Parking in a Parallel Universe

This column originally appeared on Sunday, April 25, 2010.

Parking is a problem in West Chester.

All right, all right, I hear you. You scoff, make that "pffft" sound with your mouth, and say to yourself aloud, "Tell me something I don't know!"

Well, OK, I will. I'll bet you did not know that that the medieval military leader Ivan the Russian defended Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria once conquered by Alexander the Great, in a four-month siege by the East Roman Empire, or Byzantine, army, only to find out that the, apparently, clueless citizens of Plovdiv let the Byzantines traipse right on into the city while he was away on other business without so much as a "how do you do."

So now that we have that out of the way, I will explain that the problem with parking in West Chester is not so much a quantity problem as a quality problem. Parking spaces are a dime a dozen in West Chester if you look for them, which those of us who live in the borough spend most of our waking hours doing, that is when we are not complaining about the imminent loss of another historic building. (At last count the borough was down to 5,678 historic buildings, which means if we lose one a year we'll be right out of historic buildings about the same time they unwrap all those cryogenically frozen folks in that lab out in New Mexico. Unless, of course, the world has been incinerated by a stray asteroid, in which case no one will care, except A. Roy Smith.)

No, there are always places to park in the borough, and believe me I have found them -- although some of the places I have found to park are not what you would technically call legal parking spaces, which I why I lead the National League in visits to District Court 15-1-01 at the Chester County Justice Center.

The question is not where you park, but how you park.

This became evident to me one evening last summer as I sat on the front porch at Central Headquarters on West Miner Street. (We call it that in honor of Ol' Gimlet Eye, Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, the Fighting Quaker, who used to live across the street.) Kathleen, our Electic Landlady, noticed that someone had parked their car so badly that the passenger side tires were virtually in the neighbor's front living room. "If these folks tried to pull that kind of parking job in Manhattan, they'd be towed to the East River," she exclaimed.

It struck me that we in West Chester judge those who visit our hometown on the basis of how well they park. Can you swing that sedan into a spot on the street in one swift, sure move that doesn't slow traffic down for more than a few seconds? Then you have what we like. Do you attempt the parallel moves required to squeeze that SUV into a space the size of an ice chest without a care in the world? Come right on in and stay awhile. Put those tires exactly four inches from the curb and leave no more, no less, than three feet between you and the cars parked to your front and rear? Please, sir or madam, you go first.

But spend half an hour going back and forth, trying again and again to fit your SmartCar into a parking space the size of the Queen Elizabeth II, bumping into the fellow in back so many times that the car alarm shrieks on high, and you will have earned our everlasting enmity. "Go back to Exton where they have acres of open fields of diagonal parking space, you rube," we sneer to ourselves (knowing that you outlanders could be packing serious weaponry.) "Time to go back to driving school and learn what the words 'final reverse turn' mean here in the real world," we say, shaking our heads in disgust.

I have long advocated that those of us who park well should be given some recognition by the borough for our efforts and skill. Every perfect parking job on the street would be rewarded by the Borough Department of Parking with a colorful token, like those 12-step chips that have become the accessory of choice for members of the rock band Aerosmith. Collect a certain number of tokens and you could exchange them for the fines and costs accrued when parking too close to an intersection or for more time than allotted on the meter. It's a simple act that could result in such good will, I don't see how it could miss.

I also don't see how you would know that since they changed their mascot from the Huron to the Eagle in 1991, the Eastern Michigan Eagles Football Team has won less than 28 percent of their games. But I'm telling you, just so you know.