The cars are parked. The valets are bored now.

"This is the worst part of it," Craig Childs says as he slumps forward, elbows on knees and chin in his hand. "You're just sitting here waiting. I mean, you get a lot of action and then sit here and wait."

It's 9 p.m. A breathy cool cuts through the portico in front the Philharmonic Center for the Arts. Five young men — valet attendants are mostly men — loiter there. They joke in Spanish, stare into space, wander into a dark parking lot of chrome-and-leather success for a private conversation on their cell phones.

It's been a busy evening, about 90 cars. The numbered board that holds the keys is almost full.

The doors for the third sell-out night of "Chicago" closed about an hour ago. Now the attendants don't have much to do until the long first act is over and they have to fetch cars for the handful who inevitably leave at intermission. They've already checked their charges, walking the lot with walkie-talkies to make sure keys and tickets on the board actually correspond with the vehicles carefully backed into numbered slots.

Now it's the waiting. Until intermission, anyway, and then after, when the clot of people come looking for their cars and be as close to first as possible.

Childs, 23, adjusts the tongue on his flat black tennis shoes. He checks the time. "It's kind of nice when people leave during the intermission." He smiles and explains: "Not as many people at the end."

In Naples, valet parking has just about become a way of life. For dinner and for a hotel stay, of course; for a quick trip to Saks Fifth Avenue; at a walk-in clinic or hospital; at country clubs, clubhouses, private parties; and, of course, the stream of charity galas that dominates the local season.

These young men are legs for a community in its comfortable years, men and women who have enough to buy a little convenience, folks who maybe crave a little red-carpet glamour for an evening.

The valets don't mind. It's fun, they say, when it doesn't rain. It pays pretty well and, perhaps most importantly, how else will they get to drive a Bentley?

'Run fast and park slow'

At 7:25 p.m., seven keys hang on the board with 99 hooks.

Ken Benson stands at the podium in front of the main entrance to the Phil, which at $7 is one of the few locations in town that charges for valet parking. Benson, 48, owns Event Parking, a three-year-old valet service that works the Phil and Maxwell's on the Bay, a restaurant on Gulf Shore Boulevard.

As he absently watches the traffic on Pelican Bay Boulevard, he rolls a dollar bill between his fingers. He has more than 150 of them ready to make change. The bill is as stiff, slick and flat as new Monopoly money. "I hate new ones," he says.

7:30 p.m.: A Lexus, a BMW, a Jaguar. A Sebring, a Sebring, a Sebring.

The valets work the revolving ballet of opening doors, helping men on with their coats and women out of their cars, handing off tickets, driving off with cars and sprinting back to start again.

"We tell customers that the guys run fast and park slow," says Benson, who, up until last month, split his time between his valet business and his job as door captain at the Naples Grande, a position he held for 23 years.

He never really intended to be a doorman, he says. It just happened. "It's just something I was doing well with."

Right now, he's a little fish in a highly competitive pond with steep insurance premiums (one large Naples service pays close to $100,000 annually), an ever-shifting and sometimes unreliable work force and, sometimes, a tip-avoidant clientele.

"Myra (Janco Daniels, CEO of the Phil) called and wanted me to do this years ago," he says, staring into the lot. "I was afraid. ... Now I'm ready to do more."

Right now he has a roster of eight valets, most young men in their early 20s. Some still live at home. This is a second job for most.

A Porsche rolls in. A Nissan 350Z with the top down. A Honda with a dent in the side. Another Lexus and a long string of Caddies.

With them come the nice suits, the too-deep tans, the distracted looks as customers fumble in pockets, purses and wallets to locate tickets they've been handed two seconds before. Several mistakenly offer Benson their tickets for "Chicago." And the closer it gets to curtain time, the more anxious everyone looks to get inside.

A man edges close to Benson's left elbow. "Put a sticker on it for me, please."

Benson makes change for Sticker Man, and stamps his ticket. But Benson is monitoring the parade of cars and doesn't register the unusual request.

"Put a sticker on it for me, please," Sticker Man says again, this time a little more insistently.

Benson looks at the man now, a thin little thing in a mock turtleneck and suit. Benson reaches into the drawer, feels around the edges and pulls out a sheet of greet dots. He applies one to the little manila ticket. The man scoops it up and walks away.

In this business, time expended and the potential return is carefully calculated: The sticker flags the customer as one who asked for a preferred spot — and sealed the deal with a tip.

An older lady with a blonde flip shambles up to the podium with ticket in hand and Benson makes change for her $20 ("We're in Naples and people don't carry bills, they go to an ATM and hand me twenties."). He passes her eight ones and a five.

"Oh, I see you just made these," she says of the ones. She laughs.

He smiles.

By 8 p.m., most of the cars are tucked away. Everyone's sweating except for Benson, who stands easy behind the podium. "At a hotel, you never stop," he says. "Here it's so weird. It's 8:05 and it's like a ghost town."

Benson packs up early this night, leaving his valets to do their jobs alone.

