What You Miss Most When You Leave: Parking
Melissa Levine

Oh, for an empty space. Oh, to have a six-by-fifteen slab of asphalt ready, willing and able to embrace me in a full-on concrete hug of love. I used to have one. I used to have—if you count the ones in front of my house, at school, at friends' houses, at Schnucks, at the movies—quite a few more than one. The entire time I lived in St. Louis, I drove in a kind of yellow glow, bathed in parking warmth. But those halcyon days are long since over.

In December of 1997, I left St. Louis for San Francisco. About ten minutes after I moved here, I became retroactively grateful for every parking space I ever had in St. Louis, every slab of asphalt I slipped so effortlessly into, parallel or perpendicular or at an acute angle, with room to spare. St. Louisans, do me a favor and take a moment to genuflect in thanks to every empty space that welcomes your car so open-armedly in, to all of those loose, non-discriminating, take-me-I'm-yours white-lined voids that do everything for your car but walk up to it and shake its hand. These self-effacing, quiet forces of good want nothing other than to serve your needs. They are the Mother Teresas of the motor vehicle world.

Perhaps some of you have seen the movie Vertigo, in which Jimmy Stewart careens around San Francisco frantically trying to find a parking space. This is me. This is what life is like here.

For the first six months I lived in San Francisco, I rented a room in the Mission, a neighborhood comparable to nothing in St. Louis. You have to be able to imagine East Greenwich Village and Mexico City at the same time. Parking in this neighborhood is a wicked game of musical chairs, where the other people are faster and smaller and favored by the secretive bastard working the record player.

"Don't worry," my neighbors argued. "Sometimes you have to circle. But, if you're patient, there's always something." Okay . . . no. There is most emphatically not always something. There isn't even sometimes something. There is, I would say, once in a while something, something like where you might go on a brisk walk. In good weather. With comfortable shoes. If you have the appropriate permit. For two hours.

The fact is, I defiantly declare, that there are more cars than spaces in the Mission—so many more that, every night, cars line up in the medians, jut unattractively out of driveways, and edge onto sidewalks, risking heavy fines, just to rest their weary engines. (First the hills, then the circling, then an illegal space. You can pretty much hear your engine saying, "For this you made me suffer?")

In short, life in the Mission goes like this: Rise at 6:30 to move the car before 7:00, after which, on Wednesdays, it's illegal to park on most streets. (You have to do this every day because, at that hour, who the hell knows what day it is?). Drive ambivalently through many miles of highway traffic where, at least, you don't have to park. Work. Think about your car, out there in the lot, waiting. Lurking. Hovering. Smoldering. Around four o'clock, begin to get frantic. Will you find a space when you get back? Where will you find a space? What if you don't find a space? I mean, literally, WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU DON'T FIND A SPACE? If possible, leave the office by 4:30. Feel short of breath. Consider purposefully leaving the car in a place where it will get stolen, or crashing it into something blunt. Arrive in the Mission at around 5:15. Begin to circle. Circle circle circle. It's like being a vulture, only you never have sight of your pray until, most of the time, you've just sped past it.

Once, when I saw a movie after work, I didn't get into the city until 9:30 P.M. I circled around the Mission for about a half hour before I ventured into a neighboring area, Noe Valley, where I circled for another half hour. Then back to the Mission, then Noe Valley. My companion went from bright, to hopeful, to gently consoling, to terrified. Little by little, we became convinced that there was no end to this infinity of rejection. We believed that we would circle until dawn, thwarted and rebuffed by block after interminable block until the sun rose—when, if nothing else, we'd be better able to see how crammed the streets actually were. At close to 11:00, we found a space in Noe Valley, a full mile from my apartment, and trudged down the rolling hills into the barrio.

This was after having seen Titanic.

Not being able to find parking for an hour and a half can make drowning slowly on a luxury liner look good, especially if it means doing away with that hideously ugly gem, or that offensive sketch, which (have you heard?) Mr. King-of-the-World Cameron drew himself. This particular episode made me consider driving my car back to St. Louis and leaving it there, where I could visit on weekends. As it was, my car lived in a different neighborhood from me. People would ask me where I lived, and I would say, "I live in the Mission, but my car lives in Noe Valley." This made me seem more impressive, because Noe Valley is a much more prestigious neighborhood than the Mission. Ultimately, I thought, I could probably get my car a little weensy spot in Pacific Heights, where Danielle Steele lives, and then everybody would want to date me.

Pacific Heights is, of course, several miles from my apartment. Up hills. You can make it in about twenty minutes, if you're a bird.

All of which is to say, join hands and give thanks, St. Louis. Raise your voices in common prayer for the countless miles of empty asphalt speckled all over your glorious city. No car will ever want for refuge there, nor driver for her little piece of asphalt lovingkindness.