Let the ledger show that San Francisco parking meter FLM 2228, which guards the southeast corner of Fillmore and Clay Streets, gave away its first hour of parking.
Jane Shepard arrived early for an 8 a.m. meeting at the Junior League. The meter doesn’t go on duty until 9. She figured she’d return to feed it but forgot until 10:04. She got away. The space sat vacant for a full two minutes until a woman dashed in with a dog on her back, in a Dodge Aspen.
It was still early, before things get tight and a vacant meter is seldom fallow for more than a tick.
FLM 2228 sits across from the Clay Theater and in front of La Posada restaurant. The other three corners are filled by Original Broemmel Drugs, since 1875, the Fillmore Grill and Jon Douglas Realtors. California Pacific Medical Center is up the hill. There are several boutiques and thrift shops, alng with a Starbucks coffee shop, on the block.
Here is what happens on one day at one meter.
Just before 10 a.m. the first parking enforcement officer appears at the intersection. He is a short man with possible Napoleonic aspirations. He jumps out of his cart, barks marching orders at some motorists lingering in the red zone, then steers his cart uphill as if leading his charges to battle.
A few minutes later, the woman in the Dodge Aspen, who turns out to be Yvonne McGarry, arrives with her dog, which turns out to be a 14-year-old schnoodle (schnauzer and poodle) named Charlie.
McGarry plunks a quarter into the meter, buying 30 minutes-half the capacity-and walks up Fillmore, while Charlie takes sole possession of the driver’s seat, perching like a bird on the headrest.
“That dog’s a ham,” says a woman walking by.
McGarry returns with 15 minutes to spare, which is about as close as she likes to cut it.
“That happens,” she says of the extra time, “but I’m not going to sit it out.”
Five minutes later Michael Locey pulls in, glances at the meter and sees black, not red. “One of the highlights of the morning,” he says. Locey figures he can get up the block to Pets Unlimited to fetch his cat, Mama, and get back before the meter expires.
What he doesn’t account for is that Mama has just been spayed and is not in a mood to cooperate. It takes an anxious 20 minutes, with the meter and the cat loose, before he returns with Mama in a carrier. Little Napoleon has not reappeared. Locey feels triply blessed: He found a meter with time on it, got 10 minutes free on the other end and got the cat back with a minimum of scratches.
He is replaced by Eka Reid, who had circled the block three times, standard for the area.
Reid buys an hour so he and girlfriend, Kelly Decoito, can visit the thrifts, garnering silk scarves, porcelain, a dress and a purse. But the best bargain is in the meter. There are two minutes left and Reid takes his time.
“I work for all my money,” he says, “so I’ll try to use it all.”
At 11:55 the spot opens and at 11:55 it fills. Two women and a man hover around the meter, offering handfuls of nickels and dimes before realizing the slots no longer deal in short change. A further search is required for quarters.
At 12:30, a motorcyclist parks in the faded red zone in front of the meter, rear tire at a right angle to the curb. He goes into La Posada, meter free.
At 12:55 the meter expires and gives a half hour bonus before Mike Doh returns to feed it. He attempts dimes once more, fails to find a quarter and vacates.
The next car that comes by whips into the spot. The driver jumps out, pumps in one of those elusive quarters and runs up toward the hospital, leaving her friend Teri Stockton in the car.
They had been searching for 10 minutes. “The minute we saw this we grabbed it,” says Stockton.
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A meter maid passes futilely, and Stockton’s friend runs back to the car and they roar off, leaving 25 free minutes to Kevin Young, who is impressed by his good fortune.
“Especially in front of the restaurant I’m going to,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
Young departs at 2:10, and the slot fills at 2:11 with a motorist too rushed to talk. He is in and out of a liquor store with a bottle of champagne in a minute. He doesn’t even pull out before a Nissan nudges him along.
Meanwhile the man on the Suzuki motorcycle re-emerges. He is Ben Rolston, a cabbie/actor, and he is conscious enough about parking that he declines to take a full space with his bike.
He won’t park it on the sidewalk or between cars because the bike gets knocked over. He has found no motorcycle parking in the Fillmore Street area, which leaves only the seams.
“This is kind of a weird red,” he says. “As long as you’re not in the crosswalk.”
At 2:25 the meter maid cruises by. Foiled again. Five minutes left on the ticker. Twenty minutes after it expires, the Nissan escapes, to be replaced by Elvie Ortega, up from Daly City, Calif., to deliver her son Anthony to the dentist. She fumbles through her purse, which yields only a dime. There are plenty of dimes and nickels around since the meters stopped accepting them. Anthony is of no help, so she is forced to relinquish the spot and park in the lot up the hill.
Dan Pavitz, a law student with Colorado license plates, then roars in and out of Broemmel’s.
“I wasted a quarter, but it’s 25 cents versus $20 for a ticket.”
Three cars pass, then a Ford Taurus arrives carrying mother and daughter team Marie and Joanna Zerga. “We were extremely lucky,” says Zerga, who averages circling twice and settling two blocks away. “We just happened to pull up, and there was even time on the meter.”
The next visitor is telephone repairman Dave Baylis. He fills the meter, goes up the street, then returns shortly for parts and to examine his hourglass. Forty minutes left. “I always check it,” he says, “just to make sure.”
Baylis knows his time even as he’s leaving. “I still have 20 minutes. I’ll let somebody else use it. I’m through for the day.”
As he departs a woman runs up to stand in the spot and save it for her friend coming around the block. They leave within an hour, and another woman bolts out of the Seconds To Go thrift shop, crosses to the white zone in front of the theater and wheels her wagon around and into the slot.
Peggy Karren, an antiques dealer who had white-zone business, delivering goods to the secondhand store, was now off duty with her partner, Sandra Brown.
“We wanted a cup of coffee,” Karren says, “so I couldn’t convince the meter maid if she came by that we were doing something important.”
In 15 years of parking on Fillmore, Karren has done some convincing. “When I get a ticket I go see the judge,” she says. A year ago she took a letter from a shop owner and beat the rap.
“What you do is learn the savvy tricks to parking,” Karren says. “You’re always playing the game.”
And with any game, there are always cheaters.
At 4:40 p.m., as Karren and Brown pull out, a woman in a white sedan sees the opening and reverses direction. As she backs in, a man in a BMW pulls in from behind and attempts to steal the slot. He stalls but she won’t budge.
“I was going to pound on his windows,” says Nicole Peters, who had been beaten out of three spots that day and wasn’t going to give up a fourth.
“You have to be really aggressive,” says Peters, who is in medical equipment sales. “People will just pull right in. No qualms. Every man for himself.”
She refuels at Starbucks and is replaced by another Starbucks customer, Tamar Resnick of Noe Valley. “It was good parking karma,” says Resnick. “We won’t get a spot for weeks now.”
At 5:05 nurse Flora Ketefian uses half of Peters’ final 18 minutes on the meter. She then pulls out, leaving nine minutes’ charity to a fourth car driven by Robert Caldwell. He takes no chances, drawing out a plastic Ziploc bag filled with quarters.
Caldwell leaves at 5:30 with the meter paid past 6, quitting time. Michael Thorne pulls in.
He pays anyway, his quarter leaving 35 minutes in paid overtime, nearly erasing the free hour the meter gave in the morning.
Even then Thorne doesn’t feel safe. “These meter maids, if they haven’t made their quotas,” he says, shaking his head. “Can’t be too safe.”