A street sweeper cleans Payson Avenue in Inwood.
PHOTO: Sean Leahy

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Unlike Fine, many New Yorkers pay people to move their cars for them, giving rise to an underground network of car parkers. These entrepreneurs will move your car for a fraction of what it costs to pay a ticket or park in a garage. This cottage industry includes doormen and building superintendents who look after a vacationing tenant’s car for a small tip.

“In a jam, they’ll ask us to move cars for them, and we’ll do it,” says Fred Petrocino, doorman at The Chesterfield on West 80th Street.

Then there are people who make parking cars a full-time business, such as Candice Powell and Jeff Pancone. The couple has been parking cars in Inwood for eight weeks. They have four customers, two whose cars they move every day.

They charge $10 per move. “It only comes out to $80 a month. You can’t beat that,” Powell says.

Indeed, the $80 is much cheaper than monthly garage fees that can cost anywhere from $300 to $650 depending on the neighborhood.  For those street parkers who get hit with too many $45 tickets, paying $80 to people such as Powell and Pancone can be a bargain.

But many drivers in the city have never heard of people like Powell and Pancone. “You mean those guys really exist?” says Scarritt. “I wish I knew one because I could use them.”

Scarritt is going away on business for a few days, and plans to park his car at the airport, which can cost $115 to $140 per week. “You’ve got to take your car someplace,” he says.

Powell and Pancone advertise their service with fliers they stick under windshield wipers. But they have competition around the neighborhood from supers who take down their signs.

Powell got inspiration for the business several years ago when she was returning from the grocery store with her 3-year-old.  She couldn’t find a spot near her apartment, and had to walk back and forth from the apartment to the car lugging her groceries and her daughter.

“I had 10 bags of groceries and a 3-year-old in tow,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I have somebody park this car for me?’ You end up being a slave to your car, coming home and having to find a spot every day.”

Powell and Pancone sign a contract with customers that includes a disclaimer that they are not responsible for a car’s existing problems. Pancone, a certified mechanic, inspects the cars before taking them on, and they assume responsibility for traffic tickets incurred during the 90-minute window it takes to repark the cars.

Unfortunately, Fine doesn’t know anyone like Pancone on her block. But the tow truck driver takes pity on her and moves her car to a different street, just before the street sweeper comes.
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Mondays and Thursdays, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., this side of Seaman Avenue in Inwood is empty.
PHOTO: Sean Leahy

Watch street cleaning in progress...

A Department of Sanitation officer tickets a car on Payson Avenue in Inwood.
PHOTO: Sean Leahy

Show me the money
Parking in New York can be very expensive. One garage on the Upper West Side charges $650 per month.

See a table of parking costs...