Diddly Squat

“We’re going to get booted out of there pretty quickly,” one of the bunch predicted. With that, the full implications of our parking squat—the Twin Cities’ first, as far as we knew—became clear. Inspired by similar actions in New York, San Francisco, and even a city in Sicily, we were going to lay claim to a metered parking space in Minneapolis with multiple flesh-and-blood bodies instead of the impassive steel and plastic of a single automobile. The point was to draw attention to the enormous amount of public real estate reserved for cars via roads and parking spaces—and how thoroughly we accept this arrangement. Why should cars exclusively rule the roads, anyway?

Nothing on the City of Minneapolis website explicitly limited the space at a parking meter to cars, but we suspected that a resourceful police officer could find any number of reasons to harass, fine, or even jail us. The general public, too, might not take kindly to a parking squat—especially in our targeted area near the Metrodome in Minneapolis, on a Twins game day. Partly for these reasons, we decided to bring along an infant and a seven-year-old; the presence of children, we figured, would help diffuse any hostilities.

Our core group of nine squatters set up on a gorgeous Friday afternoon at a prime, partly shaded parking spot at Park Avenue and Fourth Street. We were within sight of the light-rail line, and directly across the sidewalk from a “No Trespassing” sign protecting a vast parking lot. We brought large potted plants to offset the concrete and asphalt surrounding us, plus a variety of folding chairs, and cold drinks and snacks. As the baby napped in his car seat, the older child played on his father’s laptop. He had settled in the gutter, lounging on top of a dismantled tent. (If things went well, we could stay til the early morning—we had an eight-hour meter.)
When a friend strolled over from Orchestra Hall, one of our group went down the street to fetch an extra chair from the car. “Hold on a minute!” he said incredulously. “You drove a car to a parking squat?” Actually, we had driven four cars. Our friend had uncovered a contradiction, it seemed; on the other hand, we weren’t protesting the existence of cars—only demonstrating that humans deserve equal consideration. Besides, it would have been difficult to carry chairs and potted plants on a bike.

Other participants arrived at the squat, trickling in among the crowds of Twins fans headed for the 7:10 game with Washington. The plan was to engage the public with free lemonade and peanuts, all the while educating them about our parking-squat statement.

We quickly found, however, that offering lemonade to strangers made us look creepy. We resorted to toasting ourselves with paper cups: “Yay, parking squat! Woohoo!” Although a few people stared surreptitiously (and looked away if we acknowledged them), for the most part we were roundly ignored. Suddenly, dozens of bicyclists appeared among the cars on Fourth Street. It was the monthly Critical Mass ride, known to sometimes engender antagonistic reactions from motorists. We yelled out to them in solidarity with their concern about the predominance of the automobile in our culture—“Parking squat! Parking squat!”—but received only puzzled looks as they pedaled on their way.

One of our ranks decided to get more direct. He walked to the corner, where groups of game-goers were waiting for the light to change. “Do you guys know what a parking squat is?” The traffic noise apparently made it hard to hear. Some thought he was an imbecile—of course they knew what a parking spot was. One young man thought he was selling pot, and inquired whether it was hydroponic. But mostly he was treated with as much disregard as the scalper across the street. He persisted: “See right over there? We’ve taken over this parking spot to show how much public space we devote to cars.” The sole reactions came from two women. One said “Cool! Have fun”; the other said “I think I have an issue with that,” but she didn’t break stride, much less summon the authorities.

Finally our guy tried a different tack: “Hey! Did you guys know that you can plug the meter at any parking space and have a tailgate party without even having a car?” He received a few patronizing nods but mostly just averted gazes.

Eventually, we gave up. Several police cars and a fire truck had cruised by without so much as slowing down. An attempt to make a statement about public space had turned into a lesson about public indifference. Though we lacked beer, we settled in to have fun anyway, inventing a game called “Peanut in a Cup.” Said with a certain tinge of lasciviousness—“Ladies! How about a game of Peanut in a Cup?”—it was possible to really get people to hustle away.