The car has got to be moved.
It’s got to be moved because it’s 7:15am on Tuesday.
“You have to move the car!” I roar at my husband, who is a large bump under the covers. He grunts. The sound of engines revving outside the window signals the urgency of the mission at hand. The morning mania has begun. Our car is on the side of the street that has to be cleaned on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 8am to 11am. During that time, cars can unofficially double park on the alternate, ‘Monday, Wednesday, Friday’ side. Fine, except that it’s now 7:20am, the kids aren’t up because it’s not the weekend, and Son Number Two has to be on his school bus by 8:03am.
If you’re fool enough to own a car in Manhattan, let alone park it on the street, forget about coffee. In fact, forget about a life. Some people live in their cars. Now I know why. You have to be physically in the damn thing, with the wheels rotating by 7:25am or you can kiss a “double parked” spot goodbye. It’s the urban Grand Prix taking place on every block throughout the city. Without a spot, you’re left to wander around in parking space limbo with nowhere to put it.
If you’re lucky and you do get to double-park, then you just have to sit in your car, like a giant paperweight, smirking at those who are still circling the block and pretending to be very busy with your cell phone or newspaper until 8am, when you can officially step out of it. Leave one second earlier and you’re ticketed.
My husband is out of bed and in the car within five minutes -- I check out of the window to see if he remembered to put on pants. Then I play reveille in the boys’ room with my vocal chords and try to impress upon them the need to put on clothes instead of hanging naked from the bunk beds. I also have to shower, get dressed, prepare a bottle for the sixteen-month old, dress her, make sure that the boys load their packed lunches, snacks and homework into their backpacks, and try to figure out what the hell they will eat for breakfast. I discover that we are out of everything, including toilet paper (“mom!”) On this particular morning we’re out of peanut butter, jam, eggs, cheese -- we’re even out of bread. Except for a few cans of black beans and an enormous packet of dry cat food -- we’re picked clean. I decide that we’ll take the kids out for breakfast and I’ll use the car for a grocery shop. Parking solved. Till tomorrow.
1 comment:
=The importance of being carless=
Being a native New Yorker, it has always been my credo that people NYers who own a car must be crazy, rich, or both. I know of which I speak as I did so for 2 years before deciding that my sanity was worth more than the biweekly thrill of driving over the ridge of the LIE and watching the magnificent Manhattan skyline rise over a sea of returning Hamptons beach traffic.
=Goodbye Volvo, hello Hertz=
With private parking spaces selling for US$200,000 and upward, as well as penalties for illegal parking approaching those for a Class E felony: one would think that NYers would realize that there is a cheaper alternative: take a taxi, buy a bike or, for longer jaunts - rent a car. So I sold my 164, started marveling at the money accumulating in my bank account and my life was my own again.
=Bay City Rollers=
When I moved to the Embarcadero in SF, I felt that California yearning - the siren song of vehicular servitude calling again. But quickly the math of my prior impound costs for unpaid parking tickets reared up like Medusa. Thank the gods for negative reinforcement. All my colleagues moved 10 miles out of the most beautiful City by the Bay - so they could afford to park the car they then drove through 40 minutes of traffic to our downtown offices in, only to either drive in circles for 20 minutes or pay $30/day to park. While I took some of the $1000s I was saving every year and spent it so I could live facing the Bay and only a 5 minute bike ride from my office door. It is remarkable what an extra hour of sleep every day does for the wrinkles around your eyes.
=To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub=
I sympathize with the Alexs of the world, I really do. When you are in the grips of Urban Life, having a car seems like your gateway to freedom, your Chariot of Fire! But Oh, that way madness lies.
Shun that and free yourself, break the chains, work on your whistle and learn one of the other great lessons of living life in nYc.
Never, ever, move across from the corner on which you are waiting for the next taxi. It will, as sure as the morning sun glints off the gargoyles of the Chrysler Building, come to the people who have just taken your last spot.
Good night Gracie.
Post a Comment