Create Your Own Parking Space in Mexico City!

Today was a pretty normal day in Mexico City.

Not too hot.

And seemingly not too many people outside either.

Anyhow, I walked on over to the Walmart nearby in Copilco area to get some groceries.

As usual, I bought some food also because I normally don’t feel like cooking after buying groceries on the same day.

The shopping mall where the Walmart is also has a Chinese place that serves a shit ton of food for like 5 bucks.

With 3 fortune cookies included.

Along the 10 minute walk back to my place, I spotted a scene closer to where my apartment is.

There was a cop car parked across the street with some cop seemingly trying to calm down a situation between two people.

I stopped to watch the situation unfold along with a few random other strangers who were watching what was going on also.

Some older guy who was maybe 70 years old and some fat Mexican chick who could’ve been 40 were close to where I stopped walking.

As well, you have some theatre place close by where this happened where you always have a bunch of young adults hanging around too.

So what was the issue?

Normally, in cases like this, you’d think it was one person hitting another person’s car.

As a side point, sometimes you even got scammers in Mexico City that purposefully try to get you to hit their car so they can extort money from you in the moment.

As you can see in this video here.

However, while I have no personal experience witnessing that….

Though I have, on a rare occasion, seen road anger burst out like one time near Buenavista metro where two cars got in an accident and one of them tried to flee the scene…

In which the taxi driver sped up and rammed his car into the car running away.

Stopping it completely from going along further.

Still, in this incident, it wasn’t one of those crazy car accidents or anything like that.

Instead, it was an issue about parking!

In Mexico City (and maybe other areas of Latin America), it’s not uncommon to see someone try to “reserve” a parking space for themselves illegally.

Where basically one person will take a completely random ass object…

Could be a bucket, a cone, a sign or whatever you imagine it to be.

Something small and of little value.

And they place it on the side of the street wherever they wish to reserve a place for themselves to park.

At times, from what I’ve observed, you might even seemingly have another person whose job it is, among other things, to watch the space for you.

In case somebody comes along and moves the object out of the way to park there.

To stop that, it might be the case that the doorman of whatever building will come out and insist that you don’t do that.

Though I haven’t seen it happen, I could imagine that this could be the job for a homeless person also.

As I wrote here, some homeless folks do insist on trying to “help you park” by waving their dirty rag at your car and demand a tip for “their service” afterwards.

So it wouldn’t surprise me if any homeless people are taking up the role to guard the parking space either.

Though I haven’t seen that personally. It’s just a guess.

Anyhow, as I was listening to their loud conversation, that was what I made it out to be.

With one tall light brown skinned guy in decent clothing having a bucket in his hand while some white skinned Latino guy is having an argument with him.

Saying stuff like how he is obstructing the road that is a public utility for everyone to use.

How he can’t just place his bucket there and insist that he owns that space to park.

So on and so on.

At any rate, the guy with the bucket was seemingly pretty angry at first but calmed down a bit after the cop put in a few words.

And that was it basically.

I carried on.

Not sure if the dude with the bucket got fined for what he did.

I imagine there must be some fine available for folks who do this sort of thing.

And it’s funny too that the cop actually intervened here.

Because, over the last 5 months of me living here, I’ve seen the “bucket on the side of the road” daily at a few spots.

And there is literally a police vehicle parked just a few streets down from where those are every single day.

Just some random police officer chilling outside his car looking at his phone all day.

With that available, you’d think the police would have noticed the “bucket on the side of the road” in the few spots that are in this area every day.

Still, you can’t expect the cops to actually enforce the laws down here all the time.

But, to be fair, there are plenty of cops down here who do try to do their jobs

Though many who also just sit on their ass all day and never do anything.

Without question, the cop parked close by should’ve noticed these “informal parking spaces” a long time ago since he hangs out in the area every single day.

And given he just sits there all day, I imagine he just doesn’t feel like working?

I have no idea what he is doing actually all these days just sitting there.

It’s not a road popular with vehicles passing by all the time so it’s not like he is looking for folks going over the speed limit.

Nor have I ever seen a cop pull someone over for speeding on this street.

But, then again, there’s not that many cars that pass by.

Some but it’s not the most popular street in the area.

On top of that, the only thing of slight importance is the theatre that he is parked outside of.

So maybe it has something to do with that?

Who knows.

Anyhow, given the lack of due diligence the cop has had in this area regarding the very obvious “informal parking spaces,” it wouldn’t surprise me if it took a bribe to get the cop to intervene.

I’ve heard stories like that.

For example, one time I saw someone post a story on the internet a month or two ago about how her phone was stolen as you can read here.

And the cop literally wouldn’t do anything until she bribed him to take it seriously.

Unfortunately, they still never recovered the phone.

I can’t say for certain if it took a bribe to convince this specific cop to investigate something illegal that has literally been occurring on the exact same street that he has been standing on for the last 5 months…

It’s just a theory!

That’s all.

At any rate, I wish I had my phone on me to take a picture of the incident.

When I’m back outside, I’ll try to take a picture of where this occurred.

And, I bet you, the bucket or whatever object it might be next will still be there!

If not there, probably among the few other spots on the same street where it happens.

Because, without question, I’m sure the cop wasn’t investigating any of the other spots either.

Here’s a nice video anyway in Spanish of some guy in Mexico City investigating and confronting the folks who do this here.

And, like I said, it wouldn’t surprise me if this happens elsewhere in Latin America.

I can’t remember if it does because I’ve been here for so long and I never paid attention to any random objects being placed on the street.

Even if I did notice any, I probably wouldn’t have known what their purpose was.

You seen a lot of litter on the streets at times and sometimes you might think it’s just a random ass object placed there for no reason.

Anyhow, above all of that, what’s my verdict on this situation?

Eh, I actually don’t care that much.

I don’t have a car so it doesn’t matter to me one bit.

And, being honest, there’s nothing formal about how people park their cars down here anyhow to begin with.

Like the homeless guy who waves his dirty rag at your car and demands a tip as you can read here.

To how, at times, there’ll be someone who seemingly indirectly threatens your car if you don’t tip after parking in a space that they claim to own as you can read here.

Plus, in some cases, I get it.

You live in an apartment in which the building doesn’t have an official parking space…

Obviously, you’re going to want to park your vehicle in front of or close to where you live!

And, if you live there, I lean towards the side of giving you free dibs on getting to park there.

Or at least priority over some random person who doesn’t live in the neighborhood.

But that’s how I see it.

Anyway, that’s all I got to say.

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Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt