Could you just park it already?

It’s 10 minutes until your favorite band takes the stage at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, and you’re in neutral on the boulevard, breathing exhaust fumes and listening to the whomp-whomp-whomp from the stereo in the car next to you.

You need to park it and run. You can:

* Use the venue’s valet service ($15) and face a long wait to retrieve your ride after the show.

* Yank it onto a nearby side street and risk a $40 ticket for violating parking restrictions in residential areas.

* Try to decipher the signage on the main drag and leave your car on the east end of the Strip.

* Or -- surprise -- make a beeline for one of the reasonably priced lots that dot Sunset Boulevard.

If parking your car on the Sunset Strip is a crude lesson in Darwinism and capitalism, all it takes to help your clubgoing experience evolve -- and to elude an army of tow trucks -- is a little planning and patience.

Near Miyagi’s restaurant and nightclub on a recent Saturday night, three guys from Italy ponder the signs above the metered parking on Sunset Boulevard. There are seven postings. Stacked like a vertical Rubik’s Cube, the signs offer a blow-by-blow account of all the boulevard’s parking restrictions. Now, English isn’t these guys’ first language, but they seem to understand one thing: If they leave their car parked on the street, they’re living life on the edge.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Gabriel Abele says, rubbing his forehead. “I mean, we came to party and we cannot leave our car here. I don’t understand. Why, why?”

Abele’s immediate plight is simple: It’s 11:40 p.m., and the third sign down says his car will be towed by midnight. That’s right, the harshest new restriction is that any car left on Sunset between La Cienega and Crescent Heights after midnight on weekends will be towed.

It’s tough -- and tough to figure out.

“I’ve been on the beat for 30 years, and there are so many signs, it’s even confusing to me,” says Sgt. Tim Louis, a patrol officer with the West Hollywood sheriff’s station. “I always warn people, you better move your car in 20 minutes or you’re not going to find it. My best advice is pay to park in a lot. It’s worth it.”

Says Oscar Delgado, parking manager for the city of West Hollywood: “It had a lot to do with the club crowd congregating in a small congested area. There’s only about 70 meters where cars are towed after midnight, but just having the sheriff’s presence there has had a dramatic impact. It’s about public safety.”

Reza Roohi, who owns Shelter (formerly the Coconut Teaszer) at Crescent Heights and Sunset, understands why the city implemented the measures: “We were having a lot of problems with cruisers, people who would park their cars on the street and cause trouble,” he says.

Other metered areas, which often require coinage until 2 a.m., offer little respite. That’s what Efrem Schulz, the singer of Death by Stereo, found on a recent night when he was supposed to rendezvous with a friend at a House of Blues concert.

“If I pay valet, there goes my drinking money,” says Schulz, who opted to park at a meter farther down the Strip. “I ended up walking a mile to the club and when I went back to my car, surprise, surprise. There was a parking ticket. I tried to save myself the $15 parking fee and got stuck with a $40 ticket.”

Of course, there’s always valet parking, if you’ve got the dough. But on a busy night, to retrieve your car you could find yourself waiting in the cool night air for up to 45 minutes -- the going ETA at a sold-out House of Blues show.

Then there are those pesky prices. Parking on the east end of the Sunset Strip on a weekend night can cost $20, rates set by the club management.

“The problem we have now is people are trying to get rich off the parking,” says Joseph Gharib, owner of Los Angeles Parking Services Inc., a company that’s contracted to handle cars for such hotspots as the House of Blues, Miyagi’s, the Saddle Ranch Chop House and Concorde. “It used to be about service, and now it’s just about making money. A club will want $20,000 from my company a month to be the valet service and then still charge $20 per car. It’s insane.”

Another major valet company owner says he nearly went bankrupt because his company was paying $57,000 a month to a Sunset Strip nightclub, which he didn’t want to name.

But it’s not all bad news. The west end of the Strip -- home to such famed nightclubs as the Roxy, Rainbow, Key Club and Whisky -- offers reasonable parking nightly and shouldn’t be confused with the more congested and expensive east end.

