Only in San Francisco can a grown adult with a functioning automobile, a backup camera, and two functioning mirrors spend eight full minutes sweating through a reverse maneuver out of their own garage. And honestly? We feel nothing but solidarity.

This is one of those quintessentially SF struggles that no one warns you about before you sign the lease. You tour the apartment, you see the garage, you think nice, covered parking — and then you realize the space was clearly designed in 1923 for a Model T and hasn't been updated since. Your new company car is a few inches wider than the old one, and suddenly your morning commute starts with a white-knuckle, mirror-folding, prayer-whispering ordeal before you even hit the street.

Worse yet, there's always someone parallel parked right next to the driveway entrance, because of course there is. Street parking in this city is a blood sport, and your sight lines are everyone else's afterthought.

So what's the move? The consensus among those who've survived SF's absurd garage geometry is straightforward: back in, pull out. One local who dealt with this exact nightmare in the Mission put it simply: "I used to back out and get into accidents all the time. Then my friend helped me practice backing into my garage many, many times one day until I felt comfortable. It was one million times better than backing out."

Another SF driver suggested setting up cones in an open lot that match your garage dimensions. "If you're not used to it, it can be daunting at first, but you get used to it quickly," they noted.

Look, the real editorial here isn't about parking technique — it's about the absurdity of what San Franciscans tolerate for the privilege of living here. You're paying a premium for a garage you can barely use, in a city where the infrastructure was built for horse carriages, and the government would rather spend millions on consultant studies than actually modernize anything. Eight minutes to leave your own home. That's not a parking problem — that's a quality-of-life tax, and nobody voted for it.

Practice backing in. Buy some pool noodles for the walls. And maybe ask your company for a narrower car.