Pearls of Wisdom: Baby, you can drive my car

In the glory days, what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. But starting this past Monday, at least one notorious piece of Sin City’s culture made its way to Stanford campus.
In case you missed the memo or the Daily article, the school that has long since brought you palm-tree-lined streets and for-credit courses in golf, polo, and sailing, not to mention sushi in the dining halls (ok, in Wilbur), now provides its popped-collar students with valet parking.
Okay, so it’s only temporary and it’s just in one lot (also Wilbur… perhaps Arroyo will draw in the single-digits this year. Or not). But still. Am I the only one who’s disturbed by this development?
The phrase “valet parking” conjures up two distinct images in my mind. One involves shiny new luxury coupes, an expansive country club, and a wedding waltz playing in the background. The other features whirling neon lights, a near-solid haze of cigarette smoke, and the constant bells and whistles of coin-and-card-swallowing slot machines. These are the only places where valet parking seems normal. And any place that contains an Eiffel Tower, an Empire State Building, and an Egyptian pyramid within two city blocks is clearly not normal to begin with.
Even in Vegas, where I know valet parking is part of the over-the-top, everyone’s-a-winner-when-you’re-dropping-hundreds-to-play-with-laminated-paper culture, I feel uncomfortable handing my keys over. My car is an extension of my personal space; getting back in it to find the driver’s seat relocated to the rear, the steering wheel down to the ground, and the radio blasting hip-hop is jarring (and makes me particularly aware of my vertically-challenged stature). The last time I relinquished the keys, my Civic Hybrid came back with a blinking message on the dashboard: “Check Fuel Cap.” I’ve unscrewed and rescrewed and hit the reset button at least twenty times. Hell, I’ve even refilled the tank at this point. The three little words still won’t go away.
Personal space issues aside, the real reason I’m uncomfortable with valet parking is because of its socioeconomic implications. It’s one thing to hand my keys over when I take my car to Lozano’s — getting my car washed professionally is a service I can’t perform on my own (trust me; I’ve spent entire Saturday afternoons spraying, wiping, and vacuuming, and my car NEVER looks that shiny). Same thing with taking my car in to the shop.
Parking, on the other hand, is something that comes with the territory/luxury of driving. Sure, there are plenty of times when it’s less than fun. Palo Alto on a Friday night, for example. Or San Francisco at pretty much anytime of day/night/year. And there are a number of particularly sweat-inducing road challenges, such as maneuvering into a tight spot, preferably parallel, between an oversize Lexus SUV and a Boxster (this is a regular issue at Menlo School in Atherton, where I’m currently a teacher. We share a parking lot with the students, but it’s not hard to tell which cars belong to the faculty. They’re the scratched ones more than two years old). Still, for all of the times I’ve missed the previews and openers after spending thirty minutes circling the block, the idea of paying someone else to do the dirty work just seems a bit too spoiled for my tastes.
Speaking of payment, there’s also the issue of tipping. Is the expectation that the Wilbur valets will be tipped for their services? I can’t imagine so. But even when it’s explicitly a complimentary service, there’s always that awkward moment when they hand you the keys. And you give them a gracious smile in return. It’s hard to imagine they don’t walk away thinking unhappy thoughts.
I’m aware that parking on this campus, which probably hasn’t been plentiful since Henry Ford introduced his Model-T, just got harder. In addition to Monday’s closure of 400 parking spaces near the Law School and Stern, where the Munger Graduate Residences will be built, the Med School lost 500 spaces — on the same day — to its own construction project. The “attendant assistance” now available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Wilbur lot is intended to offset the inconvenience caused by the Munger construction work; once all the regular spaces are filled, the valets will park cars in the aisles (I can’t imagine how this will work in terms of retrieval of the un-valet-parked cars, but I’m sure they’ve got it covered).
As someone who currently only comes to campus twice a week, and still gets annoyed at the tourists slowly circling the Oval (hello! It’s almost all permit parking, people!), I know I’m far from feeling the pain of these parking complications — but I’m not questioning the necessity of a solution. I’m questioning the choice of this particular solution. At moments like this, I wonder WWBS? As in: what would Berkeley (or anyone looking for yet another example of Stanford’s wealth-dripping expenditures) say? I’m fairly certain it would be highly critical and entirely accurate.

Lisa Mendelman currently parks her own car in front of the Arrillaga Family Middle School Campus. Yes, as in that Arrillaga. Email her at lisame@stanford.edu.