Sunday, July 30, 2006
Bad walking
I have long since been irritated, to say the least, by the way tourists in New York walk. I have been to a lot of other US cities, as well as London, which at least used to have more tourists than here – I don’t know if that’s still the case. But here, perhaps because of seeing how badly New Yorkers walk, or perhaps because they are overwhelmed by the tall buildings, they just stop in rush hour crowds for no apparent reason. An extreme example was on Broadway, in the theatre district: A large group were clustered in the middle of the sidewalk, leaving enough room for one person to walk store-side and two, street-side. Another tourist, walking immediately in front of me, stopped directly in front of the smaller of the two available paths. Could this person have stopped in line with the crowd? Apparently not!
But the tourists aren’t the only offenders. New Yorkers don’t seem to be able to cross someone’s path behind or sufficiently ahead of that person, no matter how much space is available for them to do so. It is either a compulsion or just thoughtlessness. Last Friday, two people attempted this manoeuvre from opposite directions, almost causing a nasty collision! Last week, one man coming out of a store and heading in a direction that intersected my path, actually stopped to let me proceed. An experience that is noteworthy because of its rarity! So many people here act as if they are alone in the City – grunting like pigs instead of blowing their noses; sneezing with no effort to cover their mouths; barging forward with opened umbrellas…..
Some years ago, a man crossed my path so closely in a sparsely populated plaza that I tripped him up. He glared at me. I asked what his problem was and he seemed to think that I should have apologised. I told him I’m not a mind reader and had no idea he was going to walk in front of me like that, and that if an apology was due, it was from him! Let’s just say, he disagreed!
So why call this entry ‘Bad Walking’? When Trish came back from a brief trip to Tokyo, which is even more crowded than New York, she commented that she had not realised how badly people walk in this city until she got there and noticed how smoothly the flow of people proceeds.
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But the tourists aren’t the only offenders. New Yorkers don’t seem to be able to cross someone’s path behind or sufficiently ahead of that person, no matter how much space is available for them to do so. It is either a compulsion or just thoughtlessness. Last Friday, two people attempted this manoeuvre from opposite directions, almost causing a nasty collision! Last week, one man coming out of a store and heading in a direction that intersected my path, actually stopped to let me proceed. An experience that is noteworthy because of its rarity! So many people here act as if they are alone in the City – grunting like pigs instead of blowing their noses; sneezing with no effort to cover their mouths; barging forward with opened umbrellas…..
Some years ago, a man crossed my path so closely in a sparsely populated plaza that I tripped him up. He glared at me. I asked what his problem was and he seemed to think that I should have apologised. I told him I’m not a mind reader and had no idea he was going to walk in front of me like that, and that if an apology was due, it was from him! Let’s just say, he disagreed!
So why call this entry ‘Bad Walking’? When Trish came back from a brief trip to Tokyo, which is even more crowded than New York, she commented that she had not realised how badly people walk in this city until she got there and noticed how smoothly the flow of people proceeds.
