Alternate Side of the Street
Gloria Zimmerman
Word Count 772
It was a luxury to have a car in New York and an extravagance to keep it in a garage, but we had moved from Los Angeles thirteen years earlier and we just could not give it up. Besides, I worked in the Bronx three days a week and cherished my morning commute up the West Side Highway, NPR burbling on the radio, coffee thermos within easy reach. There was even a big box store on the way home where I’d do the family shopping. The suburban dream with a twist. Then Covid hit, my job went remote and it was no longer possible to justify the garage. Still, how long could it last? A month? Two? Six months tops?
Now I spend my days on Zoom, and my car spends its days on the narrow side streets of my neighborhood, rusted out and weary, both of us gearing up for another winter. My former joyride is like a reproachful, costly pet. It demands that I move it to the alternate side of the street for street cleaning, it demands that I start it up in cold weather, and it constantly demands air in the front driver-side tire. Remember those Japanese digital characters from the late 90s shaped like little eggs which you had to electronically “feed?” I have an app to remind me where I parked, when I parked, and what day and time I have to do it all over again. It’s a lot to keep track of, but the threat of a ticket, or worse, getting towed, keeps me motivated. Once a week my husband and I engage in a two-person operation known as Food Shopping With A Car. Here’s how it works: we hit the downtown Target and then the Trader Joe’s on Spring Street. The outing has to be choreographed just right so that we return with plenty of time to re-park the car before the streets fill up with other residents performing the same dance. My husband has a methodical approach that I lack and usually has good luck with street parking, although we are careful not to use that term because saying it out loud is obviously bad luck. It’s understood that once you’ve moved the car, you’re required to offer your services to those without. In the darkest days of Covid, we were glad that we could shop for a dear friend, who is immuno-compromised, but it meant we had to recalibrate our route because of where she lived, swapping out the downtown Trader Joe’s for the one on Sixth Ave, the Tribeca Target for the Fairway in Chelsea.
It could be worse. Since the pandemic, alternate side is only once a week. It’s not bad but it’s not nothing either. It’s not nothing the morning after the catalytic converter is sawed out from under the car and you’re trying to get to the airport. It’s not nothing to discover that the folk wisdom about Bounce sheets is true: it does discourage rats from gnawing through the wiring, so you want to make sure to spread the sheets around generously after you turn the car off. Certainly, it’s not nothing when you’re driving down Fifth Ave on a snowy day and realize you can’t see out the windshield because the wiper fluid is frozen solid.
A friend recently asked, “Is it still fun or is it becoming a drag?” She lives on the Upper West Side and parks her car in a garage next to her building, so already I’m annoyed and judgmental. But I get that she’s referring to more than just the parking. She means living in New York. I’m not sure that I have an answer to that question. I guess it’s a little of both. Fun and a drag. Like most New Yorkers, I bitch and moan about parking, about rent, about all of it, but I remain an optimist at heart, baseless though it sometimes may be. There has got to be a day in the not-too-distant future when I return to my in-person job in the Bronx. I will return my battered jalopy to its former indoor home. I will return to the garage and, like the final scene in “Love, Actually,” will be welcomed back by Fabian, my favorite parking attendant, his arms spread wide. In the meantime, at the very least, my children know the depths of our bond when we drive them uptown on a day that it is not alternate side parking, and once in a while even when the car is parked right across the street.
Gloria lives in New York City with her husband in their empty nest. She teaches English as a Second Language at Lehman College. Her essays have appeared in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Borderline Stories and Beach Reads. Her piece, “Multitudes” was set to music for a concert series in New Ulm, Minnesota and she directed her stage play, “The Negative Space,” at Town and Village Synagogue on the Lower East Side.