Opinion: Red flags and Tepper parking

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It was Malibu that everyone was watching, Malibu where the fires chewed through hills and houses alike.

But when the winds blow off the desert and the humidity is lower than the interest on a T-bill, millions of others across the neighborhoods of Los Angeles are on enforced alert -- the dreaded red flag parking restriction.

The mountains and hills that make Los Angeles beautiful also create a bowl for smog, as well as gullies and canyons for vast watersheds -- and a perfect playground for the wild hot winds. So when Malibu is a tinderbox, people who live in the hills 10, 20, 30 miles away find themselves under ‘red flag alert.’ Parking is banned on narrow hillside streets to allow fire trucks to pass. This means that uphill residents without garages have to park downhill, where streets widen, and either trudge or find a lift back up to their homes.

For downhill residents who don’t have garages either, this turns the canyons of Los Angeles into the canyons of New York. Parking -- never easy -- becomes a free-for-all. It’s compounded by the fact that so many residents have converted their two-car garages to gyms or offices or play-rooms, and they too park in the scarce spots on the street. During this Thanksgiving’s red flag alert, dozens of cars ordinarily parked on narrow, uphill streets got squeezed downhill. Someone parked a large, shiny black BMW -- playing perfectly into every Bimmer cliche -- in front of my stairs, and left it there all weekend. I practically had to clamber over the hood to get to my own steps. Thank goodness the piano wasn’t being delivered this weekend -- getting the groceries past that mirror-bright paint job was tricky enough.

Here’s where the New York part comes in: When I finally found a parking spot far below my house, I felt like the hero of Calvin Trillin’s little novel, ‘Tepper Isn’t Going Out.’ Tepper is a New Yorker who finds a fabulous parking spot -- and parks. And parks. And parks. He reads the paper in his car. He luxuriates in his own private bit of public property. Drivers scouring for a parking space brake, and wait, and wait -- and are infuriated at the stationary Tepper. The matter at last reaches the mayor’s desk. Who does this Tepper think he is, anyway?

Once I had found a below-the-red-flag-line parking spot, I offloaded groceries and dry cleaning, lugged them uphill, and made several trips back for more. I tidied the interior, as I do every weekend. People drove by, slowed, hopefully, cruising for a spot. Like Tepper, I wasn’t going anywhere.

Now that the red flags have gone back to green, the BMW has gone back up the hill. He’ll be back, but before he is, this red flag thing requires a lot of fixing. LA city and county need something more refined than a blanket, hundreds-of-square-miles alert when the risk isn’t nearly so uniform. And they need to set better priorities than a race that amounts to first-come, first-served. I’d vote for giving cars with the best gas mileage the pole position. The BMW may have the HP for the checkered flag, but my Prius has the MPG to beat the red flag.

-- Patt Morrison