The sudden bright-red flash of rear brake lights. The beep of a keyless remote control unlocking car doors. They can be lovely sights and sounds to a motorist on the prowl for that precious commodity in New York City known as a legal parking space.

Of course, the brake lights may belong to a car pulling away from a spot adjoining a fire hydrant. And the doors may be clicking open so somebody can retrieve a forgotten package. But for many New Yorkers, being alert to tell-tale signs of a departing motorist is a way of life. Like those contestants on TV's Survivor, they recognize that succeeding in their quest requires a combination of persistence, competitiveness, streetwise savvy and a little bit of luck.

Each motorist meets the challenge in his or her own unique way.

Going the Distance
If you're headed for a crowded area, say mid-Manhattan to catch a Broadway show or dine out, you might want to consider the "outer limit approach" of Louis Camporeale, the "Parking Pal" drivers' advocate and author of The New York City Motorists' Parking Survival Guide. "Create an imaginary circle around the neighborhood where you want to go and let that be your guide," he says. "Don't expect to get lucky and grab that presidential spot." Instead, start looking well in advance of it. "You'll save gas and wear and tear on the car and yourself."

Playing it even safer, the smart parker, says Camporeale, will carry a Metro Card, like he does, and head for less crowded areas just a quick subway ride away. They include Chelsea and the Lower East Side, "where parking is not as restrictive in terms of competition and regulation signs." Or try Ninth and Tenth avenues and get in a little walking exercise.

Sam Schwartz, a transportation engineer known to Daily News readers as "Gridlock Sam," agrees with Camporeale that a Manhattan parker's best bet may be to head straight for upper or lower Manhattan and take the subway--"it's gotten really good and you can be in Midtown in 19 minutes."

Chris McBride of the Club's Traffic Engineering and Safety Services unit suggests going even farther afield and parking off the island of Manhattan altogether. He recently left his car at a lot at 49th Avenue and 21st Street in Long Island City, where he paid $8 for a day's worth of parking. For an additional cost of $2 each way, he rode the subway's No. 7 line to Times Square in 20 minutes' time. Unless you're with a large group, the car-subway combo can be a considerable saving compared to the going rate of about $30 for over two hours of parking in the area of Broadway and 49th Street. (This won't work for latenighters: the L.I.C. lot closes down at midnight and doesn't reopen until 7 a.m.)

Another alternative might be the parking lot at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where $18 can buy you three to 12 hours of parking.

For those who insist on parking close to where they want to be, Schwartz, a former traffic commissioner for New York City, observes that in that wide swath of Midtown where noncommercial parking is forbidden until 6 p.m., your best shot at a curbside spot is to find a vacant spot at 5:45 p.m. and wait in your car until the ban is lifted--being sure to feed the meter before going on your way. Some turnover also occurs there at around 7 and 8 p.m.

When trawling for a midtown parking space, says Schwartz, a safe rule to follow is to drive down narrow one-way side streets rather than wide avenues, where you might be inclined to "swerve across too many lanes" to grab an available spot.

Hanging Tough
Of course, if the targeted parking area happens to be where you live, you may have to play a sharper game.

Lynda Spinner says she has honed her "parking assertiveness skills" in her tough-to-park neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens. After being cheated out of spaces numerous times by aggressive valet parkers at nearby restaurants, she decided to go on the offensive. "Now, when I find a spot I'll block it instead of pulling all the way up so nobody can front-in from behind me," she explains.

Most of the time, Spinner, who is manager of the Club's Brooklyn branch, arrives home in the evening to find no parking space waiting for her as she takes a brief tour of her neighborhood. Her strategy then is to "hang out at the end of the block," the radio of her 1995 Oldsmobile turned off and the windows open, ready to "pounce" at the beep of a remote. She usually finds a space this way in 15 to 20 minutes. "If you're just driving and driving around, you'll miss those spots."

Dr. Michael Laikin, a psychiatrist who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, says he's more of a "Flying Dutchman" than a sit-and-wait guy. "Cruising seems to work for me. I know the pattern of the neighborhood, how to go up and down side streets, when to move or not move the car."

He's learned that the roughest time to find a spot is Sunday evening around 6 or 7, when many West Siders return from weekend trips, or on Saturday night, when local restaurants fill up. He also knows that among the best times to grab a parking space in his area are at 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., prime times for shift changes by doormen and other staffers at local apartment buildings.

Self-employed, with his office located just blocks from his apartment building, he actually structures part of his work schedule to fit in with the alternate-side parking rules in his neighborhood, arranging his first patient appointments of the week for the late morning hours. "Every Monday morning, I'll move my car from one side of the street to the other at 10:30 to get to an 11 o'clock space, and sit for a half hour with a book, a cup of coffee and my cell phone," he says.

Also more of a cruiser than a wait-and-see person is cabaret performer and yoga instructor Jaymie Meyer, another Upper West Sider. Her approach to finding a parking spot is a little more off-beat, claiming one of her most successful techniques is "to chant 'om' to the parking gods."

She says her stress-reducing methods, which involve going with the flow of the moment as well as the traffic, have helped her deal with "the absurdity of life in New York City," including its alternate-side rules. She recently had to reschedule a rehearsal for an upcoming gig at Broadway's Iridium Jazz Club so she could move her car. And like Dr. Laikin, she too has studied the habits of her neighbors in trying to pick the most opportune times to make her moves. They include the hours between 7 and 8 a.m. and 3:30 to 4:40 p.m., she reports, "when people are leaving for work or leaving at the end of the work day."

