Adventures in Parking

I remember my friend Ledra long ago saying that having a car in New York was like having a special-needs child. How true that is. Jarek took the train to Wassiac, near where my parents live and where we had left our one remaining car, drove it to Brooklyn (a nerve-racking adventure I had to miss) and parked it on the street, in readiness for a job interview in suburban New Jersey.
Unfortunately, he parked on one of the streets where it is illegal to park between 8:30 and 10 am on Mondays and Wednesdays.(For street cleaning, in which a special truck comes by and raises the dust along the curb.Why?) So Monday we hit the streets at 8:30 and started driving around and around, looking for a new parking spot. And did not find one. I finally parked in a metered space, 50 cents for an hour, quite reasonable, and resolved to return at 10 am to where I had been before. At 9:15 I looked out the window and noticed the street was already filling up, a street where one was not supposed to park until 10.

What did these other people know that I don't? Well, a lot, obviously, about parking. Perhaps the special dust-raising truck had already passed? I went out and drove back to where I had been, still empty except for a few people sitting in their parked cars. Following the lead of these other people, I parked. And sat. And sat, feeling silly. At 10, all the other people began leaving their cars, so I did too. We will need to use the car again Tueday, when we take it to NJ for a job interview, so all this was for a mere 24 hours of parking, and then the madness will start again. When you walk around the neighborhood, there is never a free spot. How do people manage all this without going crazy? Or are they all crazy?