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Where's Waldo?

Sunday night at 8-ish, I drove around my East Passyunk neighborhood looking and looking and looking for a parking space and finally found one on the 900 block of teeny-tiny Fernon, between Tasker and Morris. This is not an unusual way to spend an evening.

The next morning, my car was gone — as were the rest of the vehicles on that block — replaced by monster street-destroying trucks, sitting there munching on the asphalt on which I'd treaded just 12 hours before.

Shit, the impound lot. I've seen Parking Wars. I don't want to go there.

So I called 311, our non-emergency info line. The busy, sorta annoyed 311 folks told me that sometimes the city "relocates" cars for paving purposes, and that if I called the Streets Department they could tell me where exactly my car was. They transferred me.

The Streets Department lady, while griping that the 311 people shouldn't have transferred me to her, was very helpful and looked up my plate number on various slow-moving computer screens till she eventually came to the conclusion that, since the relocation had just occurred, my plate probably wasn't in the system yet. I should poke around the neighborhood, and if I still can't find my car, call my local Police Department (holler, Fourth District).

So I poked. Up 10th street, down Ninth, in and out of the little streets I couldn't imagine a tow truck could even squeeze through. I even walked up and down the aisles of the Acme parking lot like a crazy person, but nada.

This morning I called the Fourth District, and the busy, sorta annoyed lady on the phone told me that the tow companies who relocate cars for paving don't record plate numbers, or where they put the cars. "It's probably in a five-block radius of where you parked it," she said. "Just look around for it, and if you don't find it, call 911."

Now, I don't really consider this an emergency emergency — I don't rely on my car, I just kinda want to, y'know, know where it is — so I'll be spending the evening combing the streets of South Philly, again, on what's starting to seem like a never-ending scavenger hunt for my silver Honda. (Which is, apparently, the same car everyone else in South Philly drives, too.)

Is this happening to other people? Is it taking you forever to actually find your relocated car? If the five-block-radius rule is true, then my car could be anywhere from Broad to Fourth, Federal to McKean. Wish me luck, and share your own relocation woes in the comments if you like.