My friend Stacza and I agreed to help our friend, Dario, move to New York City during the summer of 2001. We packed up Dario’s belongings in Stacza’s minivan and endured the ten-hour drive to New York City where we dropped him off. We stayed with some of Stacza’s friends for the next few days while we explored the ins and outs of the city.

Trying to find street parking in Manhattan for a minivan was just shy of impossible. We spent, on average, about three hours a day driving around the Upper West Side in search of an open spot. We circled block after block and double-parked on a street for a spell in hopes that someone would move their vehicle. Eventually we would surrender and drive to the nearest and cheapest parking garage we could find, hand over forty dollars, and be on our way, three hours poorer and forty dollars lighter.

On one of our parking excursions we were circling near Amsterdam Avenue when Stacza cried out, “That was Albert Brooks!”

“That wasn’t Albert Brooks,” I said. “He didn’t even have an afro.”

“It sure looked like Albert Brooks,” Stacza insisted.

I replied, “Everyone looks like Albert Brooks at 40 miles per hour.”