The Value of 10 Feet of Curb

Riddle: What do you get when you combine chess, musical chairs and Frogger? Parking in Brooklyn.

Let's be perfectly clear: We are very fortunate to live in an area where it's actually feasible, though not really prudent, to own an automobile. We're even more fortunate that we have a short Rav4 that can be squeezed into very tight parking spots -- imagine stuffing Rosie O'Donnell into a pair of Spanx, and you have the idea. But the great excitement really begins those 90 minutes every week when the street sweeper comes by.

See, the only thing our overzealous parking police love more than doing absolutely nothing is to hand out tickets. And when the street sweeper comes zinging around the corner like a subway rat on a bender, you'd better have that car moved out of the way. Every week, on the hour, depending on what stretch of curb you're parked on. Does the street sweeper do any good? Not at all! It spits a bit of water into the potholes, turning them into pigeon ponds, and whips the trash into a mesmerizing cyclone before unceremoniously dropping the crap right back where it started. But I digress. You see, there is parking where we live in Brooklyn, but not nearly enough. The hunt to find a space can often take 20 or 30 minutes and send you half way to Jersey. So when that damn street devil is scheduled to come by each week, finding a place to leave the car for that 90-minute stretch is a chore.

Yesterday morning, Kelly and I wisened up and went to get groceries while it was supposedly cleaning the street in front of our building. Out-smarted the sucker, we did. We finished getting groceries and the time still hadn't passed, so we parked in front of some dude's driveway and quickly took the groceries up to our apartment. I volunteered to wait out the street sweeper while Kelly put the food away, so I went back down stairs and found it had already passed. This was probably fortunate in that it prevented me from giving the driver, no doubt connected to the mob, an ill-fated one-finger salute. But there was still 15 minutes to go before I could move our car into prime position, and I was sure the parking gestapo was lurking around the corner. I sat in the driver's seat and peered out the windshield down the street at one of our neighbors, who stood outside his own double-parked car like a drug dealer afraid of getting caught. His head would turn one way, then the other. He'd march up the street, then right back. Very covert. About 10 minutes pass, the clock is counting down, and the guy makes his move. He jumps in his car, parks it in a flash, races across the street and jumps in another, and deposits it right behind the first. Three more cars whip around the corner, one driven by an old guy who looked like a Shar Pei, and populate the once-barren stretch of curb. My eyes are spinning like wheels on a slot machine, watching these guys go at open parking spaces like a pack of jackals at a carcass. Snapping from my stupor, I gunned the Rav4 and claimed my own piece of real estate, directly across the street from our building. Turning off the ignition as the clock struck 10 a.m., I wiped the perspiration from my brow and let out a thunderous sigh.

Safe for another week.