Buying a Car in the City

About a month ago, our 1993 Pontiac Grand Am broke down, and we had to
buy a new car. In hindsight, I should've sold it a year ago after it
crossed 75,000 miles, since I heard that's when cars can start to fall
apart. But I kept putting it off, putting it off . . . until the car
pooped out and left my wife and daughter stranded on the side of a
highway.

So it was time to buy a new car. Since I married into the Pontiac,
I'd never bought a car before in my life. And it's funny how it's
hard to shop for a car when you don't have a car, since it often
entails driving from dealership to dealership.

Enter the Internet. In less than an hour, I had read a few online
reviews, narrowed my search, comparison-shopped at nearby dealers, and
even picked up some pointers on how to get a good deal. I zeroed in
on a couple of cars I wanted to test-drive, and fortunately, both were
accessible by public transit.

Although the first was in the suburbs. I just had to get on a
regional rail, get off at the nearby stop, and walk about ¾ of a mile
to the lot. But I got some stares walking that ¾ of a mile, since it
was down a busy arterial street that no one else was walking. I was
hoping to sneak onto the lot without the dealers seeing me – you have
considerably less leverage when you walk onto the lot than when you
drive on, right? – but they were smoking out front. Oh well; I knew I
had a second place to go, so I could play hardball there. And in
fact, I walked away from the first place, walked the ¾ of a mile to
the rail stop, and took the regional rail, subway, and bus out to the
second place. Fortunately, I liked the car there, and drove it home.

As for our old car, this too was an experience interlaced with urban
and Internet themes. To begin with, I made arrangements via the
Internet to have it donated. But the towing company that was to pick
up my car was taking too long, and the mechanics where I had had the
car towed to needed it off their lot. So I had to drive the wreck a
mile and a half down a busy urban street back to my place. It
sputtered and smoked and shook the whole time, and halfway through it
stopped cold. I was greeted with a symphony of horns. Fortunately, I
was able to coax it back to life, but then I began to wonder what
would happen if I got it back to my house and I couldn't find a
parking space and I had to circle and circle and circle. I decided
instead to stash it on the street I was driving on, thinking it close
enough to my house and probably an easier pick-up spot for the towing
company anyway. And there it sat for 48 hours, until it got picked up
and whisked away from me forever.

There's no moral of this story, no deep underlying significance.
Every once in awhile, I just like to write about something urban.
Consider it a bit of documentation of life in the city.