The parking twilight zone

The other day I went to Hop Nation for a friend's comedy show. He's been hosting it Saturdays at 8pm as "WTF with Brandon Huck", but he's changing it to "What the Huck". It's very MST3K-esque, essentially a panel riffing on bad YouTube clips.

Anyway, I was a bit worried this weekend because the Roots & Vines festival was next door on Front St. Sure enough, as I approached the area all the street parking was full for blocks. I saw people who were obviously going to/coming from the festival who had quite a hike. The parking lot of the mini mall that hosts Hop Nation was packed to capacity, so I was bracing to do the same.

I started on 1st Ave behind the bar, because why not.

There were only three cars parked on the whole block, which was actually wide enough to have head-in parking on the side.

I searched everywhere for where the catch was. Was this really public parking? It was next to a manufacturing facility and looked like maybe it could have been private, but there was zero signage indicating this.

So I parked and went in the back entrance and asked the bartender, because no way could I have been this lucky.

Inside the bar, you could hear the music festival going on right outside the front door.

Me: "Is that parking back there...that's good, right? It's public?"
Bartender: "Uh, yeah."
Me: "I had to ask, because there's almost no one parked there, and that seems weird on a day like today."
Bartender: "Yeah, people are stupid."

I'm assuming everyone who came from the highway assumed all the parking in the immediate area of the festival would be full and parked on the downtown side of the train tracks instead of going just a block over and finding parking. Their loss. My gain.