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Park Slope’s alternate-side-parking amnesty has been in effect for just a few days, but it’s already bubbled over into a battle of car owners and car haters.
Car owners loved being able to skip the weekly parking space shuffle, while those without the so-called horseless carriages were already bemoaning the deteriorating cleanliness of local streets — which can’t be properly swept because cars are no longer required to be moved from the curb.
As a result, leaves filled the streets on Monday morning — and it had only been a week since the last cleaning. On Union Street, an ice cream spoon, plastic shopping bag, and Starbucks coffee bag lay there, blowing in the wind and avoiding, for the next few months, the Sanitation Department’s brooms.
But this is how it will be until the Department of Transportation finishes installing new “No parking” signs on all of the neighborhood’s residential streets. The new signs will reflect new regulations that will reduce “No parking” hours from three hours to 90 minutes on street-sweeping days.
Even though it’ll be a summer of no “No parking,” Slope car owners are already seeing how difficult it is to find spots.
Take Jim Anderson. He left his prime spot Monday morning to run a quick errand, but was unable to find a good spot upon his return.
“I thought with the rules lifted, that wouldn’t be the case,” he said.
And many residents — car owners and non-drivers alike — think their cool, tree-lined streets will turn into Brooklyn’s hot new parking lot.
“You see there’s a parking spot here,” said Peter Pancucci, pointing at a vacant bit of curbside real estate on Fifth Avenue. “But [next week], I’ll have to come early to find a space if I can find a space. The cars don’t move — what do you do?”
And, like all things in writer-heavy Park Slope, everyone was talking. On Day 3, the Gowanus Lounge blog started a “Park Slope Parking Watch” in which a correspondent will photograph the same spot on a street every day to check if cars have moved. So far, one car has sat unmoved for three days straight.
For information about the alternate-side-of-the-street amnesty, head to www.nyc.gov/dot or call Community Board 6 at (718) 643-3027.
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
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