A Minor Mystery

Ash Wednesday, and alternate-side parking regulations are suspended. Some people got the memo, and left their cars on the Wednesday side of the street. Some people did not, and parked on the other side, the side where normally you can park only on Wedesdays. Result: narrow 19th-century streets wedged tight with 21st-century cars on both sides, barely room enough to allow the street to fulfill its traditional role of being a passageway, not a parking lot. On one side, the windshields of each car bear the dreaded orange envelope containing a parking ticket.

And I have to wonder: There are a finite supply of cars in the world, on the Eastern Seaboard, in the New York metro area, in Brooklyn, in Brooklyn Heights, in my little corner of it. If all these cars are here, suddenly, the ones with drivers who didn't get the memo, where are they normally? Where are they not, today?