the end of street cleaning at 11:00. I never borrowed the car on a Wednesday, when there was no shuffle. It always felt a bit evil to do that, as I was a sometime parker, not an everyday parker. What people who work during the day do about their cars always boggled my mind, because come 9:30, the cars were all gone from the alternate side, people coming out of the woodwork at the last minute for the shuffle.

[Jon]

Interesting ordeal!

I would never have imagined living in New York would be so car unfriendly!

[kendra]

i live in nolita, where thankfully the shuffle is civilized, and dare i say it, even friendly, but it's a completely different dynamic on the upper west side where my boyfriend lives. people will generally snake your "double-parking spot" if you don't get out in your car 15 mins before street cleaning starts, and then, even before the street cleaner goes by, someone will just drive up and park in the spot across from you that you're waiting to park in. i almost had a coronary one morning! the car sleeps downtown from now on.

[Mark]

Hmm... we have the same thing in San Francisco, but without any of the bonding or waiting. Just earlier today I went out to move my car (ahh! I forgot and it's fast approaching the the 1 pm time I have to move my car) and was lucky enough to find a spot on the next block over. No double-parking, no chatting, no waiting or reading the paper. Just move your car. Or, if you've thought ahead, try to place your car in the proper position the day before or so.

[megnut]

I love hearing different stories about this ritual. When I lived in the West Village, our street was only one lane wide, with parking on each side. So people didn't double park, we'd just sit in our cars in our spots, reading magazines or the papers with one eye tuned to the rear view mirror and one ear perked for the sound of the street sweeper. When it would approach, everyone would pull out into the traffic lane and let it pass, then return to their spaces. And then sit again to make sure the police didn't come by with tickets. When they did, it was stressful, because they made you drive around the block. And I'd be worrying the whole time somebody else not involved in the shuffle would stumble across "my" spot and take it. So we'd all speed around the block and come back and park. Guh. I'm glad I'm done with that, it was a huge time sink and very stressful, even if it was somewhat neighborly.

[Adam Powell]

Hi Jen,

here. Long time! I like you site and hear your gallery is doing well. Swing it!

[Andrew Hetherington]

Looks like we are on the same block, more or less, I am guessing, I am 5th street + 1st ave, and I have helped the ferocious tree lady ' Jana' with her cart and hoses down our end.

Great to see you again the other night

I would love to catch up sometime

[Eli]

In Buffalo we had alternate side parking for snow removal.

The joke was that on my block there was no overlap -- you could park exactly half the week on one side and exactly half the week on the other side. If you didn't move your car at precisely 4pm on Wednesday and Sunday, you were technically parked illegally.

[Laia]

i just became insanely jealous of you... because of parking cars.
i dont know how to feel about this.
(maybe its just the awesome neighborhood description that made me think if mr rogers?)

[Jen Bekman]

Joe, I am jealous of you Brooklyn people and your weekly alternate side regulations. On the plus side, I am happy not to live in Brooklyn. (Blasphemy, I know!)

Laia, I hear you - I don't entirely hate the car parking ritual because of the neighborly aspects of it. I'm fortunate to live on a great block that often feels friendlier than small towns I visit elsewhere. I spent some time in Hudson, NY over the weekend, and while I did encounter some nice folks, I was overall kind of shocked at how un-cordial people were.

[Joe]

In my Brooklyn neighborhood, we have alternate side rules for just one day a week on each side of the street.

After doing this shuffle for years, I now have a mental map of a 25-block area surrounding my house, and I know exactly where to move the car on any given Monday or Tuesday at 1:30, Wednesday at 10:00, Wednesday at 1:30, and Thursday and Friday at 10:30. Busy Thursday coming up? I know where to move it Tuesday after lunch so I don't have to think about it again.

I know in Manhattan your rules aren't quite so civilized...