Parking is a fickle phenomenon that mostly divides us.
Neighbors' relationships can sour over cars parked in front of each other's houses. Sometimes over-zealous enforcement officers pass out parking tickets by the fistful, inciting anger among commuters.
Two "Seinfeld" characters, George Costanza and Mike Moffit, famously missed a televised boxing match to debate whether one can parallel park by entering head-first, a question that defies a clear-cut answer.
But parking's heated history is flying out the window this week in West York.
Residents who live within a few blocks of the York Fairgrounds are teaming up to offer their lawns to fair visitors who need places to park.
Visitors pay $6 to park inside the fairgrounds, as advertised on the fair's Web site. Most neighbors charge $5 or less.
A mother and son whose properties adjoin on the 400 block of North Highland Avenue, Lois Arvin and Jeff Klinedinst, are teaming up this week to offer dozens of cars $5 lawn parking.
They sit alongside their driveway with other family members, enjoying the sunny weather together, waving cars in until the lawns fill up.
A husband and wife, Jason and Jennifer Jacobs, volunteered to help park cars for Zion United Methodist Church Sunday in an Orange Street lot that a church member owns.
The neighbors whose backyards border an alley off North Highland Avenue even fostered a parking alliance, waving cars into one yard at a time, all charging $5 so as not to undercut one another.
That way, everybody works together and everybody wins.
Keep that in mind the next time you're paying a parking ticket or fighting with your neighbor over a space.
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