Parking Obsession

For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all. This week I completed my Magnum Opus!

Thus begins a tweet thread that went viral this week, and caught a lot of media attention. 

Here’s an extract from the coverage by The New York Times:

Michelangelo spent four years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Tolstoy devoted six to “War and Peace,” and the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan took more than twice that to erect the Taj Mahal.

But did any of them park in every single spot of their local grocery store?

Maybe they would have, given the chance and the existence of a Publix or Tesco. Instead the feat was achieved by Gareth Wild, a 39-year-old production director who assiduously took up space, in one spot after another at the local Sainsbury’s of his London suburb, until he had used 211 parking spots over six years.