Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Cars

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier begins to notice how much America loves cars. Why do 92% of American households have at least one vehicle? That's so many cars! The country's love of cars has transformed it, with not only roads - but with millions and millions of parking spaces. David becomes obsessed with all of America’s parked cars, sitting down with Henry Grabar - a staff writer at Slate who writes about cars and transportation, urban policy, and housing. Grabar has also been thinking a lot about how much of America is taken up by cars. Why in America, on average, are there up to 6 parking spaces for every car? Why does NY make more money off parking tickets than parking fees?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier in New Zealand, accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Back in episode 52, I went with Monica to the DMV to get my driver's license. It was a harrowing episode, but I emerged victorious. You passed! I'm so proud of you. That was very scary. It's taken me over a year to do this. I put it off so many times. We had that huge failure last time. And I have you to thank for that because you've been here every step of the way through the failures and the passes. I can't believe it. With my California driver's license in hand, I got my first car, joining 278 million Americans who drive around this giant melting pot of a country.

278 million Americans who drive around this giant melting pot of a country. I joined 278,065,727 Americans to be precise. Now thanks to me it was 278,065,728. And looking at driving statistics in America, I discovered I was part of a trend. An upward trend in car ownership of 3.6% since 2017. Why is car ownership still growing, I wondered? Why do 92% of American households have at least one car? Why do Americans love their cars? I started to realize it when I got my car. I'd lived in America for about a year and a half without one, and I'd gotten used to that life. But once I had a car, I began having a completely different experience of America. I realized that this country is built for the car. It's not meant

to be walked or cycled. This is a country built to be driven. Or as Rihanna said, She wasn't subtle. And Springsteen wasn't all that subtle either. Born to run? Springsteen meant born to drive. There's something baked into the American psyche about hitting the road. There's a reason Route 66 is a term everyone knows the world over. I wanted to learn more about how America has shaped the car. And more importantly, how the car has shaped America.

So, get behind the wheel and prepare to put the pedal to the metal, because this is the Cars episode. You're back from your trip. I am back. Do you have a good time? Touchdown in America So that could be why I don't look tired I started using a facial moisturizer for the first time in my life For the first time? First time ever Do you mind sharing the brand? It's, I don't know I saw it at the chemist and I was just like, maybe I should try a moisturizer Like I'm 40, I need to start looking up to the skin, you know, before it starts wrinkling and falling off my face

When do you mean to put it on? I put it on at night Yeah, you can, night and morning Okay Do you wash your face? No Okay When do you mean to put it on? I put it on at night. Yeah, you can, night and morning. Okay. Do you wash your face? No. Okay. I take the Dax method of letting it self-clean. I think you're going to want, especially if you're moisturizing, I would appreciate if you washed it first.

Okay, to clarify, I put water on it, like I shower. I just don't like soap it up. I get pim first. Okay. To clarify, I put water on it like I shower. I just don't like soap it up. I get pimples and stuff. If I start using soap or like a thing. Okay. Well, look, your skin looks great. So maybe you don't need to wash it. The idea of not washing my face is very incredible dread.

That would not work for me. My friend in New Zealand, Dan, started using a facial moisturizer in New Zealand. He's a man's man, Dan. Oh, okay. Burly? He's not burly. He's quite lithe, actually. But he's a manly man.

And he decided he needed to moisturize. His arms are out. He keeps his in, actually. Oh, really? He wears long sleeves. But his face started going quite red. And he was like, this moisturizes weird. And he realized that he'd been using

a facial cleanser. He'd been putting that on in the morning. And then not washing. And leaving it on. And he did that for about three weeks. It's one of the funniest things he's ever done. It's so funny. And then after a while he was like, this is sort of burning. And my skin's not feeling great.

Oh my god. Okay. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, I think whatever you're doing seems to be working for you. I'm not going to impart my skincare routine, although I do have an extensive skincare routine. Maybe I'll get your notes and see if it could work for me. Okay. Because your skin's good too. I feel unethical about something.

Oh. Okay. Hit me. Because I didn't know what the topic was today. This is what's fun for us. Cars in America. But it feels very unethical to do an episode on cars and not include DAX. It feels weird.

To be honest, it does. I also feel like we need to feel it out between us. Okay, that's fair. But I agree, it is weird. But also kind of funny. I guess it's the elephant in the room. It's the elephant in the room. It's the elephant in the room. Not in the room.

Just some quick admin about America, because I've been feeling American this week. I'm reapplying for my visa, and that's reminded me that America is so hard to stay in. The end of my three-year work visa is coming up. Oh, my God. And so I have to apply again with you guys as my sponsor. Yeah. But I'm doing all the same thing. I'm gathering reference letters.

I've got to give them 200 pages of text, basically proving that I'm worthy to be here. It's such a process. Ooh, who's writing you letters? Well, it's weird because I sort of write them. You sort of write them for other people and then get them to sign them. I kind of ghost write them. Oh, wow.

And then they kind of make sure it's all okay and they'll change a few words. Is that common? Maybe I shouldn't be airing this. I think I've signed one. Yeah, no, I mean, everyone does it. It's like you kind of like... Well, I haven't signed one. I'll write one.

Could you write one for me? It has to be about a page. I'll give you the format. It basically starts... Double spaced? No. Okay. Tiny, size 10 point and not double spaced.

It needs to start with your address and then you say, dear, I don't know, like- Mr. Biden. Dear Mr. Biden. And then you need to spend a paragraph establishing why you're the person that should be writing it. So your importance, you would establish your worthiness to be writing a letter. Oh, I love this. And then you need to segue into how you know me. Okay.

And then you need to do about two pages just praising me. I thought you said it was one page total. Two. Oh, fuck. I'm busy. Yeah, it's a lot. I can't. They derange these letters.

And everyone that applies for this O1 has to go through this process. Yeah. If ever I'm having a low day, I'll just get out my O1 letters. That you wrote yourself. Yeah, I'll draw it and just read. Okay, moving on. The other thing, mail. I've been thinking about doing an episode about the U.S. Postal Service.

Great. Because a while ago, I ordered a tiny little white socks cap for Rob's new child. And it just never turned up. And then about a year after I'd ordered it, when Vincent said it was probably like too big to fit this tiny hat, I got the package. It looked like it had been kicked across the United States. This box was taped up with all this different tape.

