Parking Problems

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Redefining parallel parking.


Sometimes, Rock Star Parking is unavailable to a character. If this is the case, they'll have to make do with whatever space is available. Sometimes, a space is available but they are unable to maneuver their vehicle into it. Sometimes, a character just sucks at parking.

Compare Parallel Parking. Contrast Improbable Parking Skills. Can lead to Parking Payback.

Examples of Parking Problems include:


Advertising

  • There's a Mentos commercial where some jerk pulls into an open parking spot right when Our Heroine wants to leave, sandwiching her in. Cue a Mentos, and a Bright Idea: she recruits the help of some beefy construction workers to pick up her car and ease it out.

Comic Books

  • In one Archie comic, Archie and his friends find that they have been boxed in by an inconsiderate driver and are unable to pull out. Moose arrives and offers to lift the front end of their car up and point it towards the road. Having done so, the gang thanks him... and he gets into the car in front of them and drives off!
    • In another Archie comic, Moose complains about the parking situation, saying it took an hour to get his compact car out of a certain lot. When told that isn't so bad (seriously?) he says that it wasn't a compact car when he'd parked it.

Live Action TV

Newspaper Comics

  • In Blondie, Dagwood parks his car to go pay for a parking ticket where he is pushed around by Obstructive Bureaucracy telling him to go from office to office. When he finally gets to pay his parking ticket, he spots an officer in front of his car writing him a ticket as he had parked in a 20-minute zone.

Webcomics

  • Xkcd offers this novel solution to bad parkers.
  • In one Kid Radd strip, the guy who's in charge of the Mods states one of his subordinates' parking space will be his after he kills her.

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons: Homer tries to park the family's station wagon in a stall marked COMPACT ONLY against his passengers' advice. He squeezes the vehicle in, grinding both sides of the station wagon against the parked vehicles on either side and asks Marge in the passenger seat: "How am I doing on your side?"
  • In Johnny Test, the twins' van is towed for being parked in front of a fire hydrant.
  • Megas XLR: While his back is turned, Coop's titular giant robot gets booted and towed for illegal parking.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: A cop is writing a traffic ticket for a car parked by a fire hydrant. A monster eats/destroys the offending car and the officer picks up the fire hydrant, drops it by another car and sticks the ticket to the windshield.

Real Life