A street-sweeper on the Upper West Side.

By Dr. Joan Bregstein

On Friday July 24th at 9:00 am, thirty-two residents on my Upper West Side block exited their buildings to participate in a peculiar rite of New York living that many of us hadn’t realized we’d missed. We slid into our cars, which in most cases had remained un-driven since mid-March and, at the appropriate moment, participated in an act of automotive choreography known as ASP—Alternative Side of the Street Parking. Each of us drove fifteen feet across the street at the steepest angle possible, to double park, quasi-legally. At the communally-accepted time of 9:30—official no-parking is illegal from 9:30-11– we then all exited our cars, leaving the vacated side of the street free for the street sweeper to provide a much-needed cleaning. We had 90 minutes to strategize how, in our frantic game of musical cars, we would get our spaces back again by 11 without getting ticketed. Cops usually don’t give a ticket for the egregious double parking, but they could.

Dr. Joan Bregstein when she’s not parking.

For many NYC car owners, the four to six-hour weekly time commitment to do the ASP-dance dictates activities of daily living, the timing of appointments, meetings, exercise, meals, even when your dog pees. For on-street parkers, this cyclic process is played out twice weekly on every residential street in every borough–unless drivers have the bizarre urge to actually use their cars to get somewhere.

On that first Friday in late July, we all technically had 90 minutes to kill before the street sweeper passed and our old parking spots became legal again. If I waited the full 90 minutes, I would almost definitely be beaten out by my competitors who jumped the gun. If I moved back too early, I might see and hear the street sweeper honking at me through my rear view mirror, necessitating a hustle back to the illegal side of the street, followed by a quick return to re-grab my spot. Of course, 30 other cars lined up in front and behind me would be simultaneously executing this exact maneuver at the same angle and time with only inches to spare. Seconds are all that separate ASP success from failure and, of note, hybrid cars, with their stop/start delay, and drivers with “parallelophobia,” an intense fear of parallel parking, are severely disadvantaged.

It could have been predicted that ASP timing would be affected by COVID, but, as I have learned as an Emergency Department doc, exactly how the virus will screw things up is always anyone’s guess. Normally, people return to their apartments, do errands, walk their dogs, anything that will allow them to wander back around 10:30. I went back to my 4th-floor apartment, and did my best to delete a pandemic’s worth of useless emails from my MacBook. I imagined that when I returned, I would climb into my 2017 Subaru and, arms extended to the steering wheel, would dash 15 feet back across 89th Street and claim my prize. I had been thinking of my first day back at ASP for a while, because it is all about the timing—even in the summer when the city empties out and you don’t have to worry about winter snow making some spots unattainable. But I hadn’t predicted my huge strategic mistake.

On that first day back, I didn’t return to my car until 10:40 a.m. I found it alone in its illegally double-parked state, the only car out of place on the block, devoid of protection ordinarily granted by herd immunity. The pandemic had changed the rhythm, and those extra ten minutes at home cost me hours that day.

At 11 a.m., when parking was now legal, and other drivers, feeling quite smug in their victories, had retreated home to live their lives until the next ASP day, my fun was not over. It continued on an adjacent block with different, but unfortunately, not contiguous, parking rule times. This required me to drive around aimlessly, racking up mileage and consuming gas for two hours until I could start the process again.

On-street parking in NYC can save the average car-owner $800 a month or more in monthly garage fees, but it’s unclear if most do it for the savings or the sport of a 30-foot stock car race. As a physician, I suspect I could afford to garage park, which suggests that my hours spent at this are actually my most expensive hobby.

There are no evidence-based alternate side of the street parking rule books and the uninitiated learn by seeing, repeating and learning from their mistakes. Seasoned participants rarely share ad hoc process maps as this would be aiding and abetting the competition. This, of course, does not apply to relatives, including my children, to whom this knowledge is passed, l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation.

Alternate side of the street parking was suspended in March, was restarted in late July and, depending on covidity, may stop again. There has been talk by the mayor, “we’re re-thinking it”, that it may be discontinued for good, leaving a time-honored tradition in danger of becoming extinct for the first time since it was introduced in the 1950s. If it goes, on-street parkers will be left with a void in their lives that will be difficult to fill. There is not much that can replace its obvious fun and adventure; ASP also provides structure to our lives.

With so much about life in New York, especially during COVID, being unpredictable, it’s comforting to know there is a reliable, if absurd, process to follow in order to find a free parking space.