Since moving to San Francisco I have been introduced to something that I never really noticed back east. Every single house or apartment building has a drive way and of course, you can't park in front of this drive way. At first that may make sense, but then consider the last time you were trying to park in the city and took for granted that the entire block was cars, bumper to bumper. That doesn't happen here. More often than not a city block here will accommodate about half the cars that it would back east simply due to all of the driveways. With all those extra cars left to look for less spaces, it can be quite the adventure.
As someone who likes to be independent parking in the city relies far too heavily on others than I'm really comfortable with. This may not make sense, so allow me to explain. When you have limited space available, that space is at a premium (And you never thought simple supply and demand from ECON 101 would come in handy). For parking to work most efficiently people must only take the amount of space that is necessary for their car. However, as most of you know, this is rarely the case, and this drives me insane. Since moving to the city with a car I've changed the answer to "what super power would I like to have." It is now the ability to move parked cars closer together to create space for me to park.
When I drive to work I still have to park on the street. Our office is in a shopping district and we don't have parking spaces for everybody that works here. There is a street behind our office that has open parking about 3 blocks away. However, the side streets that make those blocks have open parking on one side, but not both. Available spots on these streets is at a premium due to the fact that everybody is lazy and wants to walk as little as possible. My morning is made when I can park on the first street. It's generally the highlight of at least the first half of my day.
The last two mornings my soul has been crushed by the asshole owner of this car (see picture below) who apparently either never took or failed ECON 101. This person clearly doesn't understand how simple supply and demand relates to urban parking and is too selfish to ensure that another spot is available for another person behind them. There is also the chance that they are protecting their car by parking like this so there isn't space for someone to bump it when trying to squeeze in. If this is the case, buy a cheaper car if you're going to be parking on the street all the time. All this person would have to do is pull up to where their bumper is in line with where the red paint begins. That's it! If they did that, another spot would be available for someone to park. I'm considering drawing this person a supply and demand graph and leaving it under their windshield wiper to illustrate how their messing up the, "rotation," if you will.
As I've so carefully illustrated for you, all this person has to do is pull forward along the red arrow. If they did that, a spot of more than ample size would be available behind. With the current parking arrangement only a smart car could fit either in front or behind. And since I'm writing this post out of totally selfish annoyed reasons I'd like to point out that I don't drive a smart car.
*Using the paint brush in Microsoft Paint with the touch pad on a laptop is very hard. However, that's still sadly close to what my handwriting looks like.
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