Back in February, the Times notes, New York police officers reporting for roll call were given instructions: If you encounter a topless woman, do not arrest her. Apparently, officers had been wrongly charging women in the city for public nudity. But cops can arrest any people who gather around gawping at said bare-breasted woman and ignore an order to disperse.
Topless. In February. In New York. I’d stare, too.
If anyone is looking to pick up a special gift for me, I direct you here, to pedestrian penalty cards.
For someone like me, beset, too often, with sidewalk rage, these are brilliant. You know those violators of basic pedestrian etiquette, who stand on the left on the escalator, stop midstream on busy sidewalks, and walk in phalanxes of a half-dozen across. Worse still, they remain seemingly unaware of their transgressions and impervious to either a polite “excuse me” or a dirty stare. But just imagine if you could hand one of these cards to Meanderthals, like a referee doling out a yellow card in soccer. People, you’ve been warned!
I’m not a New Yorker, but I’ve spent enough time there over the years to have developed a personal geography of the city, of Little Italy dinners, Village bar crawls, West Side starter apartments, lazy Sundays with the Times in the park. I’m also a secret sentimentalist, so the notion of charting one’s personal history over Manhattan’s grid is to me a lovely conceit. And these private cartographies are moving, heart-rending even.
This compendium of mixed-up translations makes me nostalgic for Asia already. I have a complete fetish for the crazy signage in Asia, in what I prefer to think is a laughing with, not laughing at, sort of way. Because, let’s face it, how successful would Americans be if we had to do multilingual signs. It’s not just the Chinglish, either, but the pictography. Like in this sign, warning passengers to step back from train doors:
The birds and bees do it. Animals do it. Humans, too. We move in groups/flocks/schools/shoals.
Indeed, researchers say that studing the movement of humpback whales or brown bats can shed light on traffic management in cities:
These rules of “attraction” (staying with others …), “avoidance” ( …while not too close), and “alignment” (going the same direction and speed as those around you) are sufficient to explain all herd, school, flock and swarm behavior — not to mention that of big-brained and busy human pedestrians.
Of course, any good city dweller knows that the real issue is not with those of us accustomed to going with the flow; it’s programmed. It’s with the visitors who frustratingly insist on swimming upstream — walking against traffic, or proceeding far more slowly than the prevailing rate, or impeding progress by halting, abruptly, mid-sidewalk:
Many, distracted by cellphones and sale signs, are no longer even using their fish brains: they do not align themselves (they swerve); they do not avoid (they bump); and they do not slip behind and between others (they blunder).
Perhaps, though, next time you encounter one of these Meanderthals, consider the evolutionary — and predatory — reasons for such behaviour:
Mormon crickets and locusts seem to cooperate marvelously, moving in the same direction in march-step in caravans miles long. But they are not just cooperative; they are also cannibalistic. Coordinated swarm movement can also be generated, it turns out, if you are trying to eat the animal in front of you while avoiding being eaten by the animal behind you.
So, beware, dear tourists. You could be lunch!
If this isn’t an argument for living with your college roommate well into your thirties, I don’t know what is: “The vagaries of sexual attraction don’t disrupt your security and stability.” Unless, of course, your college roommate is a slob or, in my case, hung inspirational Hallmark posters on the wall and went to bed at 7:30 p.m.
I don’t mean to sound a gender-aggrieved note, but I do have to wonder if the “gosh, aren’t they rule-breakers” tone would have been sounded if the article was not about four almost-40 heterosexual men living together and pursuing their creative passions and instead focused on roomies Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte. (Also, am I the only one amused that the story shared a jump with a column on yuppie parents’ intra-school district hook-ups?)
Lovely to see that Metro is taking a page from the airlines in defining “on-time service.” Will we now pull away from the station and sit in the tunnel so that we can claim we left “on time,” too?
This is the sort of ridiculousness that makes me very, very glad I can walk to work.
