In the '80s and '90s, entrepreneurs discovered the old retail buildings along 15th between Peoria and Utica. They converted the old storefronts into specialty boutiques, cafes and nightspots. Since then, Cherry Street has become increasingly popular, a place Tulsans like to show off to out-of-town guests.

That success has brought its share of challenges. One of those challenges: Where do you park if you want to visit more than one establishment?

I've seen the problem firsthand. About once a month, when my wife is at a moms' night out and my oldest son is at his violin lesson downtown, I take my two youngest children to Cherry Street. They like Subway sandwiches for dinner, and while their palates aren't yet sophisticated enough to appreciate a "Hippie Sandwich" or a Greek salad at Coffee House on Cherry Street (known as CHoCS for short), they love the baked goods there, like the cream-cheese brownies and chocolate chip cookies.

CHoCS is right across the street from Subway, so you'd think it would simple to hit both in one trip. You'd be wrong.

I can't leave the car in the Subway parking lot after we finish our sandwiches and head across the street to CHoCS for dessert, because they have signs saying parking is for customers only, with a 15-minute limit and a $75 towing charge for violators. It's their property, and while I'd be upset if Subway had my car towed right after I bought a meal there, they'd be within their rights.

Neither do I want to take up one of the limited spaces at CHoCS while I'm at Subway. While CHoCS doesn't have any signs posted threatening a tow, their neighbors do. It's a popular place, and when the lot is full, some CHoCS customers have inadvertently parked in a space belonging to a neighboring business, only to find a warning note taped to the car, singling out CHoCS as the source of all the world's troubles. So as not to make a tight parking situation even tighter, I wouldn't think of parking in CHoCS's lot while visiting another Cherry Street merchant.

And I absolutely refuse to do something as stupid and wasteful as parking in one store's lot, getting back in the car, driving 100 feet, and parking in another store's lot. So instead of using either lot, I park in a public spot on a nearby side street, and my children and I walk to both destinations.

CHoCS' relatively easygoing attitude about parking is a rarity on Cherry Street, where signs threatening tow trucks and wheel boots are the rule. The every-merchant-for-himself arrangement discourages patrons from leaving their car parked in one place, strolling the street, window-shopping, and visiting several different retailers on the same trip.

Instead, a customer is more likely to park at the establishment he came to patronize, do his business, and then get back in his car. Once he's back in his car, it's as easy (maybe easier) to head to someplace on Brookside or Utica Square as to go to another Cherry Street merchant.

The zeal to protect one's own parking is understandable, given the city zoning code requirement for each merchant to provide, individually, sufficient off-street parking for the worst-case scenario. By worst-case, I'm talking about the Best Buy lot on Christmas Eve.

To meet Tulsa's parking requirements, some merchants have had to purchase and clear entire house lots; they then need approval from the Board of Adjustment to use a detached parking lot. One restaurant has gone so far as to install automatic gates to protect its investment; you need the validation code from your dinner receipt to get out.

Under our current zoning code, approved in 1970, parking requirements are based on business type. Converting a storefront from a clothing store to a café triples the parking requirement. The requirements assume that everyone will be arriving by car and will be visiting only that one establishment before leaving by car.

Times They Have A'Changed

But Cherry Street was developed before World War II, long before our current zoning code was put in place, to serve as a shopping area for residents within walking distance. Merchants weren't required to provide off-street parking, and for the most part they didn't. Customers could and did walk to do their shopping. Many stores would deliver.

When shopping districts like Cherry Street changed from serving nearby residents to serving customers from all across the city, parking became an issue. Years ago, cars would be lined up on Brookside's residential streets for blocks on either side of Peoria. Residents had to deal with late-night traffic, cranked car stereos, and sometimes worse--drunken yelling, fights and the public exercise of excretory functions.

The houses nearest Peoria were cleared and replaced with parking lots in order to meet the zoning requirements for restaurants and nightclubs. The new lots helped to keep the cars and the corresponding problems out of the residential areas. On a recent Saturday night research visit, I found there were almost no cars parked on the side streets, which were pretty quiet once I was a half-block or so away from Peoria.

Adding more parking lots as Brookside did would be harder for Cherry Street. Land north of 15th is at a premium; most of the land south of 15th is within a historic preservation district.

Even if the land were available, converting tree-lined lots to asphalt parking reduces available housing (and housing nearest the commercial area is often the most affordable), reduces shade and creates an ugly, pedestrian-friendly moat of asphalt cutting the valuable link between the commercial and residential areas.

You might think that in an area like Cherry Street, with a variety of merchants whose actual parking demand ebbs and flows during the course of a day, that the merchants could pool their parking and reduce the total number of spaces required to make all the customers happy.

The zoning code doesn't make that possible, unless you have at least 100,000 sq. ft. in a single Planned Unit Development, and even then you only get to cut the parking requirement by 10 percent if the Board of Adjustment gives its permission.

