Page 2 / News, Trends, Gossip and Stuff To Do : In Passing : But What Will the Parking Valet Think?

“It wasn’t my friends, though God knows they complained enough,” the woman was saying. “It wasn’t my husband, who simply refused to ride with me. It was the valet guy. He got out of the car, he looked at me and said, ‘Man, lady, what kind of big dog do you have anyway?’ It was humiliating. I drove right to the car wash.”

Gold and diamonds glittered at her wrist and throat, the car in question was a Range Rover, the dog in question a purebred bull mastiff. But luxuries are not enough to deflect the scorn, and the influence, of the valet.

If power is the ability to cause fear, to spark shame, to modify behavior, if power can be measured by the desire of others to impress, then valet parking attendants rule this city. With the lift of an eyebrow or a moment’s reluctant hesitation, a parking attendant can do more psychic damage than all the maitre d’s and studio execs combined.

Our cars are more than methods of transit. They are mobile microcosms of our selves. In them we feel safe, we behave as if we are safe, and so they become dioramas of our basic natures.

Into that world, then, suddenly a stranger. If this same person had shown up at our bedroom door, we could not be more flustered. Wildly, we glance around the interior, sweeping what we can beneath the seat, telling ourselves that skunk smell is much fainter now, probably just our imagination, assuring ourselves that everyone’s car has at least one petrified French fry on the floor, convincing ourselves that certainly they’ve seen worse.

And they probably have. According to Chris Dunn, owner of the valet parking company that serves the Beverly Hills Hotel, they’ve seen some doozies. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “we’ve had some terrible cars. Some people apologize upfront, some are reluctant. They’ll say, ‘My car is so dirty, can I self-park?’ But most [people with messy cars], they think everything is fine.”

Well, that’s comforting, anyway. At least the awareness that everything is far from fine puts many of us a cut above the true dumpster-drivers.

But turning the car over is only half the battle. For at no time is an Angeleno so emotionally vulnerable as in those flush-rising moments when the parking attendant returns with your car. As it approaches, you are forced to see it as others see it, in all its fly-specked, dust-dribbled glory. How obvious now that one can barely see through the wiper-smeared windshield, how noticeable the dings and dents and bumper-burn abrasions. And the interior--who knew it was so visible from the street, with its welter of food wrappers and Pepsi One cans, the newspapers and tennis shoes, the splayed and sun-faded Thomas Guide.

In that throat-tightening moment, the natural urge is to feign ignorance, to look away from the graciously opened door, to melt into the crowd on the sidewalk. But no. Instead, eyes down, you shove the wadded-up tip into the hand of the smiling parking attendant, crawl into the nest of your own making, and vow once again you will not valet this car until you have had it washed and reupholstered.

Or bought a new one.

“We’ve had a couple that I could not convince any of my guys to get in,” says Dunn. “When that happens, I just politely direct them to self-parking. Or maybe we’ll ask if they want it washed.”

Well, at least no one’s offered to get it washed for us.

At least not yet.