A New York City Parking Spot is an Oyster

You bought a car in Texas in April. It’s a 2000 Toyota 4runner, black with gold trim, and a leather interior that fuses to your tender under thighs when you’re wearing shorts on a hot day, which is every day in Texas. His name is Virgil. He is a boy car and if it bothers people that he’s not a girl car then you think they need to have a serious word with themselves about why they need all machines, objects, and beasts of burden to be women.

Virgil is not like the other cars; he defies expectation. He laughs in the face of convention. He is literally a feminist icon. He was born in Japan and raised in Alabama by one careful owner. He’s done 163,000 miles, which is about 120,000 miles less than cars his age, but there’s also a strong chance his odometer was reset in 2009. His steering wheel is tilted slightly to the left and he does not pick up FM radio. He is a gas-guzzler who, for some reason, vibrates and shudders at exactly 70mph. You paid a stupid amount of money for him that you will never tell a living soul and you love him.

He is bouncy. He’s fun. His tires are big and you feel really tall when you’re driving him. He’s analog and clunky. He has buttons and levers and interior light panels in primary colors that remind you of a pinball machine. His internal locking system makes that great “thunk” sound which is the sound of your childhood. It is the sound of the start of a long journey to the Norfolk broads, or a French campsite, nestled next to your sleeping siblings watching raindrops race each other down the window of your family’s people carrier.

In Texas, Virgil made sense. Texas is big and you are small. Even if you left the Del Valle ranch on foot at 4am each morning, you still wouldn’t make it to Austin’s city limits by lunchtime. A car in Texas is simply standard issue; a foregone conclusion. You need to go to your friend’s house for dinner? She lives on the other side of a freeway - take the car. Fancy a sweet treat? There is not one sidewalk between your house and the ice cream parlor - take the car. You gotta run to the supermarket? It’s 8000 miles away - take the car.

But when you decided to move back to New York, you had major concerns about bringing Virgil.

In any other city, a car is a symbol of control and autonomy; a marker of someone who refuses to be beholden to unreliable bus schedules and unreasonable Uber fares. And in a country as vast and sprawling as America, it is a decision rooted in reason.

There is only one exception to that rule and that exception is New York City, the most populated city in the country. It is home to 8.8million people stacked on a patch of land no bigger than Augusta, Georgia (population: 200,000) Buying a car in a city that is already so full is a decision that defies all logic. It is punk. It is naivety. It is all of the seven deadly sins but mostly wrath and sloth. It is a hopeful yet nihilistic move that flies in the face of the logistical facts and financial figures; like deciding to bring a child into the world after 2008.

New York City is the most congested place in the United States. For a progressive city to be so full of such emblems of individualism is wildly problematic. But there is no incentive for the city to change things when parking violations alone bring in $843 million a year. You have no idea where that money goes but it certainly hasn’t been put back into the crumbling subway system. Hoyt Schermerhorn station looks just as derelict as it was in Michael Jackson’s 1987 music video, Bad. The last time you were there the tiles were bleeding orange goo.

But driving a car instead of riding the train is no better way to travel, it’s just a different dance with a different devil. Yet, despite all this, the thought of selling Virgil so soon after buying him feels stressful and sad. Plus, you want to delay facing his pathetic resale value.

So, on July 4th, you embark upon the 1,700 mile trip back to Brooklyn.

Apart from Virgil’s brakes failing in Tennessee [YOLO!] it’s a pretty uneventful journey. But the New York City problems start as soon as you enter the Empire State. First order of business is for GEICO to increase your monthly insurance payments by 400%, and downgrade you to the “state minimum”, a policy which only guarantees you won’t be arrested for driving your own car. Two weeks after returning, you receive a letter from the city dated July 14th, 2024, the day you arrived back in Brooklyn, which includes a photo of you driving Virgil through a red light. They provide two photos so you can study your gormless head breaking the law from the front and the back. A head that was probably thinking something like “At last, I am home. It’s all gonna be OK” at the very moment the camera flashed.

In the short time you’ve been back, you have changed. You are a driving ninja, a bold and skillful chess player of the road; forever predicting the moves of suicidal pigeons, drunk pedestrians, and fellow maniacs on wheels. You are now an expert in parallel parking, an activity you believe should be an Olympic sport for it is no less complex and dangerous than skateboarding or dressage.