It was so wrecked. I opened it. Okay. And there was a letter. And I love this so much. Okay. Dear Mr. Farrier, the contents of this package were given to FedEx Ground in Houston, Texas on August the 11th. They were transferred to us by a driver from the U.S. Postal Service in a package swap that we do once per month for packages tended to the wrong carrier.

carrier. According to the driver, your package was one of several that they had found in a cargo bin containing primarily DHL packages, and he added that the packages may have been there for quite a few months. We explained to him that we were FedEx and had no way to move DHL packages and gave them back to him to return to the USPS distribution center. Upon examining the packages, I noticed that your package had a ship date of 21st of the 6th of 22 and had been bouncing around between delivery companies for over a year. Oh my God. Never landing with the original intended delivery company. I instructed one of my quality assurance administrators to re-box your package and create a FedEx label so that we could finally forward the package to you. We're almost there.

we could finally forward the package to you. We're almost there. Since the bottom packing tape had dried out and could no longer stick, we can open the bottom flaps and the contents. A small white socks infant's baseball cap appears to be intact and undamaged. I realize that the cap may no longer fit the toddler. But as a lifetime baseball fan myself, maybe he or she can save it for one of their children. Go Sox.

Holy shit. You have to frame that. It's beautiful. That's unbelievable. The effort this person went to to get this infant cap to me. Because you always hear nightmare stories. And in the episode, I sort of want to look at how the mail system works. Because you always hear nightmare stories and in the episode i sort of want to look at how the mail system works because you always hear about packages missing sure this is the

opposite this is a beautiful person that has just gone through hell oh to get you this little baby cat that is so i love this person this person makes me feel bolstered by humanity completely which we need right now we really need it right now. Did he sign his name? Yeah. I was worried not to say it in case you're not meant to be doing that. How about the first name? Vernon.

Vernon! Beautiful, right? I love this. Yeah. So anyway, I'm going to do an episode about the male. Okay, great. And maybe you can interview Vernon. Just quickly, also, I went to the Taylor Swift concert film

It was fun I posted on Instagram that I was going And I also posted the cinema So some flightless bird people ended up buying tickets Oh my goodness I mean it's sweet They made some Because you're meant to give bracelets to each other

That's right, Swifty bracelets And they made these Do you want to throw me one? Both? I'm going to throw you. I've got one that says Cinny. Oh, my God. Oh, wow.

Wow. I just threw it over Monica's head and it landed on the floor behind you. Oh, they're very hard to get. They're beautiful and they say flightless bird. And they're really. Oh, my God. It dropped. What was that?

I don't know. Rob's going in to get them. Thank you. That took me back to physical education class at school. We had to throw a ball. And the baseball episode. Just can't throw. The baseball episode.

Ding, ding, ding. Baseball cap. Yeah. Okay, these are adorable. They're cute, right? Bracelets, Swifty bracelets. Flightless bird. How sweet. I think that's the sweetest thing. I'm going to wear it. Yeah, this? Bracelets, Swifty bracelets, flightless bird. How sweet.

I think that's the sweetest thing. I'm going to wear it. Yeah, this woman, I didn't catch her name, but she was really lovely. She had a service dog with her that was basically the base. This dog was loving it. Sitting there experiencing front row of a Taylor Swift concert. And it was the cutest thing. Well, that's for another episode, which I cannot wait for.

And I'll come prepared. The passion of the fans is real. And just finally, in my American summary, I'm also working on an episode about, do you know those trees? I know exactly what you're about to say. They've got a certain smell? Yes.

I'm working on an episode about those because I found out that they were sort of, they're from China originally. Okay. They smell like jizz. So that's funny because you also posted about that and you said that they smell like cum. I guess a lot of people think of it like that. Is it the Bradford pear, right?

The Bradford pear tree. Yes. We had so many fucking Bradford pears outside of my high school. Right. Amazing. But we used to say they smelled like period. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And then a lot of people think they smell like semen. Yeah. So bodily fluid-ish.

Yes. That's so interesting. Okay. I'm going to die because I am going to definitely go and talk to people on the street about this and find out what they think it smells like. Fish is another common sort of thing people seem to. That's kind of more in the period realm. Yeah. Period realm. But I'm finding out some really fascinating things about this tree, and it goes places. Oh, I can't wait.

This is exciting. These are good Easter eggs. I got you a present when I was in New York. But I'm not going to give it to you until it's relevant. Oh, it's relevant to an upcoming epi? Yeah. I'm excited about this. I wonder what old bit of pizza.

I'll have to keep it in my purse because I don't know when. When I'm going to bring this episode out. Yeah. Okay. I like this. I'm excited. Okay. That's the admin out of the way.

Perfect. Housekeeping. Okay. Cars. You're a fan of the way. Perfect. Housekeeping. Okay. Cars. You're a fan of the car. You drove here today. I drove here today begrudgingly. Why begrudgingly? I would have preferred to have walked.

Why did you drive? Timing. If I'm running late, I have to drive. You got to drive. Also, I just so happen to be able to walk to this job, but mostly you can't walk to your job. It's a rarity, right? Yes. And I'm the same.

I walk here, but now I've got the car. Yeah. It changes the way your brain works in America, I think. And you do start to just drive places you would normally walk. And I'm fascinated by that, what that's doing to me. Yeah. How, what would you say percentage-wise? Did you drive here today? I walked today because the weather's kind of different today. It's a bit overcast and it's

like a fun atmosphere to kind of be out in. But no, I'd say my driving like 50-50 sometimes. And the car provides you with this sort of, it's like a respite from the day almost. It's like the car is this one place in, I feel in life where you're just completely alone and it's your own time. And I think that's maybe why I like driving here. Okay. I want to be clear because I don't think it's fair and we're going to get some pushback. I think everyone would agree that mostly in America you drive, but in New York, you don't have to drive and a lot of people don't and don't know how. Totally. I'm always amazed by people in New York that don't have a driver's license. It's

kind of amazing. No driver's license. No driver's license. She doesn't know how to drive. It's so mad to me because New Zealand is very similar to LA in that I think per capita, our car ownership is pretty much on par with LA. It's very similar in that our public transport kind of sucks. Yeah. And everyone drives. That's just a thing. And, you know, ideally that shouldn't be the case. There should be public transport and other systems in place.

