Parking: Manners turn to malice

RALEIGH -- In late December, hope dies screaming in the mall parking lot.

Man's inhumanity to man shows itself with Christmas-light clarity as drivers try to outmaneuver one another for open -- or not yet open -- spaces.

Take Brittany Jones, 18, honking endlessly outside The Cheesecake Factory at Crabtree Valley Mall. A car apparently driven by a zombie has pulled in front of her and stopped, dead, for no reason, leaving her trapped for a full minute.

"Right in front of me!" shouts Jones, of Clayton. "Like I wasn't even there!"

Then there's Mike Williamson, a security guard protecting roughly a dozen spots outside Wachovia Bank. All day, he chases noncustomers out of the empty spaces -- the only spots around -- sending rejected shoppers back to rejoin a circling caravan of the doomed.

"I had one lady flip me the bird," he said. "I hate to tell people they can't park when there's not enough space. It's Christmastime."

Despite the rise of online shopping, despite the popularity of craft fairs, despite Crabtree Valley's brand-new three-level parking deck, despite shrinking disposable income, despite bus routes, shoppers make this annual slog -- looking much like salmon determined to spawn.

OVERHEARD

Two teens trudge across Crabtree Valley Mall's upper deck, bewildered.

"Is that our car, Daniel?"

"No," says Daniel, looking as if he will never be happy again.

"Is that it?"

Silence.

On Friday at 2 p.m., you could practically stop the car and change the oil while waiting to exit Crabtree Valley.

"I'm from Idaho," said Carl Creel, wrestling with traffic on a holiday visit. "I'm not used to dense population. So yes, it [stinks]."

Crabtree Valley offers more than 6,000 spaces; The Streets at Southpoint in Durham boasts 6,400; Cary Towne Center has 5,550.

But it is never enough.

You just can't design a mall for the worst shopping days of the year, management explains.

Here's the good news:

At both Crabtree Valley and Streets at Southpoint, valet parking is sponsored by Lexus and thus free for any Lexus owner.

OVERHEARD

A gold minivan circles, then circles again, until the exasperated shopper jumps out and flips open a cell phone.

"Dude," he shouts, "you didn't tell me that the [darned] Best Buy moved!"

Mall parking at Christmas takes on the dark, claustrophobic feel of cave exploration.

Much of it takes place on the middle level of three-deck parking garages -- untouched by sunlight.

Finding space there is possible for anyone driving a golf cart. But for a Cadillac Escalade, a Ford Expedition, a Toyota Tundra CrewMax -- the decks leave enough space for the driver's seat and one tire.

So they drive on and adopt one of several parking strategies that everyone hates, yet everyone has tried:

* THE STALKER: This driver looks for a shopper loaded down with bags and follows behind like a vulture hungry for carrion.

* THE ILLEGAL IDLER: This person parks in a fire lane, or a handicapped spot, and sits there with the engine running while a spouse ducks inside. If an idler is especially daring, he or she will use this time to change a baby's diaper.

* THE STAKEOUT ARTIST: Most hated of all, this person sees a pair of brake lights go red and stops, knowing that a fellow shopper is soon to leave. The worst stakeout artists will sit there for 10 minutes if necessary, blocking traffic for 20 other cars, while the fellow shopper loads 10 bags, a stroller and a grandmother into the car.

At Cary Towne Center, general manager Christy Alphin has seen SUVs park on the grassy islands between rows of spaces.

At The Streets at Southpoint, the scofflaws prefer the lawn by the retention pond.

"Some just cut the car off and leave it," said Cal Strickland with mall security at Triangle Town Center. "Just abandon it. You can give them tickets, but you run out of tickets. We're not going to tow anybody because most of the time it's not a problem."

Williamson, the guard at the Crabtree Valley Wachovia, frequently sees people develop a sudden urge to conduct bank business once they hear the spots are for customers only.

"She said she was going to make a deposit," he said, recalling a testy exchange.

Mall parking at Christmas is a minor irritant, much like a paper cut or a persistent itch.

The shopping season starts after Halloween these days, and forward-thinking shoppers tend to rush the malls in the days after Thanksgiving, working off excess turkey.

Some even enjoy the grind and fall into a daydream, like a business executive on a long commute, secure in a car playing books on tape, dreaming of holiday glee.

"I don't care how long it takes," says a businessman on his way to Barnes & Noble. "I travel 80 percent of the time, and any day I'm not in an airport is a good day."