Something has been altered within your psyche. You are no longer the carefree soul you once were. You are hardened. Flinty. Honestly, you might be a little bit dangerous. You have to be this way otherwise you will literally be crushed to smithereens by a lorry or a school bus and, not only will no-one feel sorry for you, the city will send your mother a ticket for being dead in a loading zone.

You are terrified all the time. Cyclists and motorcyclists seem to appear at random moments from either side of your vehicle, always a complete and horrifying surprise; the wind beneath your wings. You are sure you will end up in prison for manslaughter just because you wanted to go to the beach one day.

Google Maps regularly sends you off main roads onto narrower streets peppered with parked cars, only to direct you back to the road you were just on except now you have to merge with speeding traffic and no one is stopping because why would they? You are all in hell! Every car contains a human being who has given themselves over to the worst aspects of their personality. Patience, empathy, and any notions of a brighter tomorrow are but a faint memory to them all. Their feet are fused to the gas pedal and their wheels tear at the very fabric of our society. Everyone’s ancestors are screaming. You pull out blindly and hope for the best, bracing your body for impact whilst waving a pathetic, apologetic thank you in the rear view mirror. You are spared.

But now that you have finished whatever errand pulled you into the gushing river of the road, it is time to head home to start the hellish ordeal of parking your car.

You mentally prepare yourself to go through the the five stages of finding a New York City parking spot:

• Denial: “This time it will be different.”

• Anger: “Everyone must die, including me”

• Bargaining: “Dear God, I promise that if I ever make it out of here (car ownership) alive, I’ll dedicate my life to cleaning animals after oil spills, if that’s still a thing.”

• Depression: “All is lost”

• Acceptance: “It’s not so bad to live in a car in a state of perpetual motion”

As you reach a one mile radius of your home, you turn into a spot-seeking missile; eyes like laser beams, chin to steering wheel, shoulders by ears, grimacing and muttering as you scan your surroundings. You think you see a spot, but alas, it’s home to a fire hydrant. Oh, you see another one but, gosh darn it, those sneaky fire hydrants. Do your eyes deceive you? Could this be a parking spo- of for fucks sake it’s a fucking fuckface fire hydrant! You repeat this process forty seven times as a feeling of pressure builds in your chest. Your vision blurs. The world spins. For some reason you have to turn down the radio so you can see better but when you do, you swear you can hear the faint sound of circus music.

Then, my God, you see one! A New York City parking spot! But it’s on the other side of the road; a side you are not on in a direction you are not going. You drive past, burning the image of it into your brain. You are panicking. For some reason you are looking side to side and up and down. A plan formulates. You will find a way to turn around and circle back, to claim what is rightfully yours. You deserve it. You’re not so bad. You give money to charity. You volunteered that time. You always nod and pat when your friends are crying hysterically - the parking gods wouldn’t do you dirty! They wouldn’t giveth just to taketh away?!!!

You wish and hope and pray for the space to still be there once you go round the maddening one way system which takes you three blocks south then four blocks west to get you in the correct lane and position to claim the blessed parking spot. You wonder if you should run red lights (intentionally). You wonder if the police will understand, if it’s the only thing they understand in this God forsaken world. You might even bond with the officer over the hopeless parking situation, catching each other’s furtive glances through the steamy window, exchanging a small electric shock as he hands you your seventh violation this week. Perhaps you’ll fall in love, laughing over the beauty and the madness of it all, before making love in the sacred parking spot once you both make it round the one way system.

He’ll incorporate the story of “The Last Parking Spot in Brooklyn” into his speech at your wedding, a speech that somehow turns into a communal song that you and your wedding guests sing to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Only Living Boy in New York. Not long after, you’ll realize that you’ve fallen pregnant with the parking spot baby who you’ll name Miracle or Apparition or Oasis after the craziest most impossible parking spot the world has ever seen.

But as you finally round the corner to take the spot, what is this? Your hopes and dreams have been dashed on the banks of a 1997 Jeep Cherokee, one of the few cars older, more pretentious, and less practical than yours. It looks like it’s been in the parking spot for years but could only have landed there three minutes ago. The engine must still be warm but the owner is nowhere to be seen; he has no doubt scurried off into his own burrow away from the horrors for the day.