But you're very similar in that way. It's just very widespread, the city. Yeah. That's how Atlanta is too. I mean, we do have, there's MARTA there. What's that? It's a public transportation, but often you then have to drive to the MARTA station, and then you get where you need to get, but it's just,

some places have it dialed and others don't. Absolutely. The other thing I find kind of fascinating, and this is where this ends up going, is the concept of parking, because that is something we really take a swerve into parking. Oh, I do. I love that. Actually, let's just, I'm going to get into the dog. Okay. And we'll come out of it and chat about it. Cars in America, intertwined. When I started thinking about how much America loves cars, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I think that's because being in Los Angeles, driving is inevitable.

Back when I didn't have a car, I still needed to drive, so I'd order Lyfts or Ubers, or wait for a friend to pick me up. Sure, there's public transport here, but in my short experience, it's not particularly great. And so, in LA, people drive. And it can be slow and frustrating. You're stuck in the traffic at the grocery store parking lot, or you're inching on and off the freeway. You crawl through drive-thrus, drive-thru Starbucks, drive-thru McDonald's, drive-thru In and Out. From what I can tell, you only ever get out of your car in America when you need to fight someone. This video is coming to us from Santa Clarita, where people in these two cars can be seen throwing things at each other. This is in

an in-and-out drive-thru. They threw bleach, juice, water bottles, all of it going back and forth, along with a lot of nasty language. Out of all the US states, California has the most cars, about 14 million of them, just because it's so dense. But when it comes to cars per capita, Montana is top dog, just because pretty much everyone in Montana needs a car. It's similar in South Dakota and Wyoming, because those places are so vast you'd need a car to get around. But then America is vast.

The whole thing is vast. I think I had long been conscious of just what a car-dominated country America is, and just what a seismic effect on American landscape, society, and the economy. For this episode, I'm talking to Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate who writes about cars and transportation, urban policy and housing. And he's been thinking a lot about how much of America is taken up by the car and what that's done to America. That stuff I felt like I was pretty conscious of in my early career as a journalist when I started covering cities.

And I would write about land use and transportation, housing, and of course, the automobile, automobile dependency, the creation of the interstate highways, the destruction of black neighborhoods to build roads. All this stuff was very much something that I was aware of. The more he thought about it, the more he saw the ways in which cars affected the American landscape. See, most of us, including me, think of cars as being speedy and fast. It's how they've been sold to us for decades. In a world where less is too often tolerated, Cadillac offers you more. In luxury and performance, Cadillac stands alone. But as Henry thought about it, he realized most of the time, cars aren't moving at all.

They're stationary, useless, being stored. They're parked. And I realized this episode wasn't going to be about speedy cars. It was going to be about parked cars. Because that's exactly what most of America's cars are doing. When you really get down to it, parking in some ways, is my conclusion anyway, is more important to the actual position of the car in American society than the actual roads themselves. And that's because the car spends 95% of its time parked and parking takes up all this space. And so when you think about the car's actual spatial impact

on the city, on the landscape, it's actually not in the roads themselves. It's in the parking spaces. Look, if you want a podcast about fast, speedy cars, Dax has an F1 show you can listen to. It's really good. But I was curious about this often not talked about aspect of American cars and car culture. Parking. In his book, Henry calls America a paved paradise. Believe me, there's nothing I hate more than being in the car and having no place to park

it, especially when you have to pee and you're driving around in circles and you got a kid in the back of the car screaming. And no, it's a bad situation. It's one of the unfortunate consequences of creating a society in which we have no other way to get around. And so for a lot of people, finding parking is a precursor to doing literally anything. Maybe this explains why in America, on average, there are up to six parking spaces for every car. In his book, Henry interviewed someone from the Boston City Council about parking,

who told him, The issue speaks to a basic principle of what it means to be an American. Like the gold miner and the pioneers, residents have the right to stake their claims. In this case, their claim on a parking space. Once you start thinking about how many cars are parked, you can't stop thinking about it, and you can't unsee it. I look out my window right now at the road, and there are parked cars everywhere. But as Henry puts it, a parking space is nothing less than the link between driving and life itself. There are so many cars parked or trying to park in America, it almost defies belief. It's why the long-running SimCity video game franchise didn't include

parking spaces or parking lots. They just looked too unrealistic. No one would believe it. SimCity, the game, or maybe it was the Sims, just did away with parking altogether because it was just too ugly in the game. Just visually, you'd look at the game and it wouldn't make sense. I think that says a lot. Yeah, I think about that a lot. They actually went out. They started measuring things. They went out to their local supermarket with a tape measurer and they were like, all right, well, how big is all this stuff? You know, if we're going to create a convincing representation of the real world. And they said, no, no, no, this is not going to work. Nobody's going to play this game. They said in the SimCity game, you have to pretend that the

parking is underground. But in real life, parking is a priority. Overall, housing cars has become more important than housing people. This fact is built into zoning laws. These are the laws that govern what can be built where in every city and suburb. And they blanket the United States. And they can be very, very specific in determining exactly what kinds of stuff you can build. And the laws almost always have a maximum on the amount of housing that can be built on a certain property. And they almost always have a minimum on the amount of parking that can be built on a certain property. And so you really find yourself in many places devoting more square footage to parking

than you are to housing. People get precious about their parks. Henry opens his book recounting an incident in Queens where two drivers were both jostling for a spot outside the Rainbow Bakery. Things escalate. The drivers get out of their cars and punches are thrown. One passenger comes out with a baseball bat. Eventually, one of them decides to use their car as a weapon, hitting the other driver before jumping the curb

and driving directly through the front window of the bakery. It's carnage, and it's all over a parking space. Surveillance video shows the moment a white Audi plunges into a flushing bakery. Neighbours say the crash was deliberate, but the store wasn't the target. Today was a street fight, and it got escalated very quickly. BAKERY. NEIGHBORS SAY THE CRASH WAS DELIBERATE, BUT THE STORE WASN'T THE TARGET. 3 3 3

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3 3 3 3 3 3 on Casino Boulevard, witnesses say the two parties were fighting over a parking spot. One man armed with a baseball bat starts swinging at the Audi driver. While I wouldn't go that far myself over a parking space, I've definitely felt frustration trying to find a park. But the issue of parking and finding a park extends beyond tit-for-tat parking shenanigans we experience. If you realize there's actually this more fundamental parking fight that's going on. And it's not two people duking it out with a baseball bat.

