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A visitor parks his Cadillac Escalade across part of Kent Tylman's driveway near SE 33rd Place and SE Division Street.

(Courtesy of Kent Tylman)

My friend Lynne spied the parking spot. Easily big enough for two cars, the on-street space was only a block and a half from the Southeast Division Street restaurant where she, another friend and I were planning to have dinner. Could parking get any easier?

But as I backed into the space, a blue Volvo with a "criminalize fracking" bumper sticker pulled up next to me. The driver, a woman who appeared to be in her 60s, was irate.

I rolled down my window. Angry Volvo woman then pointed at the house next to us, barking that she lived there and needed to park where we were. When we responded that there was plenty of space for both our cars, she angrily demanded that I keep backing up. Angry Volvo then zoomed ahead as we got out. Perhaps out of irritation, she backed into the curb two or three times before steering her car into the space in front of mine. She got closer and closer as my friend Janie yelled for her to stop. Finally, she did, just two inches from my front bumper.

Parking Wars, Southeast Portland edition, were on.

In retrospect, I can understand her frustration, though not her tactics. Southeast Division is one of the neighborhoods that have keenly felt the pain of a dramatic increase in residents with the construction of seven new apartment buildings with at least 270 units over an eight-block stretch. With the city's blessing, most of the buildings include no parking at all for tenants while the others collectively add 55 spaces.

Supposedly, the idea was that developers would market the units to tenants who would bike or take the bus to work, said Richmond Neighborhood Association chairman Allen Field. Many do actually bike or take the bus, Field noted. But they also own cars that they keep parked along neighborhood streets. Insufficient parking, he said, is the biggest and most persistent complaint by neighbors.

At the same time, Division has become Restaurant Row in a city that loves its food scene. While that's a great perk for those in the neighborhood, the restaurants also serve as a magnet for customers to drive there from throughout the city. Visitors park without regard for the homeowners or their ability to even exit their own driveways, said Kent Tylman, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years. When this happens every day, patience and understanding give way to frustration.

"They decide how much of my driveway to block," said Tylman, who has at times searched for the car owner at the Salt & Straw ice cream shop down the street. He said visitors justify the inconvenience, thinking "I'll only be here 20 minutes."

The conflict isn't limited to the streets around Southeast Division. The same conflicts affect North Williams Avenue, North Mississippi Avenue and other areas where Portland planning has forced density into mixed-use areas with little attention to the area's ability to support it.

The city has largely shifted the burden onto the neighbors to handle disputes and conflicts, Field said. But with little leadership by the city to fix the actual problem, livability and civility break down.

This wasn't going through my mind last Sunday of course, as we faced off with Angry Volvo. She even tried to claim that the street was a private road, asking nastily whether we had seen the dead-end sign. The street is public, of course, including the portion directly in front of her house. But in her mind, we had no right to be there.

She resisted our demands to move her car forward, despite having a good five feet in front of her car. That is, until I said I would not be able to leave without hitting her car. That sparked another heated exchange in which she countered that she would get my license plate, until finally she begrudgingly agreed to move her car up 18 inches.

When we returned to the car a couple hours later, we found a note from Angry Volvo. In all caps, she wrote that her neighbor had overheard my "threat" to dent her car but that she had my license plate. She even wrote the plate number on the note as some weird kind of proof. I started scribbling my own reply until I finally calmed down and decided it would just be best to leave and return to my parking-drama-free neighborhood.

I have that luxury, after all... at least for now. Unfortunately for Division, things are about to get even worse, Field said. The neighborhood received notification that another project is slated to go up near SE 31st and Division - an apartment complex of about 27 or 28 units. The building, he said, will have no parking.

-- Helen Jung