It’s all too much. It can’t be done. You know now that there is no justice in this world and that’s OK. You will never ever find a parking spot and will be forced to cancel whatever plans you had for the rest of your life. You think of your dog waiting for you at home and imagine your neighbors breaking down the door to find her emaciated body cowering in the corner with those doleful eyes that seem to say, “Did she do it? Did mummy find a parking spot?” You are the worst person in the whole world and you don’t deserve to live. You should be burnt at the stake for having the audacity to buy a machine that almost every other person on the planet has.

You are driven to the edge. You are edging. You are almost ready to abandon your car in the middle of the road and start a new life in Thailand rescuing dogs with paralyzed back legs, and just as you are about to be consumed by a vision of you and your pack dragging yourselves along Ko Samui beach at sunset, you see it. 

Your white whale.

Your life’s purpose.

A New York City parking spot. In an area you’ve already passed three times, located just one block from your apartment.

Is it true?

Can it be?

Is God…good?

You park up, turn off the engine, unclench your jaw, shoulders, and butt hole and just like that, you are reborn. You are whole, safe in the superior air of a New York City parking spot watching all the other losers swivel. You climax.

This is a twist of fate. Everything is going your way and nothing can stop you. You have driven somewhere in New York Citaaay and sure, you could’ve got there quicker on the subway but, by God, in a car you got to listen to your own music without headphones and almost die six times! Your heart is swelling with pride, excess adrenaline, and cortisol which you know will eventually kill you if you continue to drive in New York City but, for now, you have arrived! You are king of everything and everyone and proven to yourself that you can do hard things and reach the edges of your sanity without ending a life!

Something has been galvanized or cauterized within your soul, for now you have the soul of a New York City driver. You are like Meryl Streep’s character, nicknamed “White Water”, in the 1994 film The River Wild; the only woman skilled enough to take on The Gauntlet, a series of dangerous rapids on the Kootenai River, except Malcolm X Boulevard is your gauntlet and your nickname will have to be something like “TarMac” or “Slippery When Wet”.

You are different now. You are not like the friends you left on the shores of the sidewalk. You have become a part of New York’s lore and bloodstream, as inseparable from the city as its skyline, a nest of rats, or a fat-burg clogging up the sewers.

You are literally traffic.

You practically skip into your apartment, leaving the most expensive thing you own on the street as if to say, “Here, take it! I have no use for this mad mass of steel and rubber! Fellow humans, please don’t steal it! Incontinent birds, have at it! Good luck, God bless!”

But as you enter your home and collapse on the couch, there is niggling sensation in between your shoulder blades. A tension. An uneasy somatic knowing. Someone has you in their sights. You are being watched by Lady Luck and Father Time. You are a hunted woman who can never truly relax because you know this reprieve will not last forever, because a New York City parking spot is a ticking time bomb, a poisoned chalice, a soon-to-be forbidden zone on Mondays and Thursdays between the hours of 11am and 1.30pm. 

A New York City parking spot is an oyster; at first, an aphrodisiac; alluring, welcoming and deeply sexual. But all parking spots spoil for a three hour window at least twice a week; fickle mistresses who reject you only to be born again after the street cleaners have barreled through, welcoming you with open arms like nothing happened.

You’ve been in the city for three weeks and already received seventeen parking tickets. The only reason the number isn’t higher is because a friend is borrowing your car but at the rate you’re going you expect to be selling your plasma by Christmas.

But this is the life you have chosen, the path you must walk. You push your fears aside and go about your evening as if you are not a marked woman. As if your life is your own. When you can’t sleep, you look out onto the street painted purple and blue with night and admire your car nestled in the parking spot, safe for now but, for how long? Twelve hours? Twenty four? Thirty six - hell, you’re crazy, you fool! The parking spot is no more yours than the moon or the stars or an agitated wave in a frothing ocean. You cannot own a parking spot in New York City any more than you can cage the wind! It is as much a symbol of hope - robust, tangible, and brimming with potential- as it is an absence of a thing - a loss, a negative space, a long shadow of a future nightmare cast by an impossible dream.

There is light pollution in the city so you see no stars but what need is there for stars when you have your own system, your own imagined constellation of future parking spots that seem to light up the night with their perfect potential and shapely shapelessness? Your Toyota 4Runner practically beams with moonlight!

The next morning, like a woman who has forgotten the horrors of childbirth, you skip out of your apartment ready to take on a new day and the entire process all over again with the hopeful thought in your gormless head, “This time, it will be different”.