Local Controversy: Parking

I'm tired of national politics. So, Rummy and Rice make surprise visits to Baghdad. Big deal. We've seen this again and again. What would be news would be an announced visit to Baghdad. Of course, we know that the security problems an announced visit would present make such a thing impossible. So members of the Cabinet, or the VP, or even Bush himself, sneak into the country, and then leave as quickly as possible. To demonstrate how well things are going (does this really work? with whom?).

But anyway . . . I have been following a local story here in N.W. There are many, many churches in the Logan Circle neighborhood--many, many Baptist churches to be exact--but there is precious little parking. So on Sunday mornings, hundreds, probably thousands of cars pour into the area, but there aren't parking spaces for all those cars. So the churchgoers double-park, all up and down local streets. Generally, they do this on side streets, as opposed to main streets, and on streets that are relatively wide, like Vermont Avenue. Now, much of the time, churchgoers double-park in one another. But that doesn't mean that they won't park in your car, you godless heathens, if it happens to be parked on one of the streets that gets double-parked every Sunday morning.

Now, for a long time, when the Logan Circle neighborhood was not that nice, this wasn't a problem. But now, with gentrification, i.e., with all the damned Yuppies moving in, many of whom have to park on the street . . . there's conflict. Because many of the Yuppies really dislike getting parked in on Sunday mornings. There's also a race element here, of course, as the churchgoers are African-Americans, the Yuppies are mostly white.

My take on this is that the Yuppies, at least the ones voicing objections to this practice, are overreacting. First, the fact is that you can almost always avoid getting parked in. Because this happens on the same streets, the same time, every weekend. So . . . you might get parked in once, and be surprised. But, as the president once said, "won't get fooled again." (Or was that the Who?) This means that, if you are going to need to drive the car on Sunday morning, make sure that you park in a spot that doesn't get parked in, like a spot on a major street, or a spot at the end of a block.

I should add that I do this, myself, every Saturday. Not that big a deal, with a little foresight. It may be a little inconvenient, but when you choose to live in an urban environment, you choose some inconveniences (and some conveniences, of course).

Second, the fact is that there really isn't parking for all the churchgoers, and the churches can't really do anything about that. They can't move the churches, and they can't build parking. Some of the churches actually have people park at Howard, where there is some parking, and shuttle some of their congregants to the churches. They might do a bit more of that, but I'm sure that that is expensive, and these are pretty modest congregations.

The Yuppies will lose this one, politically, of course. (Has the godless, sleep-in-on-Sunday crowd ever beat the churches?) But I just wish they would stop their bitching. They're going to give all us Yuppies a bad name in this neighborhood.