Humor: Rows of lights and rows of parked cars

[Guest guest]

Getting Religious About Street Parking

By CLYDE HABERMAN

November 9, 2007

NYC [u.S]

The New York Times

 

[Note: this is the second year in which NYC parking

rules have been relaxed on Diwali. The temporarily-

suspended " alternate side " parking rules are designed to

allow access for street sweepers.]

 

Today is Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, celebrating

the triumph of good, represented by Lord Rama, over

the forces of evil. It is a holiday that thrills some of my

friends. Not that they are Hindus themselves.

 

The three-day Islamic feasts of Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha

thrill them, too. They aren't Muslims, either.

 

They are, in the main, Christians and Jews. Most of

them are not the sort to be found in church or synagogue

every Sunday or Saturday morning. But they derive

enormous satisfaction from holy days like the Feast of

the Assumption or from a days-long Jewish festival like

Passover.

 

That is because they answer to a separate authority.

Their true devotion is to the Church of Internal

Combustion. You probably know these people better as

car owners.

 

Nothing delights them more than a religious holiday,

any religious holiday - Christian, Jewish, Muslim,

Hindu, Sikh, it really doesn't matter - that liberates

them from the city's alternate-side parking rules.

 

In the New York diocese of the Church of Internal

Combustion, the highest virtue is being able to leave

one's car parked on the street for days at a time. Church

members reach this state of exaltation through a special

dispensation granted by a nonecclesiastical synod, a

body called the City Council. The Council is vested with

the supreme authority to suspend alternate-side rules.

This it does. Faithfully.

 

Diwali, celebrated by Sikhs and Jains as well as by

Hindus, is the latest holiday to receive the sacrament of

discarded parking regulations. By official count, there

are 35 such holidays through the year, spread across 44

days. Council members love few things more than

adding days to the list. They have done so with fair

regularity.

 

Although some members of the Church of Internal

Combustion may not believe it, alternate-side parking

does not exist to torment them. The rules were created

for the common weal: to make it possible for Sanitation

Department sweepers to do their stuff.

 

Once upon a time, the main exceptions to the rules were

legal holidays, when city employees are off, and certain

days on which observant Jews are forbidden to drive:

Yom Kippur, for example. There is no known Talmudic

exception for alternate-side parking rules.

 

But any privilege for a particular ethnic or religious

group is not allowed to exist in this city without others'

claiming it as well. And so, over the years, the Council

has steadily expanded the exemption list to include all

sorts of holidays with no inherent proscription against

driving: Ash Wednesday, Purim, the Asian Lunar New

Year and All Saints' Day, to name a few.

 

In the process, the lawmakers have essentially

obliterated barriers that are supposed to separate

church/synagogue/mosque/temple from state. All the

holidays added to the list of late are religious in nature.

 

Council members describe this habit of theirs as a way

to honor new communities in an ever-changing city.

That's how a group knows it has made it here. We keep

the streets dirty in its name.

 

But it is perhaps worth noting that the line between an

official honor and a political pander is a fine one. A lot

depends on who has muscle.

 

Take proposals in recent years to add St. Patrick's Day

to the privileged list. They have gone nowhere. Can it be

a coincidence that the political influence of Irish-

Americans has waned in the city, even if the Council

speaker, Christine C. Quinn, is of Irish ancestry?

 

TO be fair, some holidays overlap, and a few fall on

weekends, minimizing the impact on street sweepers.

But sometimes they come one on top of another, as they

do this month - 4 in the space of 12 days. That spells

trouble, says the Sanitation Department, which

consistently opposes expanding the list.

 

" It puts us up against it, " said Bernard J. Sullivan,

director of the department's Bureau of Cleaning and

Collection. " It's a little tough for us to catch up, because

on those days we don't get curb accessibility. "

 

Don't think for a second that the Council is done

keeping the streets dirty. Some members want to expand

the exemption list to include the Buddha's birthday,

which falls in May, and Flag Day, June 14. Apparently,

New Yorkers cannot show respect for the Stars and

Stripes while moving their cars from one side of the

street to the other.

 

Neither idea has gone anywhere - yet. Give it time.

Hopes certainly run high in the Church of Internal

Combustion.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/nyregion/09nyc.html?ref=nyregion