Ask The Sophist: Is city parking a contact sport?
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 103
ASK THE SOPHIST
Bump and Run
Dear The Sophist:
Does parking etiquette in difficult-to-park places like New York City require no bumping of cars? I was trying to squeeze into a tight spot the other day and doing my best to ensure, if my car touched either the car in front or the car in back, that it was at the slowest speed I could manage, and a couple of guys on the block came running and shouting as if I was ramming the cars (which weren’t theirs, btw fwiw) demolition-derby style.
My understanding of the NYC car rules is that your bumpers (or whatever molded plastic/aluminum bumper-like surface that is on your car) will get dinged if you regularly park it on the street. If that’s a problem for you, that’s why these things exist.
Am I wrong to bump cars when I parallel park?
—Need Some Wiggle Room
Dear Fender Offender:
Are you allowed to bump the bumpers? The basic question answers itself. Even if, as you note, the auto industry has reinvented the bumper as a fussy and scratchable decorative accessory, it is still the vehicle's point of contact with its outside environment, and the drivers of these other cars have put them in an environment where a certain amount of jostling is going to happen. There's a reason why the slogan on the website of that bumper-protector company you helpfully linked to is "AVOID THE UNAVOIDABLE."
Such is life in the crowded, grown-up city. If you were to graze shoulders with someone else in a shopping mall hallway or a Cheesecake Factory vestibule, that would be a meaningful violation of their personal space. If you graze shoulders on the 1 train at Times Square, that's just rush hour. (Though you still do say a light and neutral "Sorry" or "Excuse me.")
Because you are an urban soul, the kind of person who knows about bumper guards, The Sophist understands that you did not haplessly grope your way into this parking space, repeatedly tapping the vehicles fore and aft, like some rube whose last parallel-parking session was between sets of cones and flags on the side-lot test course at an exurban branch of the motor vehicle department on your 16th birthday. And because you bothered to write in to ask about your actions, The Sophist knows that you are not the kind of blindered lunatic who wedges a car into a too-small space by deliberately shoving the adjoining vehicles so they rock on their suspensions and give you an extra inch or two to work with.
So: you pulled up to the space, then past it. You judged the angle and distance, adjusted the steering, and backed in until the rear wheels were deep enough into the space and close enough to the curb. Then very slowly and carefully you cut the wheels to swing the front end around and kept backing up, while your car's backup camera alert system began beeping uselessly overcalibrated warnings at you. Making extra sure not to graze the outside fender of the car in front, while also keeping an eye that little screen, you rolled backward even slower until your bumper juuuuust met the bumper of the car behind. Then you cut the wheels again, inched forward, and straightened out.
Maybe, while you were bringing the front wheels in, you also made delicate contact with the car in front before your car was entirely parallel to the curb. Then you finished straightening out the parking job with one or two more back-and-forth maneuvers, in which—now knowing the exact distance fore and aft—you didn't need nudge the other cars at all.
That, for our purposes, is how you parked. Any difference between that scenario and your own parking performance is between you and your conscience, and if you'd meant for your conscience to get involved, you'd have written to some other advice columnist.
So what was up with those guys yelling at you? This is the real question, right? You got your car parked and eventually unparked, so your parking approach worked. And yet these dudes got exercised about it.
Here's where the other part of big-city life comes in: we live in a pluralist society, up close with people whose ideas about how to do things may not be the same as our own—whose ideas may even be, by our lights, false and wrongheaded. Maybe they weren't from around here. Maybe they're from a neighborhood microculture where cars are given a small-town degree of respect and protection.
These people are also, it's clear, not aligned with the great urban meta-norm of minding your own damn business. Not only were you not inflicting these (harmless, micro-) collisions on their cars, you were inflicting them on your own car! If you misjudge the thump, you'll be listening to a little rattle from somewhere inside your bumper for as long as you keep driving the car. All afternoon, if it's a rental!
Even if these self-appointed traffic cops don't follow the rules, however, the rules are still in effect. And the meta-rules. Their attempt to get up in your business is nevertheless still not your business; it is not your job to try to defend yourself or argue them out of their misguided beliefs about the proper parking procedure on New York City streets. Your job is to keep it moving.
"Did I touch it?" you say, as you walk away, taking a brief glance at the nearest of the undamaged bumpers. "Wow, tighter than it looked." If they stay agitated, you may throw in a "My bad," for the sake of harmony.
Don't look back!
The Sophist
Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 8, 2025
★★ Full daylight had been in place for hours by the time breakfast hit the stove. It was cool enough to open the windows again and maybe dry enough to hang up laundry. The sunscreen was starting to run low. By afternoon the clouds had covered the sky thickly enough that going out on the balcony to work still required reading glasses. The sound of a hose spray playing over something went on and on. When there was finally a moment free for going outside, speckles of rain were appearing on the stoop. People were still walking around, though, and it didn't look as if any other time would be better. In the Park, the rider of a speeding electric scooter flinched as a pigeon darted across the path at head height. The conditions seemed to have discouraged unplanned activities but planned ones carried on; punctuating the quiet empty spaces of lawn were various picnics, complete with folding tables and a canopy. Outside the Park again the drops were getting organized into a light rain. A heavily perfumed tree leaning over the sidewalk let its tiny horn-shaped white blossoms fall, leaving the pavement looking as if someone had spilled a container of rice, while a bee worked at the ones still attached.
SIDE PIECES DEPT.
Tom Scocca
For my Defector column, I wrote about Andrew Cuomo's efforts to market himself as the hard-nosed, get-things-done future mayor of New York:
And here was the option that Andrew Cuomo picked when The City surveyed the candidates for their positions on trash containerization:
Following the test pilot, roll out standardized containerization for larger buildings but reverse the requirement for small properties.
Everyone else in the Democratic primary field picked "Promote containerization for all residential buildings."
"Trash containerization," for people who don't live in America's biggest, wealthiest, and most sophisticated city, is the novel policy proposal that garbage could be put out in closed garbage cans to wait for the garbage trucks to pick it up, rather than being dumped at the curb in mounds of loose, leaking plastic bags or left spilling out of open-topped cans. This is a challenging and difficult project for New York City to carry out.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from The new Annie Dennis Cook Book , by Annie E. Dennis, published in 1921, and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Cream Cheese Sandwiches
One cream cheese, one-half teacupful of pounded peanuts, one tablespoonful melted butter, one-half teacupful of cream; salt and pepper. Make a paste of these ingredients, and spread a thin layer between slices of bread.
Date Sandwich
Use recipe for cream cheese sandwich, adding chopped seeded dates, and using almonds in place of English walnuts. Butter bread. Either brown bread or white may be used, or one slice of each, placing brown bread on top and white underneath.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
Indignity is presented on Ghost. Indignity recommends Ghost for your Modern Publishing needs. Indignity gets a slice if you do this successfully!