This past week I have come across two pieces on that perennial topic, dating in D.C. One concludes it sucks — for women, at least — so much that heading for testosterone-heavy Alaska seems like a good idea. The other doesn’t disagree, precisely. Rather, it suggests that Washington’s incestuousness, compactness, and convenient public transportation makes pairing off much easier than in other young-skewing locales, like New York and Los Angeles. Writes Amanda Hess*:
Washington, D.C. is the closest real-life dating scene I’ve experienced to that of a college campus, or else a nursing home — the city where single people go to die. In D.C., the culture of coupling was contagious. Unlike other coastal locales, District singles shack up with a Midwestern zeal.
Hess talks about the ease of running into a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend or hooking up at the regular happy-hour scene, of falling into cohabitation with group-house roommates. “Claustrophobic” is a word she throws around. Also, “intimate.” And “organic.”
By contrast, Tara Bahrampour and Annie Gowen, the Post reporters who find themselves man-magnets in Alaska, sum up their take on the D.C. dating scene thusly:
We live in a metropolitan area that has one of the largest percentages of single women in the United States. Add to that the idea that many guys here are more interested in power than in romance, and you have a potent recipe for single-gal gloom.
In fact, Bahrampour and Gowen’s experience seems to directly contradict Hess’ portrait of easy — and organic — pick-ups:
In other places I’ve lived, relationships seemed to take root organically: in neighborhood cafes, at pickup soccer, at the beach. I could walk into a party, whether I knew the people or not, and make connections on an intimate, open level. Here, meeting people can feel more like a business deal. People seem to come to Washington to build résumés, not to find love.
I’ve been thinking: How could different authors have such oppositional takes on essentially the same topic? My conclusion: age. With a little web-sleuthing, I found college graduation dates for Gowen and Bahrampour, which would, barring exteme precociousness, put them in their mid-40s. My highly unscientific — i.e., guessing — assessment of Hess, based on her website, is that she’s at least 15 years younger.
Sure, when you’re in your twenties, it’s acceptable, albeit potentially awkward, to hook up with your roommate or the guy you met at the 2-for-1 intern happy hour. When you’re 45, not only is it not okay — it’s highly unlikely that even if, like Bahrampour and Gowen, you persist in going out to the bars, you’d meet someone. (And God help you if you have a roommate.) A man above 35 in this town — married or gay. How do I meet the right person, or any person, is something professional women in their thirties grapple with.
At the risk of sounding stuck on myself, I think I’m attractive enough. In fact, when I travel, I meet men, in parks and pubs, bookstores and bars, at cafes and concerts and even conferences. That doesn’t happen here. Or, rather, let me qualify: I do occasionally meet boys here, in part, I suspect, because I look younger than I am. But even if I do still get carded, it doesn’t mean I want to play cougar to the new guy in town.
Ultimately, the demographics simply don’t add up. As Hess herself notes, nearly half of Washington households are singletons. If we’re nesting, it’s with the cat**.
*Author, BTW, of the single-best typo of all time. **For the record, I’m pet-free.There’s not much public-spiritedness in public transportation. That’s what a pregnant Post reporter found out riding the Metro. She recalls once offering to cede her seat to a blind woman, after no one else in the crowded car volunteered.
For three stops, we debated who should take the only seat on the packed train. A woman in her 40s, seated a few rows back, stood up and said, “I can’t take it anymore, seeing a pregnant lady and a blind woman argue over who should give up a seat. Take mine.”
Were that an aberration. A couple of years ago I spent three months on crutches after breaking my foot. Unless I splurged for a taxi, which I did on rainy days, that meant I had to take a bus down 16th Street, hump across the street, and catch a cross-town bus to my office. Can I tell you the number of times that people averted their eyes and stayed glued to their seats, as I tried to brace myself on my crutches? The number of times people in seats marked explicitly for elderly, pregnant women, and the handicapped pretended the hobbled person in front of them didn’t exist? The number of times people actually squeezed ahead of me to claim the open seat?
You can “blah, blah, blah, that’s D.C. for you, blah, blah, blah,” but I didn’t find it any better when I went to New York. There, I nearly tipped over on a New Jersey Transit train when Halloween partygoers pushed me out of a seat. One guy finally noticed my predicament. “Oh,” he said, “I thought these” — he gestured to my crutches and cast — “were your costume.”
People are inspired by the damnedest things.