It's neighbors determined to preserve and create as much parking as possible. And neighbors fighting for more parking. And this is actually an extremely influential force in American neighborhood planning, which is the level of planning in this country that matters the most, right? That's where new apartment buildings get approved or denied. And when it comes to building new housing, which is something this country desperately, desperately needs, too often neighbors see that new housing coming in the form of stolen parking spaces. It's like they visualize new neighbors as coming in parking-sized packages. They're not there to attend school with their kids or grill with you on the sidewalk on the afternoon. They're there to take your parking spaces. And so a lot of this debate about the direction of the neighborhood, the city, the country gets swallowed up in this fight over parking spaces. And parking isn't cheap to build.

It holds back some housing from being built because it's too expensive, when it comes to underground car parks especially. Turns out, it can be harder building down than building up. When you break it down, it costs about $28,000 to build each individual parking space in a parking garage. They're essentially like bridges. I mean, it's post-tensioned reinforced concrete. So they've got these concrete slabs with these steel cables running through them. And it's a relatively sophisticated form of construction that costs quite a bit of money. And this explains a lot about parking, because once you realize how much money it costs

to build a garage, you begin to realize there's actually a very, very small number of places geographically where parking pencils out as a business opportunity. It's really just downtowns, sports arenas, and airports, maybe a hospital or a university. Aside from that, no one's ever going to build a garage with the expectation of getting people to pay money for it. There are examples over the last five years from where the rules have loosened in regards to the minimum number of car parks required when building new housing for human beings. And some surprising things have happened. Certain parts of the city have started to look different, maybe a bit like SimCity. When all those parking spaces are taken away, things can start to look better.

In almost every city that has done away with these laws, what we've seen is fewer parking spaces getting built with every new project. And in turn, that makes new projects more affordable. And perhaps more fundamentally, it opens up new possibilities for the types of things that can be built. Because I think one of the shocking things about architecture in this country after the implementation of these parking laws is that we lose touch with the vernacular American style that characterized many of our favorite neighborhoods in our favorite cities. I'm talking about things like bungalow courts in Los Angeles or brownstones in Brooklyn or triple deckers in Boston. All these things become illegal to build. And that was a real shame. I

mean, that was a terrible mistake. We didn't mean to do it necessarily. We meant to just make sure that every new house had an ample number of parking spaces. But in effect, we did outlaw these types of buildings from being constructed because the parking just stopped penciling out. And in the last five years, as these laws have been repealed, you've begun to see a resurgence in those building types, which is great. Stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors flightless bird is brought to you by helix sleep are you a fan of your mattress monica i do like my mattress it's changed my life i mean as far as- Yeah, it's not a small thing. It's not a small thing. Yeah. If you have a bad one, you don't even necessarily realize how much it's affecting your sleep,

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Boom, springs to action. There it is. I love that part. Seeing it poof out. It's like magic. It's like a magic trick. I took the Helix Sleep Quiz and got matched with a midnight mattress because I wanted something that felt like a medium kind of firmness. And plus, I sleep on my side and back a lot.

So that's the thing that worked for me. And I've been having really good sleeps here in America. Helix is offering 25% off all mattress orders and a free bedroom bundle for our listeners in honor of Black Friday. The bundle includes two free pillows, as well as a set of sheets and even a mattress protector. Go to helixsleep.com slash bird and use code helixpartner25. This is their best offer yet, and it won't last long with helix better sleep starts now flightless bird is brought to you by aura frames i have been gifting these frames to people for a little while now rob's got one i know it's kind of your thing it's my thing honestly giving someone a digital frame that's

pre-loaded with photos of them that are either like really lovely or you can also take the more comedic option and just load it with what you want it's a really fun gift and honestly people their little eyes light up it's a very thoughtful gift yeah i'm going back to new zealand i think soon for a little bit and i'm going to give my parents a frame because my mom and dad always want to know what i'm doing here and i email them but photos they bring it to life it's really easy to set up it takes a couple of minutes per frame using the Aura app. I think it's really cool also because you can add unlimited photos and videos and you can invite multiple people to a frame.

The other thing I like is that you can update the frame. So if you have set it up as a gift, you can send other photos to it. It's kind of the perfect gift for any occasion. From now through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Aura is having their best deal of the year. This is can save $40 on their best-selling Carver matte frame using auraframes.com slash bird. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com slash bird. Use promo code bird to get $40 off their best-selling frames. Promo code BIRD to get $40 off their best-selling frames. Parking, Monica.

It's everywhere. This is very interesting. I feel like once you start thinking about it, even walking here today, just parked cars everywhere. Everywhere. Houses, garages, on the street, people circling the street looking for parking. Going to get coffee with Maru with Rob. You just circle. Circle. Yeah.

I find myself conflicted in this doc. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious what your reaction is. So he's written this book, Pave Paradise. And I just picked it off a bookshelf. And it was just basically about how parking in America and other countries as well. Just because America is so car-centric.

It's big here. Yeah. Just how much it affects a city. You know, you see cars drive. I've never thought about just the concept of every car has to be plonked somewhere. Somewhere, yeah. And that's such a weird thing. And it's like it's one of those things that's right in front of you, but you never think about it.

And once you start thinking of it, it's just so odd. Yeah. No, it is. And you're right. It's something none of us ever think about. Because you texted me coming in here. You texted me like, I can't find a park. Just tell me what was different about how normally it's like. Had something changed the parking today? Everyone's parked on the street Partly because parts of the street are blocked off Right, so there's less spaces Where you would normally be parking

Now it's like all jammed up Also, sometimes when it's crowded in the neighborhood I park on an adjacent street But that street today has street cleaning Yeah, so everyone can't be on that side of the street So no one can be on one side of the street So they're parked on the other side of the street So there's no parking on that side of the street. So no one can be on one side of the street. So they're parked on the other side of the street. So there's no parking on that side of the street.

