Rock Star Parking



Any time the hero is really in a hurry, there is always an empty parking space directly in front of their destination. Even if in, say, downtown New York. This is generally seen as an Acceptable Break From Reality as really, no one wants to watch an hour of the heroes searching around to find parking.

One does not need to be a Rock Star to acquire Rock Star Parking. This has also been referred to as "Charlies Angels Parking", because of the trope's frequency in that show. Also seems to be a built-in ability of any Cool Car.

Not to be confused with Improbable Parking Skills, which come into play after the space is found.

Comic Books

 * Justified with the Fantastic Four, who have official passes from the state of New York that let them park anywhere they want. The idea is that they're allowed to park in front of fire hydrants because they'll be on hand to assist with a disaster. Magneto, however, is apparently dogged by the horrible specter of "No Parking" signs.

Film

 * The Beverly Hills Cop series has several, including instances where more than one car is able to find a spot right in front of the destination.
 * The Horror of Party Beach: In the Mystery Science Theater 3000-screened movie, the hero drives into midtown Manhattan to buy a big jar of sodium from a store there. Not only is the street in front of the store deserted, so are all the streets in the entire city of New York. Naturally, the Mystery crew mocked the situation.
 * Subverted in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle when Harold finds a perfect parking space in front of his apartment, only to have it occupied by the 'extreme surfers' before he could reverse into it. This results in him having to find parking a few blocks away.
 * In the TV movie Get Smart Again, Max actually ignores several decent parking spaces to park in a no parking area. He then takes a fake parking meter out of his trunk (Which is rigged to always claim that he has time left) and sets it up next to his car so he doesn't have to pay for the space.

Live Action TV

 * Seinfeld did an episode where George gets great parking spaces throughout and is extremely excited about it ("The Bris"). Then of course there is the eponymously titled "The Parking Spot", where George spends the entire episode fighting with a guy over a great parking spot, each with only half their car in the spot, holding up traffic and distracting pedestrians.
 * Averted in the groundbreaking "Parking Garage" episode where they spend the entire episode wandering around the garage trying to find where they parked. To make it even sillier, Kramer was carrying a boxed TV set which fitness nut Michael Richards insisted contain an actual (CRT) television.
 * Torchwood: Taken to extremes; there is usually not only a free parking space, but a virtually empty car park. Presumably nobody else in Cardiff owns a car.
 * Kojak: Who loves ya, baby? The God of Parking Spaces Adjacent to Destinations, that's who.
 * Top Gear: The presenters pull this off more often than not. Having a camera crew on hand to keep a space clear probably helps. It was averted when James May and Jeremy Clarkson were challenged take their classic luxury limousines into the center of London and find a place to park them. They fail.
 * They eventually find a space but can't work out how to pay the parking fee with their mobile phones and give up.
 * Mocked on The Office, Michael (who is Wrong Genre Savvy) needs to find a parking space quickly because Pam is going into labor. And sure enough, there's a space: The Ambulance Zone. Even after Pam is loaded into a wheelchair and taken in, Michael tries to leave the car there and throws the keys over the fence when the Paramedics challenge him. Naturally, when Jim and Pam go to leave, the car's been towed.
 * Averted in Law and Order. The detectives' unmarked cars frequently got ticketed by zealous meter-maids while they were on a case, much to their annoyance. Parking tickets were also frequently used to track the movement of suspects or break/confirm their alibis.

Video Games

 * The Sims. In one expansion you can even land a helicopter directly outside the building you're visiting.

Western Animation

 * Kim Possible: In "The Big Job", while pulling a heist/stopping a heist, Shego, Senor Senior Jr., Kim, and Ron all express extreme difficulty finding a parking space in San Francisco. Shego eventually writes the heist off as more trouble than it's worth due to a mix of Kim's intervention and their parking woes. Truth in Television to be sure. Public parking will cost you $35 a day in the city by the Bay.
 * In American Dad, this gets subverted in the one place everyone can relate: mall parking! . Stan has to rush inside the mall to stop an evil plan, but he doesn't want to pay the valet $3 to park it for him. He then spends the next half hour trying to find a space. He spends even longer when the valet can't break his five, forcing Stan to try again.