August 03, 2026
Provided Image/Adam Wodka
In October, the Philadelphia Parallel Parking Authority will hold the city's first competition that test drivers' parking skills. Founder Adam Wodka wants the contest to be a catalyst for better parallel parking etiquette in Philadelphia. Above, two cars are parallel parked with big gap between them on a South Philly street.
When the upstart Philadelphia Parallel Parking Authority holds the city's first curbside skills competition in October, founder Adam Wodka hopes the event does more than crown a champion.
The South Philly resident and the rest of his PPPA cadre, essentially a group of friends organizing and promoting the contest, want to help raise the bar for parallel parking in Philly.
"The PPPA was born from honestly a frustration, really more around the etiquette, particularly my block in South Philly," Wodka said. "But obviously, it's something we all face everywhere of people parking inefficiently. We're all talking about the competition, and that's fine, and I'm excited. But part of this really is like teaching people better parallel parking skills and parallel parking etiquette."
Hundreds of people have applied for one of 20 spots in the PPPA competition. Its date and location will soon be finalized, but its format is set. Participants will showcase their skills in three categories. One category will test how close drivers can get to the curb. Another will challenge drivers to squeeze into a tight space by using the fewest maneuvers. The third will bombard contestants with obstacles and distractions.
A flyer on a telephone pole promotes the Philadelphia Parallel Parking Authority's upcoming skills competition.
"The competitions will really be kind of agnostic to car size, except for tight squeeze, and we'll standardize that," Wodka said. "If you're showcasing your skills and how good you are at this, you've got to use your own whip."
Beyond the novelty of the competition, PPPA aims to kickstart constructive conversations about the way people park in Philly. The group's website embraces the lofty goal of "setting the standard" for parallel parking.
"The goal is to have better, more confident parallel parkers on the road to keep traffic moving," he said.
Parallel parking is mostly an urban necessity that takes consistent experience to master. More than a dozen states don't even include parallel parking on their driver's license tests, partly due to high failure rates that create backlogs of otherwise competent drivers.
"It's one of those things that when you know how to do it, you're not going to go spend your time practicing," Wodka said. "You're like, 'I'll just struggle through it and make it happen.'"
In big cities, where hunting for tight and limited spots is hard enough, there's also an odd sense of performance anxiety and pressure to avoid blocking the road. Watching people fail spectacularly at parallel parking has become something of a YouTube genre, and Philly occasionally has produced astonishing videos of parallel parking meltdowns.
Wodka believes that building consensus around parallel parking etiquette would make it easier for everyone to collectively improve. One of his biggest pet peeves is drivers leaving too much space between cars when they parallel park and reducing the block's capacity. This often gets written off as a toss-up between deliberate selfishness and the random coming-and-going of cars of different sizes. Finding good solutions isn't easy, but better-marked curbs might be one useful idea to delineate where the first and last spots should be.
"I'm sort of loving the idea of going to blocks like that and putting a line where it starts and marking it somehow as PPPA-approved," Wodka said.
Of course, PPPA has no authority to do that, much less enforce any of its ideas. The Philadelphia Parking Authority, the actual government agency whose logo PPPA spoofs, would need to be a willing partner for a resident-led organization that seeks to represent and educate people on how to work within its rules.
"I'm not taking shots at the PPA with any of this," Wodka said. "I'd like to have a good relationship with the PPA, because I think there's kind of a shared interest here."
A driver parallel parks on the 200 block of Girard Avenue in Northern Liberties.
PPPA already has opened discussions with the city and local business groups about how best to hold the competition in October.
There's still discussion about whether the event will take place in a private lot or on a city street. Wodka said he would love to have a curb camera that lets viewers get close-ups of parallel parking attempts. He's expecting a big turnout, so he'd also like to have a screen on site for people to view the competition at a distance from the action. PPPA also is exploring the possibility of putting NASCAR-style cameras inside each contestant's car.
It's still unknown whether live-streaming the competition will be feasible. Depending on the location, Wodka could even carve out a station for people who are bad at parallel parking to learn better techniques.
Since creating PPPA in May, Wodka said he's enjoyed seeing the spirited debates on the group's social media posts. Some commenters spar over refining the rules of the competition. Others dive into Philly's recurring drama over "savesies" and whether there's any merit to illegally reserving public parking spaces. Wodka wants PPPA to be a forum for more civilized discussions about contentious parking matters to help iron out some unspoken rules.
For example, how many parallel parking attempts should a driver get before the car behind them is justified in scooting by or pressuring the driver to move along?
"I want to speak personally, and then I want to also have my PPPA hat on," Wodka said. "Let's say three attempts. I want to say two, to be honest. I mean, let's say three to be reasonable. But I know myself. I have a Prius. If you don't get it on the first time, and there's enough space for me to go by it, I'm squeezing by."
Philadelphia Parallel Parking Authority founder Adam Wodka is holding a skills competition for Philly drivers in October.
And what about giving another car a little "love tap" while parallel parking?
"That's part of parallel parking. That's part of living in the city," Wodka said. "I'm sorry. If you're being precious about your vehicle and you're parking in South Philly, Fishtown, North Philly, wherever — get a garage. I don't know what to tell you. It depends on the spot. In a tight spot on a tight street, a love bump is part of it."
If the perennial parking battles that rage on social media are any indication, it won't be easy for PPPA to steer conversations in a civil direction. But it's worth a try.
"What we're looking to do — and we'll be doing more over the coming weeks — is putting these questions out to the public," Wodka said. "I want to know what other people think. We're going to have polls around 'savesies,' things like this. I'd love to know, kind of at a bigger scale, what people think."
