The New Yorker:

Why do city drivers waste two hundred million hours a year circling the block?

By Zach Helfand

One of the first jobs that George Bichikashvili had in America was securing some street-parking spaces in the Bronx for Con Edison, at ten dollars an hour. Bichikashvili, who is from Tbilisi, Georgia, didn’t understand why anyone would pay for this. “You just take up four spots of parking and sit there until they tell you to leave,” he said. But a job was a job. On the morning of November 18, 2022, Bichikashvili pulled a blue Chrysler minivan onto St. Theresa Avenue, in Pelham Bay. As directed, he parked atop a Con Ed manhole, set out some orange cones, and settled in. He wore a safety helmet and a neon work vest. The morning was beautiful. He watched the sunrise in the rearview mirror. Winter was creeping in. His breath fogged up the glass.

Bichikashvili was twenty-nine, an outgoing guy with a bright optimism. He’d moved to New York because he was determined to live an interesting life. In Tbilisi, he’d danced in the Sukhishvili National Ballet, Georgia’s most prestigious troupe. He loved Americans, in part because of Kobe Bryant. He loved New York because of the TV show “Suits.” He told himself that in this country he could do anything.

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