Koreatown Standoff Over Parking Spot Gets Viral Play-By-Play On Twitter
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A busy Koreatown residential street was the scene of a tense, hours-long standoff…over a parking spot.
A standoff over a street parking spot took nearly two hours to resolve itself and it was all documented on Twitter by Mariah Flores, who spotted what was going down from her apartment window on Monday night.
"Yeah. Just kind of a silly situation," Flores said.
People who live in the area of 5th and Catalina streets acknowledge that finding street parking is a constant battle. In fact, finding a non-metered, non-permitted spot in any neighborhood in Los Angeles for the night without trekking several blocks can be nearly impossible, so many Angelenos who heard about the parking battle had the same responses: "We've been there."
The stalemate started at about 6:20 p.m. Monday night as a black car was trying to reverse into a spot, as parallel parkers do. But a silver car pulled up close behind, blocking the black car from completing the parallel parking job, in an apparent claim on the spot.
Twenty minutes in, both cars turned on their hazard lights, but refused to budge. Even as cars honked angrily as they wound their way around the stalemate, the two cars remained in that position for the next hour.
The play-by-play account went viral on Twitter, even drawing the attention of Twitter queen Chrissy Teigen, who declared herself Team Black Car.
black car wasn't just driving then saw in his rear view mirror there was a spot behind him. He passed it on purpose. TO PARALLEL PARK. anyone saying silver car - U ARE A MEAN AND BAD DRIVER!
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) April 3, 2019
"Of course. Anybody who's a good driver is Team Black Car," Flores said.
The stalemate finally broke when a third driver, Andrew McCray, came out to move his car, making room for both cars to park.
"I'm just glad I could resolve that issue, I guess," he said with a laugh.
But that wasn't the end of the tense situation. Both drivers sat in their respective cars for several minutes after scoring their spots. The driver of the silver car finally got out about an hour and 40 minutes after the ordeal started.