Parallel parking a drag? Let RuPaul teach you how

Parallel parking can be a drag. Who better to teach you how to parallel park, than drag expert RuPaul?

The Emmy-winning TV host explained last week on TikTok how to parallel park, from the driver seat of one of his fleet of classic cars–in this case, a silver Mercedes-Benz SL.

While the video ended up in the Cringe board over at Reddit, the Redditors may not have known the backstory of RuPaul’s driving expertise. Not only does she conduct interviews in her classic cars for YouTube—like this one with John Waters—Ru spent much of his teenage years driving cars across country. When his sister Renetta and her husband Laurence moved east to Atlanta from San Diego, RuPaul went with them in a 1973 Mercedes.

Once in Atlanta, RuPaul started then quit high school, then took a job driving cars from California back to Atlanta for Laurence, who would flip them for a profit. He would drive cross-country regularly, fly to San Diego and drive the cars back, listen to the radio nonstop as he drove.

How to parallel-park, RuPaul-style

How can you get it straight—so to speak—every time? RuPaul says follow these steps:

• First you need to establish the hard points on your “PSD”—the passenger-side door.
• Pull your car alongside the car in front of the space you want to grab, about a foot from its side.
• Go in reverse until the rear of your PSD lines up with the bumper of the car next to you.
• Cut the steering wheel into the parking spot until the front of your passenger door lines up with the other car’s rear bumper.
• Then cut the steering wheel in the opposite direction and complete parking.

“Voila! Yay!,” RuPaul pronounces. “You have been promoted.” 

The geometry might not work on every car, but as Ru shows, it just takes practice. Like all kinds of good driving, if you want to get better at it, you better work.