Impressions of New York

In New-Yorker Get-to-the-Point style, I won't write a preamble here except to say I've visited there infrequently and few times (yep, that was on purpose) and my visits have been spread out over the span of many years except for recently, when I got a hot ticket in my hands (a points/reward system I ate up like the penultimate target customer who really just wanted an excuse to sit down in a cushy seat, eat peanut M&Ms and watch the embarrassing backsides of East Coast cities whirl by while the sun is coming up so that I can walk around in a different city and get a bleepin' change of scenery now and then to stimulate my hungry brain.)

I tell people who are afraid of New York City (that's funny, right, if you're a Baltimorean?) that it's not going to be different than the densest section of downtown Baltimore.  If you didn't know you were there, you might not know.  There's where the similarities end.  If you can navigate the fast traffic between the towers and the stores and the throngs of people on foot, then you have it made; now you only need to find some stuff to do.  This can consist of only having places to go.  Riding around can take up your whole day if you think up enough destinations.  As you can tell already, I get a thrill just from standing or sitting over the wheels-n-tracks and finding myself in a different place, courtesy of the steel people-movers that roll on all day and all night, whether or not I step on or off.  They've got places to go and schedules to make; they'll take me if I get on fast enough, and there's another one every few minutes.  What am I?  Just a nothing and a nobody in a world where people assimilate into the infrastructure, and I like it that way.  Hey, I said there would be no preamble, and now I plain-old rambled!

Welcome to New York City!

 
What I haven't mentioned so far is the people.  It's hard to get solid impressions of people you see but don't speak to, and it's hard to draw conclusions about entire groups when you only interact with a dozen people, who very well may not be representative of any group at all, and that's why I labeled this post "impressions."  No true conclusions drawn, just anecdotes, with maybe some insight given about the lens through which they are viewed (my particular viewpoint.)

I like the way it is assumed that unless there is a specific purpose, no one should feel obligated to make conversation or even eye contact with anyone else; in fact, it's probably bad etiquette to be caught looking anyone over.  Now that I think about it, I'm probably guilty; I love to observe people when I think they don't notice and I bet they do notice and hate me for it, but I can't be the only one doing it.  A number of people have given me the extended eyeball treatment; they appropriately pretended it was an accident when I caught them.  This is just big-city behavior; it happens everywhere, I guess.  I'd do terribly in a small town, I can already tell.  I like the no talk-y, no acknowledge-y style of interaction.  Notable caveat:  I have selected normal-enough-looking people (which is virtually all the people) about half a dozen times to ask simple questions like "Does this train go downtown?" or "Am I on the right platform for Times Square?" and people are all too eager to helpfully supply the answer. Practical and sensible; I like that.  I didn't try to give them free headphones (what was that all about, anyway?  Had to be a catch); I didn't ask them for money or to listen to my life story (I heard at least one of those on the subway, by the way); I just needed a yes/no or this way/that way answer and they seemed genuinely fine with sharing their knowledge.

But back to the no-talk.  I stepped on a woman's foot; she was seated, playing solitaire on her phone while I stood above her hanging onto the rail; she had on little slippers that looked like foot gloves; I said, "Sorry about that" and she neither replied nor looked up at me.  Satisfied that my social obligation had been met, I silently blamed her in my mind, thinking "Who the heck wears a shred of fabric on their toes in a place like this - going around in what's basically just socks - where you're going to share space with thousands of people per minute and it's rail travel underground, and presumably traffic-dodging above ground?  "Wear a pair of work boots like I do, lady," I was thinking.  "Then your baby-size feet wouldn't have even been able to slip under my weapon-grade footwear; we would have bumped soles and not even felt it, and it would have been a non-event."  Later I pondered whether acceptable New York behavior is to not even apologize for foot-stepping or shoulder-jostling.  Several times I said, "Sorry" about unintended contact or near-misses, but I never heard an acknowledgement, nor did I hear anyone else apologize for any of their missteps or minor elbowing.  I suppose I came off as the over-mannerly country bumpkin from Old Dixie with my southern hospitality and decorum.  No, not really; the truth is that I supply, "Oh, sorry" for any physical contact, but that's the extent of my graciousness; maybe it's laughably genteel in the city of a billion feet and elbows; I don't know.

Speaking of walking above-ground; I love it because I am not timid in crowds and I believe that in my hometown I might be considered rude for the way I slink sideways through any space between people (I am an opportunistic crowd-hopper, similar to those drivers who weave in and out of traffic, but I never drive that way.)  I don't trip people; I don't make them slow down or stop; they shouldn't even notice me as they plod along; if I see a space I'm through it faster than they can look to the left and observe their companion lingering at a storefront window.  If they digress, I progress, it's as simple as that, because I don't want to shuffle along looking at anyone's back.  This is fine behavior in New York, so I'm happy there!  In Baltimore, I feel judged at times for walking past someone on the stairs, even if they've been in no way inconvenienced by me.  It's a contemptuous look shot my way sometimes, like, "I was here first. How dare you overtake a fellow citizen at his or her chosen speed of stairway advancement?"  In New York it's all fair and no one cares.  I love it!  No one cares; do what you want.

I don't like to write blog posts that are too long, so I think I'll save for next time the fun story of what happened when I tried to share a table with someone; this is frowned upon anywhere, but even with my natural inclination of the-less-social-interaction-the better, I'll do it occasionally for pure practicality, because I'd like to sit down somewhere and I see an empty chair.  I got a little bit of a New-Yorker chew-out, but it was fine with me and I walked away chuckling.  I also have a home-based story to post soon about a chew-out I dished out to someone in Sam's Club.  Very uncharacteristic for me to do that (and it was really just a few short sentences), but Mrs. Nice Guy has limits and is nice when people seem worthy of the niceness (which is just about everyone, no qualifying needed; I'm just agreeable and generous by nature) but when someone asks for a favor and I determine that the grounds are frivolous and designed just to take advantage of me, they get to hear my succinctly-stated answer and they may not like it.