Bagels, Pizza, Hot Dogs and Race Tracks - New York City?

Mr B, aka the enigma, doesn't look pleased.

Where did you park it?

yeah yeah yeah. joe got it right. we circled, parked on the 45th between 6th and 7th because we didn't want to pay for the garage, read the parking sign twenty seven times, concurred that we are ok (the person who writes those signs should be arbitrarily shot, wait, no, chopped to pieces slowly, sprinkling every new flesh wound with salt, but i digress). I had meetings, so me and Mr. B were to meet back at the car - rendered difficult by the fact that the car went missing. Mr. B called me that a doorman from the hotel claims to have seen someone drive away in the car. Not surrendering to panic we called around to the police and every towing company, finally locating the car at the lot of doom. We all took a cab there, two of my colleagues coming with us (how long can it take to redeem a car from a towing lot?). Last time I saw a line like this was in 1987 at the state fruit and vegetable store when they got bananas in communist Czechoslovakia. The premises were stinky and decrepit, much like most people queueing up in front of us. One young man sported a tattoo of Osama Bin Laden on his arm, few ladies were clad in some sort of a tube covering their chest area and smeared with glitter everywhere else. I would have taken pictures, but I was a bit worried how the baldheaded angry brute with a scar running from top of his head across his whole face down to his neck would react. My colleagues eventually went to a sub shop and brought us food and drinks. We had a lovely picnick sitting on plastic bags in the middle of the waiting room, causing annoyance, envy, or amusement to the rest. We bonded with a Swedish couple that had no idea what the hell was going on ("I have never seen anything like this in Sweden!"). After mere four hours we were allowed to go stand in another queue, the one for a bus resembling a larger Papamobile (that Pope John Paul II started to use to parade himself around in front of the crowds). When I got to my car, I found another ticket behind the wiper, but at this point I would pay any amount just to get the hell out of there. For a few seconds I contemplated abandoning the car and moving out of the country to never come back, but I came around. I had to get my young colleagues back to Boston somehow. Got home at 3am, tired more than after the Comprehensive exams and dissertation proposal defense combined.