Sit in your car for eighty minutes twice a week. The street-sweeping window is ninety minutes, but if you arrive and leave on time, you’re obeying New York City’s Department of Transportation too strictly. Appease the city just enough. During the posted interval, the cars parked on the street sweeping side are parked illegally, but never change sides. Don’t move for the street sweeper, either. To avoid a ticket, all you have to do is stay by your car. To join the cult, you must follow other rules too. And the social rules, the rules of the streets, are vast.
Be hyperaware but never look directly at anyone else engaged in the parking rigmarole. Not the boxing coach with a pit bull, the vintage-furniture dealer with a giant truck, the old ponytailed man wearing socks with sandals. If you have to talk to someone, never use the possessive when referring to their belongings. Never say “your dog” or “your truck”; rather, “that dog” and “that truck.”
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