The cost of co-working spaces in San Francisco has gotten so out of control that peeved freelancers are taking to the streets - literally - in search of a cheaper alternative. App developer Victor Pontis, 26, pioneered the concept of working from a parking space on April 25, setting up his desk in a parking spot at 16th Street and Market and feeding the meter. The stunt, which he said in tweet was to 'show that parking real estate can be used for better purposes', quickly garnered so much interest from other fed-up freelancers that Pontis organized a group event in parking spaces by the Civic Center on Monday. With membership in co-working spaces like WeWork running upward of $400 a month, Pontis coined a cheeky alternative: 'WePark', which encourages workers to set up a desk in a parking spot and feed the meter for about $2.25 an hour. Freelancers gathered to work in a parking spot by San Francisco's Civic Center on Monday. Started partly as a stunt, the practice has gained quick traction amid sky-high rental prices Monthly office rents in San Francisco average $76.28 per square foot, according to SF Business Times. At those prices, a standard nine-foot by 18-foot parking spot would rent for $12,357 per month, or about $17 per hour - making the $2.25 hourly meter fee a bargain. 'It's a simple idea - take your desk to a parking spot, pay the meter, and work at an inexpensive office,' said Pontis in a statement. 'But it shows that the real estate we use for parking can be put to a lot of other uses - offices, sidewalks, bike lanes, transit, housing, retail, parks.' At Monday's event, about a dozen people showed up to work at tables Pontis set up in a San Francisco parking spot. Word spread quickly online, and mavericks in Santa Monica and Toulouse, France joined in on the idea, setting up their own workspaces in parking spots. In Santa Monica, Gray Bright, the CEO of electric scooter rideshare startup Cloud set up on sunny Ocean Avenue. And in Toulouse, entrepreneur Valentin Decarpentrie put his desk out in a parking spot on rue Antoine-Deville. 'Real estate is very expensive and nobody wants to rent to a company for less than a year, even with guarantees,' he told French publication actu.fr. 'But this is not a problem because with telework, we can work where we want.' Cloud CEO Gray Bright is seen working in a Santa Monica parking spot on Monday The idea even spread as far as Toulouse, France, where entrepreneur Valentin Decarpentrie put his desk out in a parking spot on rue Antoine-Deville It's a concept that may only be workable in mild climates, however - and even then, critics worry that the lack of access to certain amenities makes 'co-parking' an impractical stunt. Pontis, who is working on an app called Scooter Map that aggregates scooter and bike sharing apps to find the nearest one, begs to differ though. 'The spaces I've worked in have been really nice!' he said. 'In San Francisco, we were working across from a nice cafe, a library and a bathroom. So we had all of our needs met.' In addition to the high cost of office and co-working rental space, Pontis hopes to call attention to the amount of prime real estate that cities devote to car parking. 'It makes sense to have some car parking, but how much is too much?' he asked. 'More and more people [are] moving to cities and don't want to drive cars, how should we redesign cities to be safer, more fun, and full of opportunity.'
Local developer Victor Pontis has staged a stunt to highlight the cost of co - working spaces and office rents in San Francisco , and the amount of space taken up by car owners . Founding it as a cheeky alternative to WeWork , Pontis fed a meter and set up desks in parking spaces on 16th Street and Market in the city . Monthly office rent in San Francisco averages $ 76.28 per sq ft , so an office the size of a standard nine foot by ten parking space would cost about $ 12,357 a month to rent , or about $ 17 an hour . By contrast a parking meter charges $ 2.25 an hour . A dozen workers joined Pontis , and similar protests in Santa Monica and Toulouse , France mimicked his actions .