Here is something that I wrote when we were in Israel earlier this summer. For some reason, this was languishing in the drafts section and I have decided it is time to inflict this upon my unsuspecting reader(s).
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Parking in Tel Aviv is a nightmare. And from talking to the
locals, it doesn’t appear to be a recent problem either. In the book of the
Carinthians (12:8, isn’t it simpler to write 3:2? I once scored a ‘centum’ in
maths in a class test in class VII. I think.), it is said, I shall lead my
children to the land of overflowing honey and milk but you’re on your own for
parking your camels. Thy shath be screweth mwa hahaha. *To be verified.*
The place where we stay is near a popular beach along the
beautiful Med coast. And on Fridays, the
place is swarming with people heading into the warm waters for fun and frolic
in beach wear that leave nothing to imagination. The streets look like there is
a giant Pothy’s around the corner holding a grand aadi thallupadi sale on itsy
bitsy teeny weeny bikinis and nearly everyone from as far away as Beirut, just
bought themselves one. Net result: The best ever traffic jam I’ve ever been
in. I’m stuck in a car looking for a spot that doesn’t exist while one half
of Israel wants to show off perfect beach bodies and the other half wants to
look at it.
In less touristy suburbs (like Syria), the streets are lined
with cars of residents on both sides all the time. Rumor is that if you find a
great spot, very close to your apartment, you work from home for the rest of
your career. At a conservative estimate, there are at least 3 parked cars (and
nine cats) per person in Tel Aviv. The ones driving about the roads are just
clueless tourists looking for a spot which explains the traffic jams. So on any
day, you are more likely to run over a few cats than find a spot.
Much like a degree in philosophy, finding street parking in
Tel Aviv is time consuming, pointless and there are no clear rights or wrongs.
Only wrongs. And there are more people doing it than you think.
To add a further layer of confusion to the already difficult
process, there are, at last count, 23,619 different shades of curbside paint
codes with varying implications. There is the ubiquitous yellow and red which
means that Rafael Nadal will one more French Open title if you park your
car there, they will tow your car, punch you in the face and steal both of your
kidneys while simultaneously sullying your otherwise spotless lineage. Very
different from the red and white curb where the same rules apply but they steal
only one kidney. Then there is the more common blue and white about which no
one is quite sure. Then there is a grey with dog poop stains not to be mistaken
for the grey with urine stains. And so on.
But there are always accompanying rules for each color code
for the harried user. Stated very clearly. In Hebrew. Or perhaps ancient
Aramaic. But some of them are so complex that it makes no difference in which
language they are posted. Here is a smattering of the more straight forward
ones that I have decoded:
- You can park only on the right side of this street unless you own an apartment on this street. (English: At Tel Aviv real estate prices, LOL)
- You can park only on the left side of this street unless you are a tenant and if your landlord was born on a full moon Thursday while a partial solar eclipse was happening over Easter Islands. (English: Keep driving, ROFLMAO)
- You can park here if your idea of fun on a Thursday night is to retrieve your impounded car from the city office after paying a $100 fine to a lady with an attitude and an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth sitting inside a blue, dimly lit, rusting cage. (English: OK to Park)
Add to this the complex one way system in which all streets
slowly lead you away from Tel Aviv. In anticlockwise circles. On many nights, I
have parked in Damascus and hitched a ride home from some sympathetic ISIS
fighters. They even confided that they don’t mess with the Israelis because
they know they can never park their tanks in Tel Aviv without getting a ticket.
But the situation isn’t all that bad, really. There are many
parking lots available that charge a ransom but compensate by having interesting
lot attendants. One of them in the lot close to our apartment offered a good
rate but his only condition was, and I wish I was making this up, that I talk
to him every night after I parked my car. There was one who kept asking me for
lens cleaning solution every time I walked past the booth. And I don’t even
wear glasses. Then there was the other guy who insisted that he had to
physically sign the ticket but then had no pen on him. And asking me to sit in
his booth, went in search of a pen at ten in the night. Good times. And every
morning there would be the cone-of-shame sitting on my car. The cone of shame
is a big, black, worn out traffic cone which cries out to all and sundry that
the owner of the car it was occupying had cheated on parking fees and may be
morally bankrupt. They may as well have tattooed “parking fee cheat” on my
forearm like they did in the eighties movies. But you can’t expect class or
subtlety from parking attendants can you?
After dealing with these people for a week, my colleagues
recommended that I pay a monthly rate and get it over with. Although they did
warn me that I had to drive a bargain myself. And then burst into uncontrolled
laughter. Thus on a Friday afternoon, I was negotiating with a lot attendant
that looked like a young Moammar Gaddafi having a bad hair day. I would type in
my offer ($20, a bottle of lens cleaning solution and 30 minutes of quality
talk time with the attendant between 8:30 and 9:00pm on weeknights) on his
sticky cellphone. He would snigger, shake his head and type in his counter
offer ($36,899.99, my left kidney and unlimited talk time
plus free sms). After a few iterations, we settled on an amount that I’m too
ashamed to type here. I’m not saying that I overpaid but I’m confident that
with the amount I paid, cancer could have been cured and world poverty erased
with the leftover change. Or the equivalent of a 2BHK apartment in
Puzhuthivakkam with world class amenities (English: about 18 hours of power supply, twice a week).
But on the positive side, I tactfully negotiated to not have
to talk to the attendants. Only sing and dance with them. For right after I
‘clinched’ the parking deal, the lot attendants have all turned very
professional and friendly. One of them that looks like a middle-aged Jesus with
a fanny pack around his waist even dances with my son every night singing an
allegedly Bollywood song that goes like “Jimmy jimmy…aah aaja aaja”. And then
asks me to talk to him.
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