IF there's anything worse than driving in Los Angeles, it's parking in Los Angeles. Finding a place to curb your wheels in some of the area's hottest shopping districts is as rare as that empty stretch of freeway -- and just as memorable. Discover the ideal spot, and you're talking about it for weeks.
The explanation is simple: Parking and shopping are by nature oppositional forces. One is all about free will, autonomy and gratification. The other is about coercion, conformity and discomfort. Or put another way: Parking is "a choice that's made for you," as filmmaker David Bret Egen explains it. "You have to pay even before you buy anything, and you're getting nothing in return."
Egen is something of an expert in the field. His documentary "Pain & Parking in Los Angeles" chronicles the impossibility of finding a place to park in an increasingly congested city. Of course you can go to extreme measures, as Egen shows -- carrying a can of gray paint to spray out the red zones, packing a set of orange road cones or placing a specially modified trash can over a fire hydrant. But we wouldn't recommend it.
Instead, we consulted with retailers, local governments and some of our most serious power shoppers and scored a few tips on finding a perfect piece of asphalt at some of the most popular venues in town.
Beverly Hills
With plenty of municipal lots and privately owned garages, the key to shopping the Hills isn't finding a spot. It's finding a convenient one, and the one-way alley from South Santa Monica Boulevard to Brighton Way just east of Rodeo is a mother lode of convenience.
To reach the alley, drive east on South Santa Monica Boulevard between North Rodeo and North Beverly drives and make a sharp right turn between Brooks Brothers and the Paley Center for Media. At the top of the alley, and right in front of Brooks Brothers' rear entrance, are five parking spaces reserved for the clothier's customers, many of which remain unoccupied even on busy days. Farther down, on the right side, are about 30 validated valet-parking spots for patrons of the Polo Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani boutiques.
To reach Wilshire Boulevard's axis of retail (Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York), park in one of Saks' two lots (one is accessible from South Bedford Drive, the other from Peck Drive). A standard-issue store validation nets two free hours of parking.
