After 30+ years of photography and thousands of prints in the darkroom, I love digital! I've worked in formats from 8x10 view camera down to 1/2 frame 35mm, studied Adams Zone System, and made many "fine art" prints. I am getting better prints from those negatives, now that they are digitized, than I ever got before.
In the chemical darkroom, working in B&W, we used precise over/under exposure, and over/under developement to control contrast and the range of brightness levels we could capture. In addition, sometimes it required dodging and burning in areas of the image. We would even go so far as to use variable contrast paper, and print different areas of the image with different contrast. All this, to get what we saw when we looked at the scene, before making the image.
PhotoShop does the same thing, only with better control, and unlimited undo, if something doesn't work.
A calibrated monitor is critical if others will view your work or if you plan on making prints. It is really the only way to get what you see, and big prints are too expensive to waste, because they don't look like what's on the screen!
I was an excellent spotter (fine brush, 0000 size, and various shades of black to take out dust spots on prints). This was an extremely tedious job, to say the least. Thank you PhotoShop for the healing brush!
By the way, by using the curves tool, that night shot can have plenty of detail and rich blacks too. I played with it, and quickly improved the mood. Let me know if you'd like to see the result.