"There's an art to parking in New York," writes designer-architect Peter Mannello, a resident of Manhattan's West Village, in a piece he has posted at www.studiomannello.com. This includes being able to spot the "turner"--a competitor for your parking spot who follows a distinctive pattern of "circling from block to block...they may slow down or they may speed up...but you know they're looking."

Today, some three years after he wrote his online essay, Mannello suggests that to succeed as parkers you have to develop a "sixth or seventh sense"--to steer clear of turners, for one thing--and you have to train yourself to "scan all four corners of an intersection" and "look out for the people with the keys" in a quick and safe manner. And above all, he concludes, "to keep your cool at all times."

The Outdoor Types
So why don't these long-suffering parkers just pack it in and retreat to a parking garage in their neighborhood?

"We park on the street because we're thrifty, poor or too darn stubborn to pay for a garage," observed Jaymie Meyer in "Alternate Parking Universe," a witty article that was published last November in Car & Travel and reappears on her own personal Web site, www.jaymie.com.

In his stream-of-consciousness foray into the subject, Peter Mannello wrote: "It's a thing you get into...It becomes like a challenge. And then, it's also like, well, you shouldn't have to pull into a lot, you should be able to park on the street."

For Dr. Laikin, it just doesn't seem to make economic sense to shell out the Upper West Side's going rate of $400 to $500 a month to house a car. And by holding on to an older 1991 Honda, a "great, nice little car," the practical-minded doctor doesn't feel the pressure of garaging an expensive vehicle nor does he fret about it getting "bashed around a bit" on the mean streets of Manhattan.

For local residents and visitors to crowded neighborhoods alike, everything from parking meters with short time limits and long effective hours to a profusion of fire hydrants (there are 107,000 of them scattered throughout the city) thwart motorist efforts to find a legal curbside, particularly in Manhattan.

Sam Schwartz points out that would-be parkers in Manhattan face not only the familiar alternate-side restrictions but some tricky, more recent wrinkles, such as the creation of a commercial parking zone covering 43rd to 59th streets, from Second to Ninth avenues, where on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the metered spaces are reserved for commercial vehicles. The remaining time is for the rest of us, much of it with $2 per hour meter rates in effect. Trying to decipher the posted rules of conduct in that commercial zone has turned many people "dyslexic," he says.

lso likely to catch motorists off-guard, says Schwartz, are those overnight parking bans in Greenwich Village, policed by tow trucks known as "night hawks"; the prohibition was obtained by local residents upset by the noise created by nightclubbers.

Making Room
Meanwhile, the conversion of many parking garages into more lucrative real estate enterprises, particularly in Manhattan, has made parking on and off the street "a scarcer commodity" for everyone, says Schwartz.

Currently, there are nearly 2,000 city-licensed and city-operated public garages and lots in the five boroughs, with off-street space for more than 326,000 vehicles, according to the Department of City Planning. (For online maps to help you locate off-street parking, go to the agency's Web site at www.nyc.gov/html/dcp, then click on the "Reference" and "Parking Facilities in NYC" bars.)

Slightly offsetting the loss of off-street parking facilities, says Schwartz, is the spread of the so-called muni-meter parking system, which in replacing one-per-car meters with single machines placed at the end of a street does free up two or three additional car spaces on a typical Manhattan block. It also has allowed the introduction of a pre-paid NYC Parking Card, eliminating the need to carry around a pocketful of quarters.

Unlike a MetroCard or E-ZPass tags, however, you can't replenish the Parking Card locally or automatically. To purchase a $20 or $50 card, you have to request a form, either by phone (718/786-6334) or online (www.NYC.gov), and send it in with your check by mail.

Even the reduction of prohibited days and hours on many alternate-side streets can be a mixed blessing, according to the Club's Spinner. In her Forest Hills neighborhood, she says, "it brought some people out of the garages and onto the streets." Coupled with the spread of parking meters in her area, along with their shorter time limits and an extension to Sundays, "it's made the Forest Hills I love a very hostile place."

One way New Yorkers deal with the frustrations of parking is to turn it into humor. As a popular line used by female comics goes, "Men are like parking spots--the best ones are already taken."

The Savvy Parking Ticket Fighter
Even the savviest city parker will at times find a costly orange nuisance tucked under a windshield wiper. When you do, study your summons closely, match the information on it against your vehicle and where you were parked, and consider contesting the ticket.

Here is some advice, based on the Club's observation of PVO Help Centers and interviews with it's judges.

Act now. Respond to any summons promptly

Make sure the violation is settled before it goes to judgment (after 90 days). The judge will often waive penalties that have accrued, but not when the summons has gone into judgment.

You can visit any PVO center, regardless of where you were ticketed. You may also pay your fee or contest your ticket online or through the mail.

When you visit the PVO, consider leaving your vehicle at home, as parking is scarce at these sites. The Queens Help Center (on 94 th Avenue between 144 th Street and Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica) had the most available parking of the centers visited by the Club in a recent survey.

If you lost or can't read your summons, visit any Help Center or call 311 for a copy.

Study the summons. Mistakes on tickets-about time, place, vehicle or infraction-are the basis of most dismissals. The PVO's own Web site, www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dof/html/pvomain.html, provides an explanation of common mistakes made on tickets; click on "Disputing a Defective Ticket."

A wide-angle photo of where you were ticketed may be the most telling piece of visual evidence.