Yeah. So I was late because I was just driving around kind of in circles waiting. And you're trapped. And the other thing I find, and I'm getting used to this having a car now, and I'm sure it's different in different cities, obviously, in different states. But so much of going to a destination, you can do the route on Google Maps and say, it'll take me 22 minutes to get there. Factoring in how long it's going to take you to car park is this wild card at the end of any trip, right?

It is. I was so stressed out when I first moved to LA because city parking is so different than suburban parking. Totally. You don't worry about it in the suburbs. Never, because there are parking lots and you never have to worry about finding a spot on the street or parallel parking or anything like that. And so when I first moved here, I was so, so stressed out about parking, and I was really bad at parallel parking,

so I had to just drive and drive until I could find a spot that I didn't have to parallel park in. And then walk for like 20 minutes to get to where you want to go. Yes. That's the other funny thing I find when you go to park in America in a parking lot at a grocery store, there's such competitions for parks closer to the space. And I wonder like the amount of time people spend circling,

looking for a closer spot, be so much quicker if they parked further away and then walked. All that mentality, I just, since reading this book, I can't stop thinking about this stuff. It is funny. Whenever I'm home, we go to this specific mall in Georgia. It's an outdoor mall, kind of like the Grove here in LA. And it's so funny. Every time we're going there or really anywhere that's not in our normal routine, my parents are always like, what's the parking like? Like, they're so obsessed with the parking. Same with my dad. Okay, so this is an international thing.

Yeah, my parents obsessed with parking and the spot. It gets me so irritated. Yeah. Like, we'll find something. But anyway. But it does dictate the journey. It does. The park at the end.

It's just such an interesting aspect to life here. Well, and when I was on shrooms. Uh-oh. The one major thing I remember is because I had like a panic attack basically. And then Dax took me outside to walk around. And I noticed all the cars. Oh, you had a revelation. Yes, because they felt, to me, they looked like they were wrapped in saran wrap.

Okay. And that they also seemed like little characters. Yeah, these little packages. But then there were so many. Yes. Yeah, you're awakened. Yeah. To this thing.

I think I've just had a similar awakening, but not on shrooms, of just being like, holy shit, cars everywhere. It's tricky, though, because I don't know how we would do it any differently. In fact, this is part of the dilemma of parking here is that there are seemingly not enough spots. So that's why everyone's panicked and it takes forever. Totally. Yeah, that statistic is crazy. It's the far end of the estimate of there being six parking spots for every car. That's across the whole country. Obviously in LA it's weighted

very differently because it's this huge mission to find a spot. When I was in Chicago, I was working in the city and I had to reserve a parking spot. I was leasing a spot monthly. I paid 200 bucks to have this spot that I could park in every morning because you

can't deal with that exactly in downtown yeah i also find that mentality where a new neighbor or a new apartment block just represents a parking size package coming to your neighborhood and every new neighbor is one less car park for you if you rely on street parking. I know. I'm going to be Dax right now. I found that a little extreme. Maybe subconsciously people are feeling that way, but I have never. I've felt that way. It's not a good way to feel. Yeah, when new people move in. If you don't have a garage. Oh, if you don't have a garage. Yeah, see, I'm on the street. Yeah, so I park in LA on the street. And so I remember when a new neighbor came in and they had a car,

I noticed that car would often be parked where I used to park. Oh, for sure. Okay, that makes sense. And that mentality completely shifts. Having a garage is this huge, amazing thing to have because holy shit, it's a guaranteed park. Every day is like a weird lottery. You shouldn't feel that way towards a neighbor.

It should be like, hey, welcome to the neighborhood. But internally, you're going, less parking spots. I guess that does make sense. like a weird lottery. You shouldn't feel that way towards a neighbor. It should be like, hey, welcome to the neighborhood. But internally, you're going, less parking spots. I guess that does make sense. And apartments here, definitely, if there's a garage or, I mean, I can't even call it, I would call it like a carport. They're pretty rare, right? Like to have a garage or there's limited numbers of parks. They won't have a garage, but they'll have a carport.

Basically a hut with little divisions. Your little naps. Uh-huh. You have one inch on either side of your car. It's so hard to get in and out of those fucking things. Hence why my car was in the shop recently. So there's like eight spots and you hope you get one. When I first moved into that apartment, I had to wait for someone to move out in order for me to be able to get a spot. Yeah. Crazy, right? Yeah. And those apartments that have parking like that, they're definitely at a premium. They can raise the price because it's a huge asset in LA to have

a parking spot. Yeah. I got my apartment cheaper because it didn't come with a parking spot. And I was like, that's great. But then every day it's like this weird bit of trivia built into my day about, am I going to park today? I hate that. Or am I going to park like two streets over? I don't know. What do you do about street cleaning? Do you have like a calendar reminder to move it every week? I've got a calendar reminder.

Sweet. Also, street cleaning we should talk about because that does not happen everywhere. We're going to get into that a little bit. Because, yes, street cleaning is... It was new to me when I moved here i've never seen it bonkers on a wednesday you can't park on this side of the street on a friday you can't park on the other side of the street i mean it's a revenue collecting for the city because they can fine you if you don't do it obviously they have to like sweep and that's good keeping the city clean yeah it is it is they do they have to i think it's a dirty city.

It'll be nasty. Yeah, totally. Yeah, and it's a way, I think, for the city to check that cars aren't being stored there. When I went to New Zealand for that back stuff, I had to find a friend's garage to park it in. Because if I left it on the street, it would have been amazing to see what fines it had gathered. Oh, so many. But yeah, it's also an excuse for a city to move people on. Yeah, we get into a bit of this

in the next part, so I'm going to play it. Okay. There's another thing I find interesting about cars and parking cars. I've noticed it a lot in Los Angeles. As I look at house prices, I see how expensive everything is. The average house here is about a million dollars. Houses are expensive. Land is expensive. You know what's not that expensive? Curbside parking. We explored this a bit in the RV episode, and it's a concept that's stuck with me ever since. At five in the morning, you're allowed to pull in here.

