The Holiday Shopping Guide

Page 4 of 6

Park Life
Fork out for the garage, or take your chances by the curb? Avoid the gamble with our handy tip sheet for finding a spot wherever you are.

By Jason Schwartz, Illustration by Joe McKendry

	Back Bay	Beacon Hill	North End	Coolidge Corner	Wellesley Center
Street Spaces	About 1,200	980	1,080	650	254
One Quarter Gets You	15 minutes	15 minutes	15 minutes	20 minutes	One hour
Watch Out For	$45 fine for double-parking	$75 for no-stopping/standing violations	40 fine for parking in resident-only spaces	$25 meter violation (Brookline meter maids are notoriously omnipresent)	$150 fine for parking in a handicapped space
Cheap Garage	Central Parking (1085 Boylston St.): $5 per half-hour, up to 90 minutes; $17 daily fee after that	Charles Street Parking Garage (144 Charles St.): $10 first hour; $15 two to three hours; $19 five to seven hours	FAL Limited Parking (34 Cooper St.): $10 daily; $15 nights and weekends	There’s only one—the Harvard Parking Associates garage—and only bother if you’re looking for overnight parking ($28).	No garages here, but at $2.50 a day the least expensive street parking is alongside the library in the Cameron Street lot, off Washington Street.
Best Bet for Street Parking	Head for the Newbury Street extension, off Massachusetts Avenue and adjacent to the Pike on-ramp. A lot of people don’t know it exists, so open spaces are more abundant.	Finding on-street parking here is tougher than finding an honest politician—head straight for the subterranean (and giant) Boston Common Garage near Charles and Beacon streets.	Try Fleet Street. Past that, says one former North End resident, “sell your car—it’s violent.”	Use the lot behind Boca Grande taqueria (1294 Beacon St.). Bonus: easy burrito access.	While the Cameron lot may be cheapest, the Tailby lot on Linden and Crest has nearly 70 more spaces. It’s two bucks more, but also your best bet.

Parallel University:
Self-Parking Cars Earn Above-Average Marks as Holiday Helpers

Only one thing can eliminate the agony of parallel parking, and that’s a car that can be driven sideways. Until it’s developed, we’re left with the Infiniti EX35’s new 360-degree cameras and the Lexus LS 460’s self-parking mode. We tested both.

1. With a few button pushes, the Lexus really did park itself—although it worked only in roomy spots I could have conquered easily on my own.

2. The Infiniti was more helpful: Its AroundView monitor system produced a bird’s-eye view of the car’s immediate surroundings, making parking feel like a video game. Still, I was a better (and faster) parker when using more-familiar features: a craned neck and my own eyes. —Jason Feifer

For two ways to give back this holiday season, go on to the next page...

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