The driver of the Dodge pickup honked angrily at the double-parked Lexus SUV that blocked his way.
He yelled an obscenity, gunned the truck and swerved into the oncoming lane, only to have to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting two women who were jaywalking in front of him as they nibbled from cups of frozen dessert.
He honked and yelled again. One of the jaywalkers flipped him off as the pair ambled on to the sports car they had left sitting, illegally, beneath a no-parking sign.
It was business as usual the other day in the Yogurt Zone -- the corner of West Hollywood where culture, commerce and civility collide daily.
Pinkberry is a tiny yogurt shop near the corner of Huntley Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard. It sells a tangy, South Korean-style frozen dessert that has sparked a craze across Los Angeles, drawing as many as 3,000 customers a day to the hole-in-the-wall store.
As a business, Pinkberry is everything West Hollywood would like to be associated with: cutting-edge, trendy, even chic. But its popularity has some residents questioning whether their densely populated, parking-deprived town can sustain the crowds.
The Pinkberry frenzy reached a peak in the summer when it seemed that everyone around Southern California was driving in for a dish -- earning national media attention for the swarms of customers.
Six months later, the political battle over Pinkberry continues unabated, having become a dominant issue in West Hollywood and a symbol of the clash between commerce and quality of life.
Last month, residents appealed to the City Council to force Pinkberry to move. Officials declined but opened the door to the use of a mediator to help solve the problem.
The public hearing suggested that will not be easy, however. And it illustrated the chill that the frozen dessert shop controversy has brought to the city.
Problem is, Pinkberry does not have a parking lot. There is a shortage of metered parking places in the shopping district north of it. And there's a total lack of public parking in the neighborhood of single-family homes immediately to its south.
The parking issue simmered for months before the summer's hot weather caused crowds of yogurt lovers to swell. Lines of customers often snaked up the street and around the corner. Pinkberry fans waited up to 20 minutes to get into the 600-square-foot shop to order their $4.95 cups of plain or green-tea-flavored yogurt.
