San Francisco is known for many things. Cable Cars, sourdough bread, beat poets, hills, liberal politics–I could go on. Of course, San Francisco is also known for challenging parking. Take a city as densely packed as New York City, throw in some wacky hills, and you have San Francisco parking. I know of no other city where at certain times and on certain streets (that I still haven’t figured out) you’re allowed to park in a lane of traffic. Despite this, Mike and I have felt pretty lucky when it comes to parking. We actually have a garage (that’s currently filled with items from the former residents) and a driveway. In addition, we don’t live in one of the more densely packed neighborhoods of San Francisco. For the last two months we’ve been able to keep one car in the driveway and park one on the street. Given that today is our two-month anniversary here in SF, it seems the fates wanted to have some fun with mad. Last night, we came home a little later than usual and there was no parking to be found. No parking on our street, the adjacent street, or even the street two blocks over. I’m happy to report that under battlefield conditions, mad performs with aplomb. We quickly cleared a little spot in our packed-to-the-gills garage so we could park the smaller of our two cars inside. This allowed us to park our second car in the driveway. Most important, it allowed mad avoid a night of sleeping in our car.
Yes, those cars are parked in a lane of traffic. Photo credit sf.streetsblog.org.