Residents’ wait out the night hours for parking
By That’s what it has come to for some locals BY CAROLYN SACKARIASON Daily Press Staff Writer
Sonja Braga has to draw a map to find her car in this city where finding parking is as strategic as it is an art form.
Braga has to park blocks away from her apartment on Third Street late at night. If she doesn’t draw a map when she gets home, she won’t remember what block her car is on.
“You keep thinking you know where you parked, but then you can’t find it,” Braga said. “My friend thought her car was stolen because she couldn’t find it, but if you do the map, you’re fine.”
Braga and her neighbors have been searching for parking for years. They live just north of the Third Street Promenade, where hundreds of people come day and night to shop, eat and take in a movie. But even more of a problem are the employees who work along the outdoor shopping mall and nearby hotels and use Braga’s street for parking.
When residents return home from work in the evening, they spend up to an hour looking for a place to park. And when they finally do find a space, it’s six blocks away from their apartments.
Braga and several of her female neighbors have dubbed themselves the “pajama parkers” because they go out late at night when everyone has left the Promenade. They move their cars to the front of their apartment building so they’re waiting for them in the morning.
They go in groups for safety reasons, and they are usually dressed in their pajamas.
“It’s scary,” Braga said. “All you’ve got is scary, homeless people and gang bangers out here at night, so we organize and go with at least one other person.”
When they grow tired of waiting around to move their cars, the pajama parkers use another tactic.
“I purposely stay out as late as possible, if I don’t I could drive around for 45 minutes looking for a spot,” said Third Street resident Cindy Marin. “By about 11 p.m. it frees up.”
The pajama parkers have been shuffling their cars for about three years. But they may get some reprieve in the upcoming months as the Santa Monica City Council has approved a “preferential parking” zone for them. However, the zone still has to be approved by the state’s Coastal Commission because the neighborhood is in the Bayside District.
The zone would restrict the public from parking on the street during the evening so residents are able to reasonably find a space in front of their homes.
Braga, who, after two years, got two-thirds of the residents on her block to sign a petition asking for a preferential parking zone, said her and her neighbors’ quality of life has gone down hill because of the situation.
“Nobody visits us,” because they can’t find a place to park, she said. “The standard of life really sucks right here.”
In 1994, Braga tried unsuccessfully to get preferential parking in her neighborhood. She was able to get enough signatures for other blocks near her — on Fourth and Fifth Streets between Wilshire Boulevard and California Avenue — but not her own.
She watched the blocks where she helped gather signatures get preferential parking, which ultimately hurt her cause since she inadvertently helped available parking on neighboring blocks be taken out of the mix.
But for the past two years, she has slowly convinced her neighbors to sign the petition requesting that their block be set aside exclusively for them to park on.
“Every time I would get mad (at the situation) I would try to get signatures to cope,” Braga said, adding a high rise building across the street from her apartment is predominately made up of senior citizens who are Russian, which made it difficult for her to communicate with them.
Out of desperation, Braga came up with a solution.
“I couldn’t get into the Russian building for the longest time, but then I got a translator and brought snacks,” Braga said, adding she finally got the signatures required for city council consideration. “I represent at least 150 people easily.”
Braga’s block is unique because it not only is used by Promenade users, but also by patrons of Michael’s restaurant, which uses spaces in front of her apartment for valet services, even though they are supposed to use an underground parking structure on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Third Street.
To make matters worse, there are a dozen paid parking meters in front of Braga’s complex that require coins from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
City officials told Braga and her neighbors that the meters were temporary while a new parking garage was being built between Third and Fourth Streets, just south of Wilshire Boulevard. The structure is open, but the meters are still there.
And, there are a few spaces along the block that are “no parking” from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., essentially making no space available throughout the day and night for residents who live there.
It’s expected that the coastal commission will review the proposed zone in September, but Braga isn’t holding her breath.
“Whose ears is this falling on? I wish they would speed it up because it’s a safety issue here,” she said. “We said ‘we’ll take anything,’ because we feel trapped.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 25, 2002. Read the original PDF.