[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n New York, our lives overlap on many fronts. Your car alarm goes off, your street wakes up. You overcook your fish, your neighbors gag. You hold the subway door open, you have saved the job of the person behind you. We are densely, intensely interconnected, but no place is more connected than on the sidewalk, and no time is it more connected than after a snowstorm.
As I waited my turn to traipse single-file through the Kilimanjaro of snow at my corner a few weeks ago, my teeth gritted in fury even as I attempted a cheery “We’re all in this together!” grin. The truth is, we ARE all in this together, but our sidewalks are like the freeways of Los Angeles: A place we’d all love to gun past everyone else if we could—or a place we curse the tailgaters.
“I hate slow people,” says substitute teacher Elizabeth Atkinson Cuccia. Her strategy for avoiding them on the sidewalk is the same strategy used by NASCAR drivers. “My eyes are always scanning for a potential opening so I can scoot around them. I’m good at finding holes that I can worm my way through.”
It’s not that Cuccia, of College Point, feels no empathy for the slow. Her mother uses a walker and she herself broke her foot a few years back, hobbling so pitifully that strangers stopped to offer her a ride. (See? We may be impatient but we’re not heartless.)
Now, however, Cuccia is back to fighting trim, and when those in front of her are busy gaping at tall buildings, or wearing headphones, ambling in time with Adele, her sympathy gets displaced—as do those in front of her. Whoosh! She’s on her way. Then, unable to stop herself, she turns around to see just how far behind they are.
I’ve done that too.
We all have our favorite techniques for passing people. “On the street, I usually walk along the curb to go around the slow people. Or I huff and squeeze past them, sometimes with a little extra shoulder check action,” says Kate Schliebin, a Brooklyn mom not to be messed with.
“There are times when I will sneeze a big sneeze so they get grossed out and move out of the way,” reports resourceful Freddy S. Zalta, an author.
Another guy I know walks as loudly as possible. Me? I whistle, somewhat aggressively.
About five years ago, the group Improv Everywhere went down to the Flatiron district and painted a line down the middle of the sidewalk. They labeled one lane “Tourists” and the other “New Yorkers.” Then, wearing official-looking vests, they queried pedestrians, “Are you a tourist or New Yorker?” directing the amazingly compliant folks to the right lane or left. (You can watch it on YouTube. Search “Tourist Lane.”)
“Excuse me, ma’am,” one of the actors said, “Are you just going to stand there? Stand in the tourist lane. That’s for slow people.” A woman directed to the fast lane said, “As a New Yorker, I appreciate this!”
The Improv folks told her to thank the mayor—Bloomberg at the time, who later declared the project “a nice thing to do.”
Another Improv Everywhere participant held a clipboard as she explained to passersby, deadpan, “There are a lot of pedestrian accidents between New Yorkers and tourists.” This lane initiative, she said, was just one possible way to keep everyone a little safer.
The lanes remained on the sidewalk for four days before they were removed. One wiseacre on the group’s website suggested that next time, they should create a smartphone lane to make for a “safe, obstacle-less continuous walk.” But I guess it’s no surprise that the Improv folks had already tackled that problem: In another project they provided “Seeing Eye People” to help folks text and walk safely, holding on to them with leashes and yelling, “Watch out! Texter coming through!”
It’s all really funny—except when I’m texting. Or gawking, or gaping, or I’ve twisted my ankle and am limping along. Then I’m the speed bump and you’re the impatient New Yorker who can’t spare one single second for me to get my bearings.
And I go home and overcook my fish.
