Das Letzte

To Park Or Not To Park

Educational Dictatorship America

There is hardly anything that Americans take as seriously as the rules for the use of the parking space, however cumbersome, confusing and incomprehensible they may be. The penalties for non-abiders are severe and get rigorously enforced.

America, as every school kid between Anchorage and Tallahassee knows, is »the land of the free and the home of the brave.« In many states, you can freely purchase weapons, change your name at will, one doesn't have to register one's residence with the authorities, no law forces shops to close in the evening, there are no church taxes, and there are many fewer restrictions overall in daily life than in Germany where almost everything is regulated by law, from social security for freelance prostitutes to fixed book prices, the dog tax and the housekeeper tax up to the minimum amount of beef required in burger meat.

Americans can only laugh about such prescriptions. But they don't have anything to laugh about anymore, and their confidence in having an edge over Europeans in matters of individual freedom quickly evaporates when the conversation turns to the matter of parking rules. In this area, there are »European conditions« in the USA, so-to-speak, and it seems as if Americans put all their suppressed regulation fury into one single effort: How can one optimize confusion among car drivers so that they make the maximum number of possible mistakes and end up paying a lot of money?

The parking rules differ from street to street. One day, you may park on the left side, the other day, only on the right side, sometimes only in the morning and somtimes only in the afternoon. But that would still be easy to explain - with the necessity of street cleaning - and to obey. It gets difficult up to the point of impossibility when rules are added to each other, so that eventually no one understands them in their complexity. You then see people standing flabbergasted in front of the many signs, and hear them thinking: To park or not to park, that's the question...

In one case, you may park your car in principle, but not from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. for a maximum of two hours, but not on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons. One parking meter is good for half an hour, the next one for two hours, the second-next for five, except not between 3 and 5 at night. In the valet zone, you may not park your car at all because a restaurant needs it.

The most fantastic thing I ever saw was a broken parking meter on Fourth Street in Santa Monica. It was covered with a leather cap that said »out of order.« And nobody parked in front of the defective meter, it would have been illegal, although hundreds, thousands, millions of car drivers were looking for a parking space. This was one of the few moments where I preferred German anarchy to American order. The parking spaces are made for big sedans, often a third card would fit in-between two parked cars but even that is not allowed.

When it comes to parking, America, »the land of the free and the home of the brave,« is an educational dictatorship with apt pupils functioning like parking meters themselves. You sit with a nice person in a café, talk about the importance of spreading »freedom and liberty« in the world, and suddenly somebody shouts: »Oh God, my time is up!« and runs to put a few quarters into the meter. Strictly seen, that isn't allowed either. Therefore, some people repark their car, thus creating additional traffic, since other people are reparking their cars at the same time - from one meter to another.

Here comes a true story, I swear that it happened exactly as follows: I I had an appointment with Thierry at the »Lago.« He arrived in his Audi convertible and was happy to have hit upon a parking space right in front of the café. One of the signs underneath the meter said that one may park for one hour. Thierry put four quarters into the meter and found out that the pointer was stuck at »15 min.« He inserted another two quarters, and the pointer didn't move. After that, Thierry, who has lived in the USA for twenty years but is still a practicing Frenchman, went into the café, asked for a plastic bag and pulled it over the meter.

»Good idea, isn't it?« Two pasta dishes and one Pellegrino bottle later, a parking officer of the »Traffic Service« department suddenly stopped in the second lane, already having her mini computer ready to issue a ticket. Thierry dropped the espresso cup, jumped up and ran into the street to explain the situation to her. He inserted another two quarters into the meter, the pointer went back to »15 min,« the parking officer had to concede that the situation was »unclear« and let mercy prevail over injustice. Thierry was happy, not so much because he had saved thirty to fourty dollars, but because he had tricked the system.

Others do that as well, but with more effort. Margit works for a German institution in Los Angeles that doesn't provide parking for its employees. Consequently, she parks her car on a side street in a »non-metered zone.« If she only had to do some shopping, this would be ideal, but she works eight hours a day and the time limit in the »non-metered zone« is two hours. And it's under surveillance by »parking enforcement« attendants who mark the car tires with chalk to determine whether the cars are moved. »Half of the office is busy running every two hours into the street to repark the cars,« Margit says, »which is not exactly the best discipline in the workplace.«

Nevertheless, Margit recently got a ticket because she exceeded the two hours by a few minutes. »I had been busy on the telephone.« She will pay $35, because, if she doesn't pay, she will get an overdue notice fining her twice the amount. And then? »Then a warrant gets filed,« an arrest warrant. But there is no marshal or police officer coming to your house, that would be too laborious, too complicated and too ineffective. The warrant gets stored in a centralized computer, and if Margit gets pulled over for a ticket on the highway, the police officer looks her up in the file and sees that she hasn't paid her ticket. »And then it's no longer fun.« Margit will get arrested immediately, her car »impounded« until Yoel, Margit's husband, comes and bails the two out, which is considerably more expensive than the original fine.

For the city, Yoel says, this is »a major source of revenue.« And therefore, the rules get rigorously enforced. The most common words in a parking lot are »tow away zone,« which means: »You will get towed away if you don't shop in the store or don't sit in the restaurant that owns the parking lot.« And so the big parking lots in front of »Ralphs,« »Blockbuster« or »Gold's Gym« are often half-empty while desperate car drivers drive around in circles looking for a parking space. How the businesses control their parking lots is often unclear, but also unnecessary, since the »tow away« threat alone has its intended effect.

A friend of mine observed how a worker in a McDonald's parking lot marked the tires of cars with a paintbrush every half hour with a different color so that he could always determine how long a car had been parked in a space.

The Americans endure all this without rebelling against it, in the full spirit of Janis Joplin's »Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.« They don't feel that there's injustice in the way they are being treated because the same rules apply to everyone. Only occasionally does someone take offense, like a »senior citizen« from Santa Monica in a letter to the editor of the »Santa Monica Mirror.« He complained about the »Parking Meter Nazis« who force him to pay 25 cents for 15 minutes of parking when he wants to go to the beach, even after 6 p.m.

Those who want to avoid persecution by the »Parking Meter Nazis« take the bus or buy the »Los Angeles Parking Guide,« a 284 page manual for $15 that lists all public parking lots from Beverly Hills to Westwood. Of course, the parking lot that just happens to be nearby is either full or already closed. Nevertheless the book has practical value: For the people who wrote it and for the publisher who sells it.

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