Park(ing) Day (9/19/08)

This past Friday was Park(ing) Day, during which enterprising urbanites worldwide set up impromptu parks in car parking places. The whole event falls right in line with my nascent obsession with geographical art, and it was a fine day, so when lunchtime rolled around I looked up the nearest park location to my office, grabbed a big bowl of udon from Yo Yo’s, and walked a few blocks down to Jackson and Montgomery to spend some time in the park.

After walking around for a bit I found it directly in front of an upscale eatery. It seems that the various Park(ing) spots all operate on their own autonomy and are only loosely coordinated by the REBAR group which initiated the idea. In this particular spot two friends had set up the mini-park, and I’ve completely forgotten their names, but he was a graduate student at Stanford and she was an architect. I introduced myself to them, sat in one of the chairs they offered, and proceeded to chat and eat my lunch.

Their parking spot was not as elaborate as some that I’ve seen pictures of, but it had a homey feeling nonetheless, with a little succulent on a table and several folding chairs set out on the sod. After a last-minute scramble for sod, they had set up their park largely with left-over sod from one of the other Park(ing) Day parks, and had transported it from the Mission (I think?) to its current location on a bike with a trailer. The student told me this was a formidable task and I believed him.

I spent the better part of an hour in their park, eating my udon and talking about this and that with the park creators and with friends of theirs who would stop by from time to time. We would also talk to the occasional passer-by, including a somewhat eccentric French woman who talked a lot about riding her bike and then seemed to offer us a role in a movie. The Park(ing) organizers and their friends all seemed amiable and in good spirits. When my lunch break was over I bid my hosts farewell and went back to the office.

All in all the experience was very like that of whiling a way some time in a public park. There was a definite feeling of being in a public space, a place where a lot of different people who were in the immediate vicinity could sort of meet and interact with one another on neutral ground. In a way I felt like by virtue of being the guy who just dropped by out of the blue I was fulfilling a classic role in a public park, that of the friendly stranger. (I figured I should either aim for that archetype or else mug them.)

The area this spot was set up in does not lack for public spaces, but inasmuch as one of the points of Park(ing) day seems to be about the act of reclaiming private space for the public domain, I’d call the operation a success.