Bully for you

I drove back and forth to New York yesterday. I've done that many times in my life, and of course I lived in Manhattan with a car for several years, which is an experience I will repeat only if I can afford to garage it.

New York drivers have a well-earned reputation for aggressiveness, but most of that is really because there are so many taxi cabs and the taxis are super-agressive. I don't find driving in New York to be all that different from driving in Philadelphia. In fact, New York drivers are more respectful of pedestrians that Philadelphians, especially at corners where pedestrians have the right of way to cross and the car is trying to make a right turn.

But having a car in New York? That's a whole nother thing. All you need to know about owning a car in New York is explained by the growing popularity of a product called the Bumper Bully. The web site is quite informative, but basically, this is a thing you drape over your rear bumper to protect it from cars hitting it from behind.

Back in the day, a bumper was a steel thing that might get dented and you didn't care (nor were you much protected from bodily harm by its presence). Now bumpers are plastic and they break and tear, like other plastic and look awful when they do. They also are part of a shock absorption system that makes cars far safer than they've ever been. And they are expensive.


Just to make myself clear, you have to be absolutely crazy to keep a car New York City if you can't afford to park in the garage. Parking is subject to strict rules regulations, all of which require you to move your car with exasperating regularity. And, the demand for spots for outstrips supply. The bane of the Manhattan car owner's existence is called alternate side of the street parking. This system, sensibly designed to allow the city to clean the streets, requires you to move your car every other day. In practice, it means you can park in a space but not from 8 AM to 11 AM Monday Wednesday Friday or on the other side of the street, Tuesday Thursday or Saturday.

When I lived on the Upper West Side, I was in an 8 to 11 six day week area as I described above. Move three blocks north or five blocks south, and you enter an 11 AM to 2 PM zone. This arrangement yields a fantastical red of strategies and texting's design to allow one to keep one's car without getting ticketed or towed.

On my block, and the surrounding ones as well, the usual strategy was to move your car by 7:55 AM and double park on the other side of the street. Double parking, if you've not seen that before, means parking not next to the curb but next to another parked car. This is absolutely illegal almost all of the time except for the 8 AM to 11 AM six days a week when you were allowed to do it opposite the side on which there is no parking. So the street is transformed from having a row of parked cars on either side to having a double row on one side.

Good luck if you're parked along the curb and want to go someplace. Some people put their phone numbers on piece of paper under windshield wiper on the double parked car, but it's hardly universal. Then, at about 10:40 you go get your car, un-double park it, and move back to the other side and sit in the car until 11 AM. This is repeated every other day, Sunday not included.

So what does this have to do with the Bumper Bully, you may ask? New Yorkers as a whole are pretty adept parallel parkers. However, sometimes spots are just too small to get into comfortably. This requires a lot of back-and-forth iteration, punctuated on both ends by a slight bump against the other cars bumper. Every once in a while, you're bound to miscalculate this like to the bump becomes something slightly more. This kind of thing eventually shows up on the bumper.

In addition, sometimes people park so as to take up two spaces with one car by having it strategically in the middle. In cases like this, although it's not what one might call acceptable, it's not uncommon for somebody to come up behind another car and push them (slide them, really, since the wheels don't turn) a few feet forward in order to meet for their own car. I will admit to having done that more than once as a last resort. I also returned my car to find it not quite in the same place as where I left it the day before. These things happen.

In these kinds of situations, it's not hard to see why one might want a Bumper Bully. Just one more way technology makes our lives just a little bit better and brighter.