Sean Parker backs San Francisco’s “cars first” measure, twirls moustache

Okay, Sean Parker. I don’t really mind if you have a Live Action Role Playing wedding in the redwoods, since you paid to clean it up. I don’t care if you invest in tobacco marketed to kids. And it’s none of my business which conservative politicians you support. But it does tick me off that you’re putting your shoulder behind this cockamamie ballot measure to make San Francisco more car-friendly.

Of course it bothers me because, in my experience of San Francisco, making things more car-friendly always means making things less human-friendly. I tend to side with the humans. And on the other side, every time the city has taken freeways or parking lots and instead dedicated them to cyclists, pedestrians, or transit, it has made things easier, faster, and safer.

We could have a reasonable debate about all that. But the thing that really gets me is that the movement you are supporting is organized around opposition to parking meters. Simply having free parking on streets where there is an overabundance of cars creates a classic tragedy of the commons scenario. San Francisco has been on the cutting edge using technology and the market to find solutions. Ask your conservative friends — it actually works!.

I thought that’s what you were all about — disrupting stodgy conventions with actual solutions. So I’m bummed that you are acting like an old grump who can’t imagine life without a parking space.

I do understand that you are defending your ancestral heritage, from those proud days of yore, when the parallel and valet skills of the Parker family were the stuff of legend. But, sad as it may seem, the future will be brighter in cities so walkable that parkers are rendered irrelevant.