Perhaps because of the extra parking lots, it appears that Brookside merchants are much more easy-going about parking than their Cherry Street counterparts. Most of the lots I mentioned above are available for anyone to use at any time--no signs to indicate who owns the lot or any restrictions on who can park there, no threats that Mater will come to haul your Lightning McQueen off to the impound lot.

For example, one church in the bustling heart of Brookside has a large parking lot, but restaurant and bar customers were parking there, and I didn't notice any signs forbidding it.

Brookside's open-handed approach to parking means that you can have dinner at a restaurant on one block, have drinks on another block, go dancing on yet another block, and cap the night off with coffee on yet a fourth block, all the while leaving your car parked in one spot.

I'm not sure how Brookside has managed this level of cooperation, but the district seems to accommodate the crowds without loading down neighborhood streets and without causing heartburn between merchants.

If Cherry Street merchants would pull together, they could work out a solution that would meet the needs of merchants, customers and neighbors alike.

The solution I have in mind would respect the property rights of existing parking lot owners and would avoid eroding the neighborhood with more parking lots. My solution would require a minimal amount of government involvement and a willingness on the part of the merchants each to pony up a small amount of money (less than it would cost them individually to acquire more land for parking).

The solution is to create a business improvement district. Collecting the funds to provide shared facilities for a group of adjacent properties is exactly the sort of situation that an improvement district is meant to address.

The improvement district would cover property owners along Cherry Street, each of whom would pay an assessment proportionate to the degree of benefit from the district's improvements. The formula could be based on frontage, square footage, the number of parking spaces required by the zoning code, or some combination of those factors.

Assessment funds would be used to pay the owners of existing parking lots to open their parking spaces for the general use of customers of any merchant on Cherry Street. Lease payments could be based on the number of spaces and how many hours the spaces are available for general parking.

One lot owner might choose to make more money by allowing wide-open parking at any time. Another owner might choose to forgo some lease revenue, reserving her spaces during her peak business hours. Some lot owners would choose not to participate at all and would miss out on using their empty parking lot to generate some extra money.

The more spaces you make available, the more hours you allow open parking in your lot, the more lease money you'd receive from the improvement district.

As a purely hypothetical example, a school might allow open parking except when the space is needed during the school day or for special events. The school could use parking revenues to fund special school projects.

Assessment revenue could also be used to pay for a few security guards to walk a beat on busy evenings, deterring vandalism and other kinds of misbehavior in the parking lots.

As a further incentive, the City Council could cut the required number of parking spaces for properties in improvement districts that provide shared parking.

Of course, the simplest and least bureaucratic solution for all concerned would be for the city to reduce off-street parking requirements to a reasonable level and for property owners to be more easy-going and open-handed about who parks where.

Failing that, a business improvement district may be the best way to defuse tensions among Cherry Street merchants and to allow customers to get full enjoyment out of one of Tulsa's finest shopping and dining districts.

¡ASK A MEXICAN!

Special Drinko por Cinco Mariachi Cheat Sheet Edition

Dear Readers: As you drinko por Cinco this May 5th, please take this column around listing songs that mariachis will actually, gladly play instead of having to glumly strum through the umpteenth "La Bamba" and "Guantanamera." The following eclectic choices (and reasoning) came from hundreds submitted by wabs and savvy gabachos; make sure to knock back the Herradura but por favor designate a nerd as your driver!

"Los Mandados" (The Errands): I could give you hundreds of songs for Drinko de Mayo festivities, but if a Wayfarer-sporting, American Apparel-wearing, Elliott Smith-worshiping, Shepard Fairey-loving and oh-so-ironic gabacho wants to hear a mariachi play something subtly anti-gringo, they can ask for this.

"El Borracho" (The Drunk): Mariachis love it and the puto pendejos que comen en restaurantes mexicanos on Cinco de Mayo can no doubt remember the title.

"La Media Vuelta" (The Half-Turn): Is there a more supremely-confident, hypermacho, Mexican song out there? "You'll leave if I say so?" "You'll stay if I say so?" "I want you to kiss other lips just to see how great I am in contrast?" Perfect!

"No Volveré" (I Won't Return): The counter balance to "Volver, Volver" (Mexican note: another mariachi standard). "I swear to you that I will never return, even if life tears me to pieces, if at one time I loved you like crazy you are now forgotten from my soul." Beautiful and painful all at the same time.

"La Martina": A great corrido by Antonio Aguilar about a young bride who cheats on her husband. She gets caught red-handed and tries to talk her way out of it. When her father refuses to do anything about it, her husband takes things into his own hands and empties his revolver into her. What else was the man to do?

"El Gavilán Pollero" (The Chicken Hawk): Years ago, our high school Spanish club used to sponsor "authentic" dinners out. One night, the mariachi played "El Gavilán Pollero" and one of the no-so-fluent students asked la profesora to translate la letra. Our teacher, blushing with embarrassment, actually told us the song was about a nasty chicken hawk who flew over a barnyard terrorizing the newly hatched little chicks (Mexican note: Metaphors, amigo; song is about a guy who steals another guy's girl). Now, whenever I heard the song, it makes me laugh so hard, Negra Modelo comes out my nose.