The reason is simple. “We have more spaces,” says Nic Adler, whose family owns the Roxy and co-owns the Rainbow. “We have plenty of parking down here. When my lots fill up, we can send our customers across the street to a $5 lot.”

Adler says he advises people to confirm the time that the parking lot closes and to ask to hold onto their car keys. “Every night, we see people who have to call cabs because they get back to their cars too late and they don’t have their keys,” he says.

Although most live music venues charge an average of $10 to park, the Key Club’s nightly fee is $6 ($10 in advance, $4 returned with club validation) at the lot it rents from Bank of America.

Throughout the Strip, the prices get higher as the weekend approaches, but on the south side of the 9000 block of Sunset, across from the Roxy, parking prices can start as low as $5.

And that’s the difference. While you might pay $5 or $7 on a Saturday to see a show at the Key Club, those heading up the street to Miyagi’s, Shelter or the Standard are looking at $20, and that’s if they get lucky.

Those headed to the Standard for the evening might as well check into the hotel. If you’re not a guest, the valet parking runs up to $40.

As you start to approach La Cienega, however, you’ll find the prices beginning to drop, with $12 and $15 parking on the southeast side of the street near the Peterson Building.

Interestingly, the prices aren’t that different from what people are paying in the Cahuenga Corridor area of Hollywood, and some of the Strip lots have dropped their prices in recent years. Not long ago, multiple lots were charging $30 on a Saturday night in the area around the House of Blues and the Hyatt Hotel, but for the most part, the prices linger around $20.

Credit goes to club owner Larry Pollack, who debuted Dublin’s in 1996 with valet parking at the astonishingly low price of $1.50.

“When every other club on the Strip was charging $10, I came up with the idea of going way low,” says Pollack, who later opened the Saddle Ranch Chop House and Miyagi’s. “My whole concept was built on value. While everyone else had the velvet rope, I wanted my customers to feel that they were being welcomed.”

Although he later sold Dublin’s and Miyagi’s, his Saddle Ranch Chop House valet parking is still a mere $3.75. The only other neighboring club that comes close to that price is Bar Marmont, which charges $5.50. However, if you’re planning to dine at the Chateau Marmont, which excludes nonguests from parking at the hotel on weekends, you’ll pay $20.

“I’m out 20 bucks!” says Steven Hayes, a young Marine whose pal was turned away from Miyagi’s because the bouncer determined his pants were too baggy. “I just coughed up $20 to park and I’m fuming. We’re fighting for our country and we can’t even get into a simple club on a Saturday night?”

Hayes and his posse have decided to abandon the car at the lot and begin marching down the hill toward the Saddle Ranch, where they hope to have better luck.

Clubgoer Craig Patton has another strategy. “Unless I have a date, I don’t mind hiking in,” he says. “I parked all the way over on Fairfax and Selma [a mile away] to go to the Comedy Store.”

Patton says he not only enjoys the walk, he learned the hard way about parking on the Strip. “Interpreting the signs is like reading ‘War & Peace,’ ” he says. “If you don’t get out and start reading the signs from top to bottom, you might miss some fine print.”

Efrem Schulz says he’s got a new plan of attack. His band is scheduled to play at the Whisky on Dec. 7 and this time, he plans to make the trek from Fullerton to the Strip early.

“I’m gonna get to the club hours before opening and stake out my spot,” he says. “ ‘Cause if I don’t, I’m probably looking at another ticket.”

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Survive the Strip

A few suggestions for parking your car on the Sunset Strip:

* Avoid residential areas entirely.

* Avoid parking in metered spaces on Sunset Boulevard -- on the east end of the Strip, it’s a tow-away zone after midnight; on the west end, the meters need to be fed until 2 a.m.

* Allow yourself plenty of time.

Here are some places where, on a recent Saturday night, you could park for about the price of a drink (lots often adjust prices according to demand):

* Lot across the street from the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., $7 ($5 on a recent weeknight)

* Sunset Millennium parking deck, on Alta Loma Road just off Sunset, $10

* Lot on La Cienega Boulevard just off Sunset, $10

* Lot behind the Viper Room, 8852 Sunset Blvd., $10 ($8 on a recent weeknight)

Heidi Siegmund Cuda can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.