An Anthropological Look at finding a San Francisco Parking Space

Yesterday I went to see Rachel Getting Married because Anne Hathaway is nominated for a Best Actress award at the Academy Awards. BB, K and I drove down to congested Polk and California Streets with the idea that we would find street parking and not have to take out a second mortgage to pay to park in a lot.

It wasn't easy. As we drove around like vultures we recounted to each other how different cultures react to finding difficult parking spaces in the city. The one I love the most is when an entire Asian family stands in the newly found parking space, holding it captive while the driver turns around or goes around the block to jockey into position. If you want that space don't even think about it b/c you'll have the entire family, all of them stern-faced and unbudging, to contend with.

K recalled how some inner-city black folks will stand in the parking space trying to sell it to you -- and yes, this has happened to me South of Market. I asked them if they had ever had the experience in the Castro where a gay man will steal the space right out from under you, zoom right into it, get out of their car and simply shrug their shoulders like too bad. K says maybe it's because they've had to put up with so much homophobia all their lives and they are now on home turf, in the Castro, and they are doing what they want and you can't stop them. Looking at it this way, I almost want to give them my parking space...

Parking culture. One of my favorites is the driver with the huge hog of an old American car who, spying the coveted parking space, swings a slow U-turn in the middle of the block and ties up the Muni bus while they inch this way and that to get into position, the Muni driver honking and gesturing at them. Of course I make illegal U-turns too in the middle of the block, but I have a small car and can do it a lot faster....

Or the situation where you're walking down Geary at a busy restaurant time and people roll down their windows and yell at you from their cars wanting to know if you're walking to your car and can they have your space.

Or the angry older folks who get in their cars and make you wait ten minutes while they get ready to leave, power-tripping you into frustration.

Or the person who gets in their car and makes you wait ten minutes for the space, then decides they're not quite finished shopping after all....

Or the Russians in my neighborhood who double-park in the street waiting for a space to become available....

So, the three of us descended upon Polk and California Streets on a busy Valentine's Day, Saturday night, K driving, BB riding shotgun, and me the back-seat-driver:

"There's one, there's one, there's one!!" I yell at K as I spy an unlikely space in an alleyway off of Polk. "Come on come on come on!!!! Hurry hurry hurry hurry! Back up back up back up back up!!!!!"

"Shit Eliza, I can't! There's a pick-up truck behind me! He's not going to let me. Besides, it's a one-way street!"

"It doesn't matter!" I yell. "No one's coming! You can do it!"

K is afraid of the pick-up truck and doesn't risk it so I tell her to come on, circle the block, but we all start laughing. K says people become birds of prey when looking for a SF parking space, that it becomes a survival issue, and yes, I can feel it....

We finally find a space on Polk mid-way between California and Sacramento Streets but not before someone pulls up in front of us trying to steal it and we start yelling at them, except for BB who is the most positive person in the world and doesn't unleash her inner criminal....

We get out and head for Bob's Big Boy at the top of the block. K says she likes eating at Bob's b/c it's such a depressing place and nobody expects too much of you when you eat there. And it's true. They even let us play Crazy Eights while we kill time after the meal
waiting for the movie to start.

The movie. OK, so Anne Hathaway is very good but the characters are so darn unlikeable. Not her, but her sister and her mother. It's so painful watching Kym (AH) in her ninth month of sobriety, let out of rehab for the wedding (what insurance plan in the United States of America lets someone stay in rehab for nine months and counting???) and trying to manage her emotions in this highly-charged situation. Her successful sister is getting married, is pregnant, is going for her Ph.D. Their mother is a denial queen about a tragedy that's happened in the past. The father, sweet as he is, cannot reach her. You just want to get her out of there and back into rehab before she screws up her life even more. I'd give the movie a C, maybe a C+. I didn't like it.

Only one more week until the Academy awards. Only one more Saturday night before the Balboa Theatre opens its doors to televise it on the big screen...