And then at sundown, you can cruise right out. But that's at nine o'clock at night. So you got a free, beautiful sanctuary in the middle of, I mean, God land right here for free. This is heaven. Curbside parking can be a kind of hack. Free real estate, free rent. It goes back to the taco truck, the ice cream truck. I mean, those were some of the first people to say, wait a second, why would I pay for real estate when I can do my business here for free right at

the curb? And now, sadly, because the housing crisis has become so intense in California, you're seeing that arbitrage getting taken advantage of by people who need a place to live. And it started in domestic garages, right? That started in the garages of single family homes, people living in what they call garage units, granny flats, accessory dwelling units, etc. And it's estimated that tens of thousands of people live in garages in Los Angeles, which only became legal about five years ago. But the practice far predates that. Because again, it was illegal to create a new housing unit, but the garage was just sitting there. And so people just did what they felt they had to do. And now you're seeing this practice spread to the curb.

The curb is free and housing is really expensive. And for a very desperate group of people in Los Angeles, that's the only place they can afford to live. For some, a parking space is somewhere you pull into so you can rush out and get a coffee. For others, it's their home, which is a pretty strange thing to be reckoning with. Of course, there's the flip side too. Not all parking is free when it comes to parking in the city, especially if you forget to pay for it.

New York City makes about twice as much money from parking fines as it does from parking fees. So it makes twice as much money from people parking illegally as it does from people parking legally. And you might even say the city has a financial incentive to have people continue to park illegally because it's a major cash cow. And a very concrete example of that is the biggest illegal parkers in New York are the delivery trucks who take care of our burgeoning e-commerce economy. I'm talking about Amazon, UPS, FedEx, etc. Those guys pay sometimes

tens of thousands of dollars per truck per year in fines. That's a huge cash cow for the city. Now, the problem could be solved by creating loading zones on every block where a truck would have a place to pull over and make their deliveries instead of blocking traffic. But the city doesn't do that. And I think one of. But the city doesn't do that. And I think one of the reasons the city doesn't do that, it's a little bit cynical, but I think it's because they make so much money from the fines. It's estimated that about a third of congested traffic in a city is just people driving around looking for parks.

And that's not a victimless crime, right? Like double parking is a huge contributor to traffic congestion, which creates pollution, slows everybody down, strangles the economy in lots of other ways that are more significant than those tens of thousands of dollars in fines that are raised. And yet it's harder to see the big picture when you are getting that influx of cash. The most I've been ticketed in LA is $65 because I forgot to move my car on street sweeping day. The biggest scam of all the scams. In New York, fines can range from $35 to a whopping $515.

Thousands of cars are ticketed in New York each day. That adds up to hundreds of millions in revenue for the city. It gets pretty bad in LA too. I think a lot of the time you just end up getting fined there because the signs are so hard to interpret. I find the signs for parking incredibly hard to decipher. I often have to park, get out of the car and then look, read a multitude of signs and kind of do the math about what I'm allowed to do. Is that an issue across the United States or is that a Los Angeles thing

that I've encountered? Oh yeah, I think that throughout the United States, parking rules are some of the most complicated and Byzantine regulations from city to city. And I think this is one reason that it's so irritating to people. It's not legible. It's not logical. People don't understand what the city is trying to accomplish. And I think that's because, again, there is a disconnect between city policy and what makes most sense. Cities are managing this space often not at all. It hasn't been decided according to any logical scheme of how we're going to make the most of our precious curb space. It's actually just a holdover from what the previous administration did

and what the previous administration did, and things get tacked on here and there, and none of it makes any sense. And I think that's true of the fines as well. In a perfect world, a parking fine wouldn't be very expensive. The crime you have committed by illegally parking is not a very serious one by overstaying the meter or something like that. And the reason that they are so expensive is because enforcement is relatively rare

because we don't have very many parking agents and we refuse to use the technology employed elsewhere in the world of having cars with cameras go around and automate the enforcement. And so as a result, we're stuck with this weird, big fine that's supposed to be deterrence, rather than sort of proportional punishment for the crime. And obviously, that makes a lot of people very mad. And that's another example of a case where parking policy really hasn't been thought through. There are so many things about parking that I find confusing and weird here. Like back to the street sweeping thing again. Every Wednesday I have to park on one particular side of the road. On a Friday, it's the other

side. Is this actually so they can clean the streets or is it a way to raise revenue and fines when you forget to move? Or is it just to make sure you don't leave your dunger of a car parked in the same spot for a year? I think of parking meters, another weird thing. They were originally built to sort of regulate parking, to keep people moving along. But I feel like in 2023 they're just there as an excuse to fine you. America just feels like it needs to catch up a little bit. Even the parking meters, they're often so old-fashioned. Feeding coins in? I mean, in small-town New Zealand, you'll be surprised when you come across a parking meter that takes coins.

You're like, holy shit, one of these things? Here in Los Angeles, in this giant, amazing, you know, I'm in fucking Hollywood and I'm trying to find coins to feed in. It's such an odd thing. Like it feels like you've gone back in time or something. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. I mean, I think this gets to a broader American issue, which is a reluctance sometimes to look at what's happening in other places and say, hey, I could work here. It's not always a kind of a sense of superiority. I think sometimes we are very ready to acknowledge that some things work better in other places, but when that happens, we'll always say,

well, but that's because that's that place and it couldn't work here because we have our own problems. And that in itself is a kind of American exceptionalism. It's not like a good American exceptionalism, it's a bad American. Like we're exceptionally bad and we can't fix this problem because we're so bad. And that is the case with parking

and a number of other things. I don't mean to end this whole thing on a downer. We started this episode with Rihanna and Springsteen thinking about cars as methods of freedom, the dream way to see America. And they are. I mean, I love driving in America. America and the car are intertwined. But I guess what I've learned is that cars have led to this infrastructure here that's a bit wonky. And I keep thinking of that stat,

up to six parking spots for every car, a paved paradise of parking, or figuring out how to store cars when they're not roaming the open road. Henry's thought about this a lot more than I have, and he thinks America is already making some positive changes, changing the way we look at cars and parking, motivated a bit by how others have done it. I really like what's been going on in Paris, France recently, because the mayor there has made a really conscious decision that she's going to get rid of as many on-street parking spaces as possible. And her thinking is, if you want to drive a car in the city, you better have a place to park it in a garage. And there's lots of garages in Paris. But what has happened since

she started doing this is obviously fewer people are driving. And that has achieved a number of goals that the city has been after for a while. I mean, there were a couple months this spring where nobody was killed in traffic in Paris, which for a city that size is just unbelievable. I mean, in New York City, like a dozen people are killed in traffic every month. That's an example of the kinds of benefits that can be unlocked when you start to convert those parking spaces into other uses and then that's to say nothing of what you can unlock with those other uses right i mean restaurant space green space places for elderly people to sit for children to play i mean all this stuff is possible once that parking space has been re-envisioned as public space and suddenly it's up for Places where this stuff has been tried,

and it's been tried in places like New York, Philly, Boston, San Francisco. There's all kinds of examples of people turning parking spots into other things, and then being like, wow, this is really great. We're not going back. And that concludes my TED Talk on parking in America. I truly do not remember the last time I was at a meter and they didn't take credit cards. There are cards in a lot of them. It's true.

