Jackie, i presume by now, you have caught on--In NYC, alternate side of the street parking requires you to move your car, (so city street sweepers can clean it.

this manditory PITA is suspended for religous holidays. (mostly christian and jewish holiday, because these religions represent a large percent of population, and are organized enough (and middle class enough to be part of the car owning/driving population) to get rules and regulation passed so that their holidays are exempt.

as for cars, it hard to make statements about cars citywide.

manhattan has the lowest car population of all the boroughs, staten island, (though the smallest in population) has the hightest percentage. Queens has a pretty high percentage of car owners.. (it the big "bedroom" borough of NYC-) phyically the largest (in land mass) is has a huge percentage that is not served by the subway, (and even bus service ends at midnight in may places) for the most part the subways end at 164street or so (of 250 to 275 numbers streets. (the border is a jagged line)

that a pretty bigh chunk of the borough that doesn't have as many choices when it come to mass transit.

my other obsession