Automotive wealth

With Benson gone, the guys stand in the parking lot next to one of the many Jaguars they've parked. They may be working. It's hard to tell.

"I don't like Jags," says Craig Childs, a lanky, agreeable man-boy with darkish spiked hair and anime big eyes. They're very touchy. The gas, the brakes.

"And that's not really good for us," adds Drew Neumann, the team leader tonight. "You're trying to take it out of there slow" and it can sound like they're peeling out.

Which is certainly a niggling temptation when you're behind the wheel of a Porsche or a Maserati, but strictly verboten by Benson. They may be enjoying their short ride, but it shouldn't seem like they are.

Childs starts walking back to home base, the podium and key board. He talks about the valet attendant's No. 1 gripe: When clients leave behind take-home dinners. Just about any food can leave the car smelling pretty funky, especially on hot late summer nights. "It's disgusting," he says.

He rifles through the keychains. The best tonight isn't all that interesting: A tiny wallet with children's pictures inside.

He doesn't have much to do now. He doesn't like to read and since he's not in school, he doesn't have to. Although Childs already has a two-year degree in special education, he knew that wasn't going to work for him. But he wasn't sure what would. So he moved from New Jersey to Naples in February.

"I hate the cold," he says.

Now he's living in someone's pool house and working three jobs "to save money." He waits tables at a Fifth Avenue cafe in the morning, and then details cars in the afternoon. Most evenings, he works for Event Parking, dipping into a banquet of automotive wealth and performance he'd likely never otherwise enjoy.

"For me, it's the Porsches, the Mercs, the Ferraris," he says. "If it handles nice, it has a nice interior, that's what I like."

"There is a lot of glamour around the idea of parking cars," says Cory Pantelakis, owner of Right Guest Services, which before a recent reorganization employed 250 and had seven valet properties in restaurants, resorts and hotels across the state.

He explains what draws men to the job: "A lot of the time it's a fast-paced and generally in an environment where people are dressed up and looking good and enjoying themselves. It's also a nice opportunity to drive a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz."

Back at the podium, Drew Neumann, 19, gathers up his backpack: A business major at Florida Gulf Coast University, he's got studying to do. Eventually. "Any type of convertible," he says of his favorite rides. "A car with a navigation is always nice."

Do you need a navigation screen when you're only parking it?

"Oh, I don't know," he says, smiling sheepishly. "The big screens seem nice."

They'll tell you that the money isn't bad, usually at least $50 for working a 7 p.m.-to-10-p.m shift. Tips go into a pot that's divided at the end of the night and anything short of $50 is supplemented by Benson.

Tips, then, are their lifeblood, and like waiters, they have tip stories.

"I've had people give me a five-dollar bill and ask me for change and then give me a dollar," Neumann says.

One woman gives them a Saskatchewan dollar every time she comes — and nothing else. "I just throw it in an ashtray at home," Childs says.

"You can park a Bentley up in here and get a dollar," he goes on. "Park a car, a piece of junk, and they throw us $5." Which is a good tip, they say. "Why? I think they know what it's like in our shoes. They know what we go through."

They've all waited around late with someone who's having car problems. Neumann has taken someone home when they asked for a ride. Strangely, tips are usually pretty bad in such above-and-beyond circumstances.

"People here are just getting used to valet parking," says Tony Marino, owner of Marino Parking Systems. He started the service 25 years ago in valet-hungry spots like Miami Beach. He has about 65 valets in Naples for the countless steady gigs and more than 150 parties and galas every season.

"You know, a lot of these guys are getting $1 a car. That isn't making it. An average tip should be $3. The people here, I don't want to say they can't tip ..."

It's after 9 p.m., and Childs stands by the podium with Neumann. They bat around the cars that they've parked in the job. That red Porsche, the maroon one. The Hummer with a stick shift. The E320 convertible that throws them a dollar.

Childs unfolds his cell phone and shows off a little photo of his car, a '99 Acura Integra he's reworked into a custom-color, suped-up dream with a PA, three TVs, Playstation and strobes that flicker under the car and inside, in the foot wells. He's won 20 trophies at car shows, he says.

A love of cars are his inheritance: His grandparents own a body shop back in Jersey and his dad works at the local Ford dealership.

He stretches out long legs. "When I first started, I'd go home and put ice on my legs and my ankles. Especially when I'm on concrete."

Rafael Ortega, 21, stands nearby. "Yeah," he says, "my ankles hurt, too."

Ortega looks at his watch: 10:30 p.m. "I remember last time we got out at 10. I'd been gone by now," he says, kicking a tiny rock. "I'd been home by now."

Childs nods, looking into the lobby.

What do you want to do, say, in five years?

He looks back and shrugs. "I'm not really sure. I might open up my own detail shop. I don't know."

Soon, the crowds appear, "in a blob" and anxious to leave. But before they do, Childs reveals his bottomline — part Zen, part fiscal realism — to the strange hours, the bad smells and the cars you can't take home:

"Every person you handle the same," he says. "You run hard. You don't know you can't run hard because that might be the person who gives you a good tip."