"El Son De La Negra" (The Song of the Black Woman): Its upbeat driving rhythms get me smiling really fast, even before the first margarita arrives. It's pretty easy, and simple enough for a school mariachi to play. ¡ASK A MEXICAN!

Special Drinko por Cinco Mariachi Cheat Sheet Edition

Dear Readers: As you drinko por Cinco this May 5th, please take this column around listing songs that mariachis will actually, gladly play instead of having to glumly strum through the umpteenth "La Bamba" and "Guantanamera." The following eclectic choices (and reasoning) came from hundreds submitted by wabs and savvy gabachos; make sure to knock back the Herradura but por favor designate a nerd as your driver!

"Los Mandados" (The Errands): I could give you hundreds of songs for Drinko de Mayo festivities, but if a Wayfarer-sporting, American Apparel-wearing, Elliott Smith-worshiping, Shepard Fairey-loving and oh-so-ironic gabacho wants to hear a mariachi play something subtly anti-gringo, they can ask for this.

"El Borracho" (The Drunk): Mariachis love it and the puto pendejos que comen en restaurantes mexicanos on Cinco de Mayo can no doubt remember the title.

"La Media Vuelta" (The Half-Turn): Is there a more supremely-confident, hypermacho, Mexican song out there? "You'll leave if I say so?" "You'll stay if I say so?" "I want you to kiss other lips just to see how great I am in contrast?" Perfect!

"No Volveré" (I Won't Return): The counter balance to "Volver, Volver" (Mexican note: another mariachi standard). "I swear to you that I will never return, even if life tears me to pieces, if at one time I loved you like crazy you are now forgotten from my soul." Beautiful and painful all at the same time.

"La Martina": A great corrido by Antonio Aguilar about a young bride who cheats on her husband. She gets caught red-handed and tries to talk her way out of it. When her father refuses to do anything about it, her husband takes things into his own hands and empties his revolver into her. What else was the man to do?

"El Gavilán Pollero" (The Chicken Hawk): Years ago, our high school Spanish club used to sponsor "authentic" dinners out. One night, the mariachi played "El Gavilán Pollero" and one of the no-so-fluent students asked la profesora to translate la letra. Our teacher, blushing with embarrassment, actually told us the song was about a nasty chicken hawk who flew over a barnyard terrorizing the newly hatched little chicks (Mexican note: Metaphors, amigo; song is about a guy who steals another guy's girl). Now, whenever I heard the song, it makes me laugh so hard, Negra Modelo comes out my nose.

"El Son De La Negra" (The Song of the Black Woman): Its upbeat driving rhythms get me smiling really fast, even before the first margarita arrives. It's pretty easy, and simple enough for a school mariachi to play.

"El Perro Negro" (The Black Dog): A man kills another man in his sleep, and the victim's faithful dog avenges his owner's death. The wife of the killer (who the victim admired) finds the two bodies, and buries them in a local cemetery. The dog follows his owner to his plot, and dies there.

"Sabor a Mi" (Taste of Me): Gringos will love this beautiful ballad, but talk about a little dirty! Favorite line, literally translated? "On your mouth, you will take a taste of me." Research English translation only for laughs--it's a perfect example of American influence sucking the passion from anything ethnic.

"Historia De Un Amor" (History of a Love): If the white folk do not get our true intensity by the following lines, "Adorarte para mí fue religión/Y en tus besos yo encontraba/El calor que me brindaba" (Adoring you was my religion/And in your kisses, I found/The heat that it offered), they never will.

"El Sinaloense" (The Sinaloan): It sounds like an entire group of high school band students are falling down a flight of stairs but that they are so dedicated to their craft that they keep right on playing as they fall. WARNING: Any mariachi who has asthma should not attempt this song.

"I Just Called to Say I Love You": Yes, mariachis know it--and it sounds bad-ass.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, find him on Facebook, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!

"El Perro Negro" (The Black Dog): A man kills another man in his sleep, and the victim's faithful dog avenges his owner's death. The wife of the killer (who the victim admired) finds the two bodies, and buries them in a local cemetery. The dog follows his owner to his plot, and dies there.

"Sabor a Mi" (Taste of Me): Gringos will love this beautiful ballad, but talk about a little dirty! Favorite line, literally translated? "On your mouth, you will take a taste of me." Research English translation only for laughs--it's a perfect example of American influence sucking the passion from anything ethnic.

"Historia De Un Amor" (History of a Love): If the white folk do not get our true intensity by the following lines, "Adorarte para mí fue religión/Y en tus besos yo encontraba/El calor que me brindaba" (Adoring you was my religion/And in your kisses, I found/The heat that it offered), they never will.

"El Sinaloense" (The Sinaloan): It sounds like an entire group of high school band students are falling down a flight of stairs but that they are so dedicated to their craft that they keep right on playing as they fall. WARNING: Any mariachi who has asthma should not attempt this song.

"I Just Called to Say I Love You": Yes, mariachis know it--and it sounds bad-ass.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, find him on Facebook, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!