I visited San Francisco in California just recently and I have to say, it is not the city I would want to live in. Why you ask. Traffic is a bitch but parking is even more of a pain in ass. Cramped streets littered with cars, and limited parking spaces. It is a huge city but parking and driving around looking for parking is very time consuming and not great on gas. Then when you park in an unfamiliar street, you run the risk of "losing" your car. I told my friends that I just recently downloaded an app that might help with all that. Of course, the reaction I got was: "Jesus, you're such dork" and "of course you would have an app". I rarely ever get praises for being so tech savvy especially when it comes to my apple products.
The app in question is the Park Place app for iOS on IPhone. People living or even visiting large cities will find this app somewhat useful. The app isn't a necessity but it will make searching for parking a tad more convenient. So far the supported cities include: Balimore, Boston, Philidelphia, San Francsico, Seattle, and Washington D.C., with more coming in the future. The app has a feature that allows you to search for parking facilities and compare rates. Once you find a few, the app will list the facilities as open or closed parking. I didn't use this feature yet but I was able to mark my location.
On the bottom of the screen, there is an icon called "Parked At". I thought this one was incredibly useful. Since I couldn't find any close street parking, I ended parking about 2 miles from my destination. I clicked on the "tap to add location" and it pinpointed my location. Then I clicked on "tap to add photo" to add a picture of the area where my car was parked (my picture wasn't helpful since the only thing seen is my friends mooning me). Then If I wanted to, I could set a countdown timer in case I was pressed on time. After 9 hours later, we happily stumbled back to my car worry free. I hate San Francisco less now.