I mean, I truly don't remember. Yeah, I think they're all almost that way. Yes. So that's not fair. No, I think defending your country is very reasonable. And you're right. I think what sort of got me is these parking meters are so ancient and they can still take coins. It's just a weird experience for me. And I guess it's good they take coins because people that have coins and don't have credit cards can

use it. That's great. But they just strike me as these ancient machines. I'm trying to read the screen. It's all faded. It's all kicked up. I don't know. It's just, it's- But we'd also be mad if we spent a ton of money updating those machines people would be pissed if tax dollars went to that yeah but long term it could be really good the alternatives are those boxes that you type in the numbers and there's you gotta download an app yeah that's way more annoying i agree yeah but efficient it's more easily policed because it knows when your time runs out saves saves the city more over time. Well, I think the city would make more money.

See, that's the thing. It's a trade-off. The fine is higher currently. It's, I would say, 50-50 that you actually get the ticket. Oh, it's like a fun gambling trick. It is. Totally. As an individual, it can feel really good and freeing because it's like you might not be charged a thing. Well, right. So then if it's all monitored and then you're 100% going to get fined.

Yeah, but I mean, that's so good as well because it keeps things moving. The fines aren't crazy. I guess. I mean, the thing is, if you're five minutes after the two-hour thing you get fined I'd be pissed even if it's $20 as opposed to $65 that I'm probably not five minutes after But if everyone's paying for it then and the fine is less and it all creates like a bit more balance it feels like but this is like it's hard I can't argue a certain point I don't know people don't want to pay for parking I think that't know. People don't want to pay for parking. I think that's really interesting. I don't want to pay for parking. I'm always trying to look for free parking. Of course. Yeah. You end up in these parts of LA as well, where you're not allowed to park on the street. You go to Beverly Hills or something, and you can't just park up there. So you end up in a parking building, and then you're annoyed

at paying money there. I don't even know what my point is it's just like parking is just chaotic there was a scandal in chicago they privatized the parking meters at one point where a company how did that work owns it and makes money on it they leased them right over it looks like they paid one billion billion for a 75-year lease. Oh, wow. So they manage it. I don't think taxpayers are paying for it, but they're also maybe getting money for... Profiting a decent amount from that. Is the overall reaction like it's a good thing or bad?

People weren't happy about it, I remember. Yeah, right. The other thing that's going to be sneaking up on us is the whole electric car thing because at the moment you don't have an electric car right Rob's got an electric car yeah at the moment you can find a charging station but I guess is we slowly convert all cars to that where are we all going to charge it depends on where you are like I was a big bear this weekend and it was impossible to find a charger so what do you do in that situation you charge it from your accommodation?

Yeah, I was in an Airbnb and I have one that plugs into a regular wall outlet. Yeah, right. And how long does it take to charge from like a socket in an Airbnb? You get like four miles per hour. Really? But I mean, we were an hour away from a real charger. Yeah, right.

And I guess probably with the new building codes every apartment that's built will have to come. For sure. Because retrofitting, I think he talked about this a bit. It costs the city about $40,000 for each electric charging station to be built, which is so expensive. But if they come packaged with a building when an apartment gets okayed, then it'll be like a more affordable way to build them but retrofitting is so crazy expensive so that's this weird thing like converting at this point yeah it's just so that's a whole other chaotic thing with parking and having to charge it will be very interesting once more and more people start driving electric they're gonna have to build a lot more stations

the other thing i thought about while i was writing this episode was your specific car as well. Because I feel like I sort of want to do another episode on you pay for storage facilities. I think a lot of people have stuff in storage. You use your car as kind of a storage base, almost like your boot. See, a car park for you almost represents you're paying for storage as well, right? Well, yes. I'm lucky to have two cars and one of them truly is storage right now. It is sitting outside my house filled with junk from my basement.

That's so funny. Yeah. Ding, ding, ding. Because they had to clear it out. Ding, ding, ding. They had to clear it out, and I just moved it all into my car. Also, that little car, the one that I went to take my driving test in, it's just filled with stuff now.

Yes. Storage facility. It's a storage facility. I saved money. Yeah, yeah. But that car has to have a little space, right? Wherever you are. Wherever your car is, you've got to have a little spot for it.

And where we are, like at the attic as well, obviously Dax had a lot of cars, and I imagine he battles with storage. It's a mad problem to have. You buy this car, and then you've always got to have somewhere to dump it. And depending on where you are, it costs different amounts of money. Sometimes it's free to park. Sometimes I went to see a movie. It cost me $30 to park.

It's just so crazy and all over the place. And I just find it fascinating. Yeah. What percentage of people in New York City own cars? Oh, I have no idea. That would be interesting because it'd be super low, right? Like, I have no idea. That would be interesting because it would be super low, right? Like so, so low.

It has to be. And it feels like the city really fights you if you do have one. Exactly. And storing that. Yeah, when we were shooting Tickled, I drove a lot in Manhattan and it was so stressful.

I'd be so scared to drive there. Yeah, I've never been tutored at more or abused more and it was just so scary. So it looks like 45% of households in the city own a car in New York. Wow, that's much more than I expected. There must be a lot of cars that are probably just sat somewhere, right? Like in a garage or on a street.

They're not all being driven. Although our friend Emma, Emma has a car in the city. She's got a car in the city? Yeah. Is she using it very often? She uses it, but not that often, I don't think. So it is interesting. Looks like New York is the lowest, though.

