Thank You for Not Parking

The official seal of the City of San Francisco.

There are some cities at high altitude, such as Quito, Ecaudor and La Paz, Bolivia, where the more affluent, desirable neighborhoods are those at the lower elevations where it's literally easier to breath.  In other major cities, the desirability and price of housing may be determined by the proximity to the downtown (a shorter commute), public transportation or even the ocean.  One of the major factors residents of San Francisco use in evaluating neighborhoods is the sun.  San Francisco is full of small micro-climates.  One part of the City can be completely socked in by fog while another part - a mere mile away - can experience a beautiful, sunny day.

When my wife and I lived in San Francisco for three years in the early 1990's, we lived right on the Great Highway (a misnomer because it wasn't really a highway and nothing about it was "Great") in the Sunset district - what locals actually referred to as the Outer Sunset - of San Francisco.  I don't know how or why the neighborhood was named the Sunset because it had the least amount of sun of any place in San Francisco.  Maybe it was because on a typical summer day the fog didn't clear until the late afternoon - just in time to watch the sun set into the Pacific ocean.

As the foggiest neighborhood in The City, and also the furthest from downtown, it was one of the least hip and most inexpensive in which to live.  We paid $800 a month for our two bedroom, third floor apartment - with one covered indoor parking space - in the early 1990's (adjusted for inflation, the equivalent of approximately $1,600 today - still a bargain).

Because it was San Francisco, one of the amusing past times the residents were put through by the local politicians and bureaucrats was the constant need to dodge the "No Parking" signs along our street.  The city scheduled a street sweeper to clean one side of the street every Tuesday morning between 8 and 10 a.m. and another side of the street was cleaned every Thursday morning between 8 and 10 a.m.  I felt this was never intended as a way of keeping the streets of San Francisco clean, but merely an excuse to extract more revenue from residents each week as they had no choice but to park their cars in an open space late at night on the side of the street that would be scheduled to be cleaned the following morning.

I, unfortunately, fell for this ruse time after time.  The parking tickets were much cheaper then (even adjusted for inflation) than they are today.  They were more of a nuisance ($15-20) than a budget buster - just another "you're living in San Francisco" tax.

My job often required me to work late and I would regularly return home near midnight, tired and ready for bed, and all the spaces along the side of the road where the parking wasn't prohibited the next morning were taken, leaving the only spaces available those on the other side of the street - where you would be subject to a parking ticket if you didn't move your car by 8 a.m. the next morning.  I was forced to just go ahead and park on the side of the street where spaces were still available, and tell myself that I could get out of bed at 7:30 the next morning, and move my car back to the other side of the street.  A good theory that didn't always pan out in practice.

My wife, who had our one indoor space and never had to bother with the San Francisco street cleaning/no parking dance, would leave our apartment for work at 7:30 in the morning and remind me to get up and move my car.  I would be so exhausted after four days of flying back and forth across the country, that I would roll back over for another fifteen or twenty minutes of sleep and not wake up for 30 or 45 minutes - now past 8 a.m. and into the sacrosanct street sweeping time.  Hearing the street sweeper pass our building,  I would jump out of bed in a panic, quickly throw on a shirt, pants and a pair of shoes, and dart downstairs to move my car, only to find it had already been ticketed by a friendly local meter maid.

The amazing thing is that the street sweepers and the meter maids - even though they had a two hour slot to clean my street - ALWAYS seem to come by our place at 8:01 a.m.  I think every parking ticket I got on the Great Highway was within just 5 or 10 minutes of 8 a.m.  I had always returned late the night before and parked on the only side of the street where open spaces were available, and then got dinged the next morning when I couldn't move my sorry, tired butt out of bed.  Another victim of the San Francisco parking tax.

My wife and I lived in The City for three years.  We enjoyed it, tried to take advantage of all the great things San Francisco had to offer and are still glad we did it.  Over the years, I would meet new people at our next home up in Sonoma County who, like us, had lived in The City for several years, enjoyed it and then moved out to have a family and raise kids - and to be able to park in front of their house at night without worrying about discovering a parking ticket the next morning.  Not one time during those conversations has anyone ever said they wished they still lived in San Francisco.  Not once.

And I think the politicians and powers that be who run San Francisco really want it that way.  Come live there for a few years when you're young and childless (San Francisco has the fewest children per household of any major city in America) and want to enjoy the many cultural amenitites that The City has to offer.  We will use you as a human ATM machine and suck every dime we can from your wallet with a never-ending list of taxes, fees and fines.  You will grow tired of it after a few years and move out, and another new person will move in to take your place, starting the whole process all over again.  The Circle of Life in San Francisco.   The only thing missing is the score by Elton John.

San Francisco is a great city, but if you live there for long, eventually the urban nuisances will wear you down.  The only people I have ever known to use the word "love" and "San Francisco" in the same sentence are people who have never lived there.

Enjoy the sunset.  That will be $55.  $65 if you don't pay it by the end of the month.