By

JOHN SCHERBER

DRIVING IN MEXICO 3:

FREESTYLE PARKING

         In two prior posts we have explored the subtle nuances of operating a motor vehicle in Mexico, where the distinctive character of the national method is referred to as free style driving.

         But every car trip must end, and what better symmetry to end it with than the equally uninhibited process called free style parking. Far from being confined to inserting your car between two boring lines in a given space as in the U.S. or Canada, free style parking opens the door to an entire symphony of improvisational parking techniques, few of them well understood or even recognized beyond the Mexican border.

         Since most cities in México were founded in new locations or overlaid upon indigenous towns during the sixteenth century, few were conceived with parking in mind. Many streets are no more than three burros wide, and few burros were ever parked since when not underway they were looking for lunch.

         Today, many parking places are often occupied by dead vehicles being scrapped for parts. Yet, when the need to stop is compelling, one option is the half-park. The sad truth is that some desperately needed parking places are two feet shorter than your car. But why should this be an impediment to parking? Should it really be your problem that the two adjacent drivers were too ill mannered to leave you enough space? In the spirit of the Mexican workaround, you will proceed to use what space remains, leaving the front of your car nosing out into the traffic. As other drivers will certainly realize while they struggle to get around you, you have done your level (or diagonal) best.

         Then there is parking-on-the-run. Let us say you are in a hurry. A true full-size parking place appears, but in your haste to run into a store and do some business, you park three feet out from the curb. A more precise job is reserved for those who have more time and less personal clout. To place your car in this space even to that degree announces your goodwill, since your business is clearly more important than that of anyone else passing on this narrow street.

         Ironically, a popular subset of free style parking is non-parking. It is used when no real parking place exists within three blocks of where you wish to stop and get out. This popular practice resembles parking in every way, except that it is done out in the street where no parking is permitted. Therefore, it is clearly not parking. How could it be? It is variously defined as stopping, pausing without a driver, or, more formally, drivus interruptus.

         Quite the opposite in character is involuntary or serendipitous parking. In some parts of México it is also called destination parking. This is where you experience a compelling need to park that didn’t exist seconds before. In this increasingly popular parking style, you are driving down the street far from your destination and you spot, quite impossibly, a marvelous parking place. It is as if fate has intervened in your journey. Naturally, you cannot circumvent fate, so you pull over and park, even though this is far from where you wish to be. At least it prevents this valuable parking place from falling into the unworthy hands of someone else who might have a real reason to be there. If your need to reach your original destination is sufficiently weak, you may decide to end your trip right there with a feeling of mixed triumph and fulfillment.

         Many free style parking maneuvers are often accompanied by a virtuoso priority lane change. Here the oncoming driver spots an empty space on your side of the street and with no warning swerves across and into a steady stream of traffic to very painstakingly park his car facing in the wrong direction. The terms élan, panache, and bravura rush immediately to mind. This brings everything to a halt so that other drivers can admire his elaborate technique under pressure. You will quite naturally give him a friendly hand salute out the passenger window when you’re finally able to pass.

         Naturally, no rules governing these practices have ever been published. It is not exactly because they’re secret, but the truth is that in fact, no book with the word rules in the title would ever sell a single copy in México, where that word would only find legitimate use in a humor magazine, usually as part of the punch line to a tasteless joke.

         Yes, we live in a lawless land down here south of the border, and in saying that, I am making no reference to the drug trade. Laws in themselves are respected insofar as they are appropriately applied only to other people. Naturally, they have no application whatever in the areas of driving or parking, where free style techniques permit, and even encourage, a level of freedom of expression with the same degree of looseness as finger painting. If God had wanted to rein in the unfettered expression of driving and parking, wouldn’t He have put something to that effect in the Ten Commandments?

         Think about it. What kind of free and creative society needs a bunch of lines painted on the pavement?

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