Are you feeling parking guilt?

There are lots of stories in Paved Paradise that made my eyes boggle.

I’m not sure what ones stick with you. Maybe Victor Gruen, the architect and actor who fled the Nazis, landed in America, and somehow ended up popularizing the concept of mammoth shopping malls surrounded by ocean-sized parking lots in cities all over the US. Then there’s Chicago mayor Richard M Daley’s absolutely insane, rapid-fire 2008 decision to sell public parking infrastructure to private investors that “still haunts the city’s finances.” And there are New York City’s parking scams, in which the biggest offenders against parking rules are the very people who are part of government: police officers, court officials, diplomats… (except for Ana Russi, the parking attendant who was so dedicated to enforcing the law that she even ticketed the mayor’s limo.)

The tales that resonated most strongly with me, though, were less bombastic: the ones that felt closer to my life and my habits. The tricky housing regulations that inflate the cost of new housing and make it hard for building projects—a perenially hot topic here in San Francisco. Or the explosion of parklets, particularly during the pandemic, which actually started here as the brainchild of John Bela and friends.

I really enjoyed all of these stories, and Henry Grabar’s exploration of the sordid, uplifting, silly and complicated details. All through the book, though, I struggled with a kind of parking guilt.

I use pretty much every form of transport there is but I do love driving my car, and the freedom and convenience that it brings. But that inevitably means I need to park it. It’s a guilty pleasure, a luxury. When I go to my therapist, for example, I don’t catch the bus even though it’s a straight shot, but instead drive downtown and park in a nearby municipal parking lot (which has never been remotely full, even when downtown was booming.) It’s a little more expensive and less efficient, but the benefit is that I get 15 minutes of personal isolation before and afterwards, a bubble that I deeply appreciate after hard sessions. But I can see that I am part of the problem.

Then again, I don’t get angry about parking spots, so maybe not. 

There are, according to Grabar, around 441,000 parking spots in San Francisco—which is more than the number of residences and more than the number of cars—and the city gives over most of the streets, particularly outside of the city center, to free or nearly-free parking spots.

But I saw a thread on Reddit the other day about a parking dispute a few neighborhoods over from where I live. The poster had parked in an open, public spot on a residential street. They happened to be in front of somebody’s house (since most spots are in front of somebody’s house) and the homeowner came out to confront the driver and tell them to move. It was their spot, they said. What temerity! You can just picture the vein-throbbing, red-faced man, true gammon. Grabar’s angry, entitled parking pest in action.

The provision of a public good has not only been co-opted into a private one, but it’s something people feel entitled to. I wondered: What do they do when they go out of the house, and need to park somewhere else? Do they assume that every space in front of a residence belongs to somebody? If they parked on a different street in a different neighborhood and a homeowner came out and asked them to move, would they do it?

I think we all know the answer.

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I went to see the author Ray Nayler speaking at City Lights bookstore earlier this week: his first novel The Mountain In The Sea features people making first contact with intelligent octopuses, and led me into my own deep dive about cognition and consciousness. He said something that resonated strongly with me, and hopefully with you too: that his superpower is being curious, always wanting to know more and diving deep into every rabbit hole. As I found a range of varied and fascinating work from around the Curi-verse this week, his comments came back to mind. 

First, Rebecca Nagle (CUR007, By The Fire We Carry) had a great and devastating piece in The Atlantic about how her difficulties with Long Covid helped show exactly how screwed the healthcare system is.

Meanwhile, the latest New Yorker joint from Kyle Chayka (CUR008, Filterworld) is a profile of Jay Graber, the CEO of social network Bluesky, and the company’s attempt to wrestle the Twitterspace. Some interesting observations, and honestly more than a few moments that felt like a skit from HBO’s Silicon Valley than I expected—even if Bluesky is quickly becoming my favorite network. (We even post there sometimes!)

And then there was a recent episode of Gastropod from Nicola Twilley and Cynthia Graber focused on the story of quinoa: where it originated from, what brought it to the rest of the world, and how it exploded in popularity. There’s a good summary at Eater. 

All three of them deep looks at disconnected and fascinating things. I hope Nayler would be proud.

A reminder that our live chat with Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise, is on Tuesday April 22 at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific. We’ll be sending out reminders and links ahead of time, and calendar invites to club members. I hope you can join us… and I guarantee that there will be enough spots for us all to park up and talk.

Onwards

Bobbie