The Streets of San Francisco

7/1/2001 English German

Edition # 31
San Francisco, 7-1-2001

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The Streets of San Francisco

Figure [1]: A historic event on June 9, 2001: The "PERL MAN" in pole position.

Michael Apart from the unbearable traffic conditions, there is another reason why I don't like to move our car: It is very difficult to find a parking spot in San Francisco. Since we don't have a garage, if one of us comes home with the car after seven in the evening, we sometimes have to drive around the block for up to half an hour to find a spot. If we happen to have parked the car near our apartment, we think twice about moving it again. Parking spots are evaluated based on street cleaning days -- a "Monday parking spot" has to be vacated on Monday because that's when the street sweeper comes. Getting a Monday parking spot on a Tuesday, where the car can theoretically stay for a whole week, is considered a superhuman achievement, often celebrated with champagne. On the other hand, if you park your car late on Tuesday evening on a 7 AM Wednesday parking spot due to lack of alternatives, you might as well go to bed wearing a fool's cap.

The best parking spot is, by the way, what I call the "Pole Position" -- right in front of the house. ("Pole Position" is what they call the best starting position in car races). We get this parking spot extremely rarely, maybe once every three months. Then the car is only moved if someone needs to go to the emergency room at the hospital.

Furthermore, you are not allowed to park near fire hydrants; you have to keep a distance of about eight and a half feet or so. Back when I obtained my California driver's license, I had to memorize that, but by now, I don't remember it anymore. It always reminds me of an old movie with the Marx Brothers, in which Groucho Marx had an inflatable hydrant in the car that he would place on the sidewalk when needed to scare away drivers parked in that spot. There's also some rule about intersections, but it's not taken very seriously. The actual rule is more like: if it doesn't directly harm anyone, it won't be punished. In Germany, I once received a ticket for parking against the direction of traffic--here, no one cares which way the car is facing. What's important on steep streets is to turn the wheels in such a way that if the gear slips and the handbrake fails, the car rolls against the curb and stops there. If you don't do that, you'll get a ticket because there have been serious accidents when old cars started moving on their own and thundered down the hills. Angelika always scolds me when I only gently turn the wheels and not, as the lady wishes, so that they almost pop out of their sockets. However, my dream is to one day get such a ticket, frame it, and hang it in the bathroom.

Figure [2]: The wheels of the car in front are turned the wrong way -- it would roll into the street! The two cars behind it did it correctly.

Figure [3]: A ticket for the car that turned its wheels the wrong way -- 23 dollars!

A recent update: The other day, I wanted to drive to the office in the morning, went over to 23rd Street where our car was parked, and couldn't believe my eyes: On a 30% incline, there was a black Acura Integra parked sideways on the sidewalk, right in front of a garage. And the license plate read "PERL MAN"! An approximately hundred-year-old woman was frantically moving around it, and a younger gentleman, who could no longer get out of his garage because of it, had just called the towing service. It turned out that while parking, the woman had bumped into our car with her massive 1960s Oldsmobile from above, causing our car to roll down the hill on its own, despite the handbrake being engaged and the gear in place. Thanks to the wheels being turned towards the curb as required (Angelika had parked), it only hopped up the curb and came to a stop just before the garage. The woman had kindly already tucked a note under my windshield wiper: "Please ring 647-92.. -- will explain." Well, I would have been curious about that explanation. But luckily, I happened to be there, found that nothing much had happened to our car (minor scratches don't count in America), whereupon the woman thanked me with "Thank you for being so nice." The garage guy quickly canceled the tow truck, I drove the car off the sidewalk, and headed off to work in Mountain View as usual. In all the excitement, I unfortunately had forgotten to photograph the scene. You experience things in this city!