Santa Monica Parking Structure 1

So I had volunteered to pick up Schoolteacher at the end of her long run of the Los Angeles Marathon. I felt that the best plan would be to stick my car somewhere in the morning and just walk around the area. Due to the Marathon crowd, I knew I had to get there early, but decided to check how early just to be sure.
I emailed my multiple questions to the ‘contact us’ email on the official website for the Santa Monica Parking structures. Within minutes, I had a reply with all the answers to all the questions I had posed. The times I should arrive, the fixed marathon day price, as well as the address just in case I needed it. Right there I was already excited to write a review about the place.
On Marathon Day, I arrived super early at the time suggsted by the helpful employee, parked my car in the structure, and began to meander around Santa Monica and Venice Beach for the day. When I met up with a very tired Schoolteacher several hours later down on the Santa Monica Pier, we very slowly walked back to the parking structure to retrieve my car. After a whole day, my car was A-​OK. Just as I had left it.
Paying on the way out was very easy, and I was on my way back home with Schoolteacher napping in the car. Good job guys. You’ve got one heck of a parking structure and some great people manning it. Thanks for making my Marathon day picker-​upper parking experience just a tad bit easier.

Free parking at a tourist spot?! No way!!!
Well, the first 90 minutes are free, and the next hour after that is $ 1. So, $ 1 for 2.5 hours – sounds good to me!
There are 9 structures total, all conveniently located close to Third Street Promenade and the beach. My suggestion would be to start with one, stay 1.5 or 2.5 hours, go to the next structure, repeat. All of the parking lots display the number of available spaces near the entrance, which is even more convenient.
Why can’t San Francisco have this :/

$ 5 to park over 90 minutes… me thinks I’ll vote with my taxes and not shop SaMo. Plus, this particular garage is a ticket trap. People routinely turn left into the garage crossing the double yellow. Then, on the weekends, the lazy SaMo Po sit on their motorcycles ticketing people who came to spend money. Hmm… wonder if the stores realize what’s going on.
If I were a merchant, I’d go to the City Council meetings and complain. As a consumer, I can drive to lots of surrounding cities, have free parking (or at least some reasonable period) and vote with my dollars.
This is a poor leadership/​lack of vision problem.

Well, had a very bad experience the other day. It was an odd exchange because I have been parking in the various SM structures for years and have never had a problem (well, aside from getting lost and wandering aimlessly throughout the structure).
Anyway, I was leaving and had my $ 7 in hand. When the woman working announced my total-​$ 7, I began to hand over my money… a five, a one and a dollar in change.
She refused to take my money. She said my money wasn’t accepted here. I was speechless. I told her I had the exact amount and she said she would not take the coins. I told her I’d been paying with coins for 7+ years. She said I could not leave unless I give her bills. I told her that it is against the law to refuse my coins (I could understand her refusing a $ 100 bill, but 4 quarters?). I told her to show me where it was posted that coins were not accepted as legal tender. Riiight, just as I thought, there isn’t one! She told me I could either pay in all bills or back up. F’n bitch. I didn’t have time to call her supervisor, which I would have happily sat waiting for, so I scrounged around and found a $ 1 bill crammed at the bottom of a folder in the back seat.
I was bailed from prison.
Discrimination anyone?

When I was in college, I used to delight in being able to drive from Westchester to Santa Monica and park near the Third Street Promenade without paying for parking. How did I do it? Well, it used to be pretty easy to find non-​metered street parking if you knew where to look, and I knew where to look.
Ten years later, a friend and I were going to spend part of the day in Santa Monica. I drove up to the part of town where I used to be able to park for free. .. and saw parking meters everywhere. I got really sad. I now live in San Francisco, hate driving, and basically love the idea that people who insist on parking their cars in the city pay through the nose for metered spots. But I was on vacation, in a place where my San Francisco values didn’t used to apply, and I wanted to be able to find free parking, dammit.
Reluctantly, I ended up parking in one of the city-​run lots near the Promenade. We got our ticket, I parked the car, and we were off to the beach. The entire time, I felt inadequate because I had been beaten. Sure, the parking structure was cleaner than I remembered it and its sister structures being, and sure, its stairwell didn’t smell like piss the way that all Santa Monica parking-​structure stairwells used to, but I would have to pay for parking. Pay!
When we were exiting the parking structure more than two hours later, I was absolutely shocked that the charge was $ 1. I almost floored it out of there, assuming the attendant had made a mistake. But he hadn’t. The first two hours of parking are free (!). I’m completely serious. And it’s only $ 1 per half hour after that, up to $ 7 maximum. That’s ridiculous.