Long Term Parking

The street is just your car's apartment

New Yorkers have dreams about discovering extra space in their tiny apartments. As Geoff Manaugh wrote in 2007,

“A friend of mine once told me about the ‘typical dream of a New Yorker,’ as he described it, wherein a homeowner pushes aside some coats and sweaters in the upstairs closet…only to reveal a door, and, behind that, another room, and, beyond that, perhaps even a whole new wing secretly attached to the back of the house…

Always fantasizing about having more space in Manhattan.”

Manaugh proposed, as a research project, wandering around the streets of Manhattan with a microphone and asking strangers what kinds of extra domestic space they fantasize about, then compiling their answers into a radio piece:

“Then you’d edit it all down and listen to the unbelievable variations: people who find secret attics, or secret basements, secret closets inside closets, or even secret children’s bedrooms, secret bathrooms, hidden roof gardens, even a brand new 4-car garage plus screened-in porch out back. One guy finds a sauna, and a cheese cave, and then a bicycle-repair shop…

And if you once dreamed about finding a secret UPS loading dock attached to your back door…would Freud approve?”