What's LA? LA. I'm not sure. We're like probably 95. I mean, I don't know. They're not even on this list. Honestly, having a car here just changes your entire experience of the city. I did a year and a half without one.

And I think what pushed me over the edge was just a few Uber rides with drivers that were just really bad. And I felt unsafe. And I was like, I can't be doing this. Like hurtling along for 40 minutes. It's like lunatic. Yes. It's partly because the high traffic cities, you have to have one. Because relying on Uber to take you an hour and a half to

Santa Monica, like no. And that's the other thing. Obviously people in LA who don't have cars, it just takes them so much longer to do everything. Going to a job when you're taking a bus, it's like this two hour ordeal as opposed to a half hour one. So that's such a big difference in those lives as well.'s chaotic new zealand ranks higher for car ownership per capita oh your third 860 cars per thousand people third in the world yeah wow united states is 811 cars per thousand people where are we ranked fourth fifth fifth who's number one san marino then monaco Monaco, New Zealand, Iceland, United States. It's amazing having this country that's known as being clean, green, beautiful,

and we've got our highest per capita car ownership. And again, that's because our public transport, like LA, it sucks. And so people don't use it. And anytime a politician in New Zealand tries to get more cycleways or more public transport, there's just this huge angry push. Because New Zealand tries to get more cycleways or more public transport, there's just this huge angry push. Because New Zealanders, we love cars. And we're kind of bad drivers as well. And that's where we let our anger out. Because we're so mellow in person. When we drive, we love to road rage. Oh, yeah. I've been in a car with you.

You've seen me. Yeah, you've acted out. That's how we express our emotions is in the car. So the idea of taking our cars away from us means like we can express our emotions less. And so we get really angry about that. I want to push back on one more thing. I just remembered the point about we often say we can't compare ourselves to some of these other countries because we're a different country, right? And so I understand feeling like that can be a cop-out, but it is also true. And I don't think it's fair when people are always comparing us or saying like, Sweden has this. Yeah, Sweden is very specific. They are all essentially one race. I would prefer some of the problems we have for the trade-off of diversity and people just make it all equal. It's not the same

and not about parking but he was saying in regards to a lot of things we do that and we do but i don't think that's necessarily fair to say all things are equal because they're not i think it's a balance like it doesn't always hold but i also think god forbid we ever do a gun episode which is something i'm just gonna it's i mean's like, what fresh thing can I offer to that debate? With that debate, I always think there's always those, everyone's just like, but those countries are different. Those countries are different. I mean, I think if you applied the logic to, again, like gun control, it would be so good.

America isn't that unique. We could do what other countries have done with gun laws and it would be so much better. We could have. It would have been, I mean, and I'm not saying, because i am so pro zero guns like i'm so anti-gun i wish there was no guns and yeah you can you'll be a good new zealander yeah i would be so good i would love that we do have so many millions of guns at this point it is a harder problem than just solving it's crazy exactly yeah getting rid of guns is hard. That's the thing.

I think people are like, well, we just have to do what other countries are doing. But at this point, it's hard. They're out there. Then what do we do? Like trade back? America's dug itself into a bit of a big old hole. And there's so much money involved now. I just think to make things so this or that or black and white,

or we could do it just like this. It's just not exactly accurate. Yeah. And I don't think he was saying that's the one thing that's holding us back. It is an excuse I think sometimes people use. We could never do that because that country is so different. When it comes to like education or guns or cars or anything. Paternity leave, like those things for sure.

Yeah, there's a way that it's like, oh, we're different. But also it's not an excuse to not try at all. I agree. I totally agree with that. Yeah. So I don't know. Look, again, how do you even begin to solve the car issue? Like LA, it is the way it is. We're not suddenly going to magic up a public transport system. Everyone's so addicted to their car. It's never going to be unwound. The car in LA and in America, I would say, but definitely in LA is a part of your identity. And that's not to keep bringing up with the guns, but that's such an interesting thing. That is part of an identity for many people. It means

more than just a thing. It's like where it's freedom and we can do what we want. And yeah, the car is, yeah, people take such pride and it's this thing. In what they're driving, yeah. It kind of says something about you and what you picked. Yeah, all those things. It's deeper than just how you get from point A to point B. And again, it's like since I had a car, I think cars overall, terrible. They're not a great thing to have, but I love having a car.

So it's that thing. I love listening to my heavy metal music turned up real loud in there I like the freedom it allows me and so that love of that feeling of driving overrides the practical thing I know which is that we should all be pushing towards public transport and making that a viable thing because it's just going to be so much better for everyone. Right. I mean, people try. I feel like there's some attempts to do that here. And I don't know if it's happening or not. But in the meantime, I mean, this is an overall question. And it's going to sound very demoralizing.

It's going to sound. We can end on a downer. We'll end on a downer and then we'll try and think of a happy thing to end on after. There's a part of me that's like, so what are you, David, you not driving, going to do for public transportation in Los Angeles? Yeah, that's the tricky thing. It's not going to do anything. But if we all do that, then it's going to be so wonderful. But no, it's not because that costs money. It's more about that than the issue of if just no one had cars. It depends on order. It's like a chicken and egg thing. What comes first? I mean, ideally, a city should come up with goals to have like a public transport

system that works so well. You suddenly go, fuck, I'm going to use this train or this bus because I don't need to worry about a car park at the other end. This just works so well, it'll happen. And then slowly you migrate to that. Suddenly you free up all this parking space. There'll be beautiful dining on curbsides instead of parking. There'll be parks. Old people can play with their kids. All that stuff, you know? It could be so much better. But it's what comes first and who makes the push to do it.

Yeah. Toot toot. All right. Well, that was a good pivot. I liked that cars turned into parking. Cars turned into parking. Cars turned into parking. And I think maybe anyone listening, walking around, feel like Monica did on her little mushroom trip. Yeah. And look at all the cars.

Saran wraps. Instead of just going, holy shit, what is this world? Look at all these cars everywhere. This is crazy. Because it is kind of crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of them. More American or less American? I mean, I didn't go through any great personal change in this episode but i feel like i thought about cars more and parking and i think that makes me more american okay then sure yes i'll give it to you okay bye Thank you.