How Not to Park

Taking advantage of a rare day off, I headed over to Tryst for a weekday lunch -- the only time the always-popular restaurant isn't too crowded to bear. I'd been sitting at my window seat for only a couple of moments when I spied a beautiful blonde woman in sunglasses with a pony tail across the street in a PT cruiser convertible, getting ready to park.

She backed into the space, which was big enough to hold about one and a half cars. Notheless, she proceeded carefully and anxiously. She had set it up perfectly, but she backed in too far and tapped the Prius behind her ever-so-slightly. No big deal, that's what bumpers are for, all she had to do was just pull forward a bit and she was golden. I've always believed that people would be better parkers if they weren't so afraid of tapping bumpers (this does not apply to SUVs, which have bumpers above the bumper level of cars, and thus can do actual damage, and also tend to be driven by the type of people that don't care about that).

That's when I noticed the owner of the Prius come out of a nearby store and make a show of inspecting her bumper for damage. Alarmed, the blonde hung out of her window watching behind her, waiting to see what the woman would do. In classic passive-aggressive fashion, the Prius woman never acknowledged her, never made eye contact, but after the inspection, she got into her car.

The woman in the PT cruiser waited, thinking the Prius woman was going to pull out and thus give her more room. But the Prius woman just sat there. Finally the blonde gave up, pulled out of the space, and headed down 18th. After she was gone, the Prius woman got back out of her car and went into a shop -- so she'd clearly been "guarding" her car from any further taps. Maybe she could've helped the woman park, instead?

Meanwhile, my sandwich, called the Neal, had arrived, with a side dish of bean salad. Delicious -- the reason why it's worth braving the weekday trustafarian crowd. I noticed a couple of DC EMTs park their huge ambulatory truck in front of Tryst with a lot less trouble than the blonde woman in the PT Cruiser had had, and come in for a couple of to-go iced lattes.

My mind wandered from the City Paper in front of me (50 best restaurants issue -- two of my favorite Columbia Heights spots, Pete's Abizza and Commonwealth, made the list) to reflect on the nature of power. A guy at a happy hour a while ago was telling me that he supported the Iraq war, and that "history is always made at gunpoint." Dick. And then there's the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, a douche among douches, saying "people with guns make the rules." But then there are the millions of people in Iran who have taken to the streets in the face of a brazenly stolen election and terrifying threats of violence, proving something that history has shown over and over again -- that sooner or later courage and moral conviction will always trump brute force. I fear for these people and wish them well.

Tryst was playing an awesome soundtrack of old motown and soul -- Stevie Wonder's cover of the Beatles' "We Can Work it Out," The Isley Brothers "Who's That Lady," Michael Jackson's "Rock With You." I spent part of my childhood in Connecticut, where New York's radio and TV stations cast an even longer shadow than its skyscrapers, and this music for me still conjures images of the skyline of 1970s New York, shimmering in the distance, an intoxicating blend of menace, mystery, and promise.