On a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me

June 30, 2016 6:46 PM

New York’s Sidewalks Are So Packed, Pedestrians Are Taking to the Streets. A walking city has turned into an obstacle course.
posted by plexi (79 comments total)

This wouldn't happen if people would just Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way ^{© John Roderick, 2011}

I pin the blame squarely on idiot tourists who walk four-abreast, stop to check the maps on their phones, keep gawping at All The Tall Buildings, and generally get in the way of people who REALLY HAVE TO GET TO WORK GOD DAMN IT.
posted by SansPoint at 6:57 PM on June 30, 2016 [12 favorites]

What gets me is people with friends. Like, I get it, you are capable of normal human interactions and are able to maintain mutually pleasing bonds of comradery, but do you really have to rub my face in it?

And while you are at it, you don't need to walk side by side on busy sidewalks, I mean seriously.
posted by idiopath at 7:19 PM on June 30, 2016 [19 favorites]

One of the several things I like about my job is that the subway station that takes me there is right in the basement of the building, so I never even have to come above-ground and walk on the sidewalk.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:21 PM on June 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ban cars from every other street. Problem solved!
posted by Autumn Leaf at 7:25 PM on June 30, 2016 [27 favorites]

I feel like this has been a thing since tourism really started coming back to NYC. The street is really the only place to walk when there's nothing but yokels gaping at everything. This city moves fast, I don't have time to navigate around everyone who has to stop dead in their tracks every time they get a text message, either.
posted by nevercalm at 7:30 PM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Boy, NYC sounds like a swell sorta place.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:53 PM on June 30, 2016 [34 favorites]

today at the gym i almost murdered with my bare fucking hands some leg-day-skipping douchebro because he stopped in the middle of the staircase, with people going up and down on either side, so he could check something on the phone he'd been staring fixedly at for the first half of the flight, and no jury in the world would've convicted me

i hope he dies and i get to see it
posted by poffin boffin at 7:56 PM on June 30, 2016 [29 favorites]

This is my life. I walk in midtown and I bike in midtown. Both increasingly involve running a gauntlet of obstacles in constant flux. Last year, a woman biking ahead of me (in the bike lane!) was taken down by a man's backpack - he was slinging it over his shoulder just as she rode by and the strap caught her handlebars. She went flying, he kept walking blithely on down the middle of the street. Just last week my walk to the bike rack turned into a road runner cartoon because I was nearly mown down by a scrum of young men running the wrong way down a one-way street; they were doing laps on the order of the Crossfit gym on the corner. And don't even get me started on the 8th Avenue bike lane at rush hour.

Bottom line, though, is that this is NYC's problem to fix. More people living and working and visiting and strolling and biking is a great thing, but our infrastructure has to adapt more quickly. I vote for congestion pricing from 14th to 59th, if not an outright ban on private vehicles altogether. But I'd settle for widened sidewalks and bike lanes separated from car AND pedestrian traffic.
posted by minervous at 7:59 PM on June 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

you think NYC is bad? try LONDON streets, aka cow paths...!
posted by mollymillions at 8:05 PM on June 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

I feel like this has been a thing since tourism really started coming back to NYC. The street is really the only place to walk when there's nothing but yokels gaping at everything.

I pin the blame squarely on idiot tourists who walk four-abreast, stop to check the maps on their phones, keep gawping at All The Tall Buildings, and generally get in the way.

I feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.
posted by not that girl at 8:08 PM on June 30, 2016 [18 favorites]

I feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.

A lack of self-regard has never been a problem in New York.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:21 PM on June 30, 2016 [20 favorites]

london was the worst, it was so terrible and awful and ghastly being That Fucking Person who can't remember which way to look when crossing the street despite the H U G E LETTERS WRITTEN RIGHT THERE ON THE ROAD reminding tourists to look the other way before crossing, i hated it, so fucking much, being the incompetent sort of asslord tourist that i personally want to dismember

even worse was that everyone there was really nice about repeatedly saving my life and i absolutely refuse to learn from their kindly example
posted by poffin boffin at 8:25 PM on June 30, 2016 [19 favorites]

> I feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.

We had a fantastic week there in March. The weather was perfectly idyllic spring. We were staying with friends in Manhattan and we walked nearly everywhere; we took the less-crowded streets when we could, and when we needed to check our phones we stepped to the side because we are not jerks like that. We did plenty of sightseeing, and some of it did make me a little nuts - like, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge made me want to fling all the other tourists off of it - but there was plenty of opportunity for looking at buildings and walking at a less-than-racewalking-speed. So, you know, you should go! Just pay attention and be considerate, like you do when you're home. New York City is pretty fantastic.
posted by rtha at 8:36 PM on June 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

i feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.

Hey, it's like Johnny T says - you're a tourist, and that makes you a jerk. But it's okay, because when I go to your town and I'M the tourist, then I'M the jerk.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 PM on June 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

If New York is so amazing it's presumably amazing everywhere which means there's no point locomoting from the place in New York you presently occupy to any other place in New York since it's all just so incredible and you really ought to just stay still there in the spot you are in until you die and that way you'll give other New Yorkers something to step over and be world-weary about once everything goes back to normal.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:49 PM on June 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

This has been a thing forever? Why is this news?

But hey it sure was a great idea to narrow sidewalks in midcentury for wider avenues wasn't it
posted by Automocar at 9:09 PM on June 30, 2016 [9 favorites]

While crowding is hardly a new problem in the city, the sidewalks that cemented New York’s reputation as a world-class walking city

Yes, the fact that New York has sidewalks made it a world-class waking city, and not the dense network of subways on a narrow island constrained by limited water crossings that made other forms of transportation very inefficient, and the city that grew up around it which meant your needs of everyday life were all within walking distance

What even is this article
posted by Automocar at 9:13 PM on June 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

New York remains the one city where people actually walk like they're not killing time before heading out to dig their own grave and jumping in to lie down and die. New Yorkers walk like they have places to fucking be and those places are not the sidewalk.

So it's still fine for now.
posted by GuyZero at 10:02 PM on June 30, 2016 [14 favorites]

I feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.

If you decide to tour beautiful St Louis, MO instead of New York City you'll make two cities a tiny bit happier.
posted by GuyZero at 10:03 PM on June 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

This is news? I have lived in NYC all my life, and have always done this. When it comes to being a pedestrian in this city, one of the cardinal rules is: The masses are the asses. You walk where the horde is not.
posted by old_growler at 10:06 PM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

the other solution is stay the fuck out of midtown because what are you-- going to fucking applebees or something?
posted by dersins at 10:51 PM on June 30, 2016 [11 favorites]

My mother prepared me to be a good New Yorker by taking me to Disneyland quite often. There she passed on these wise words: "Walking in a crowd is like playing football: you look for hole and you take it."
posted by dame at 10:52 PM on June 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

David Byrne bike cam in which he sees a lot of pedestrians on the street.
posted by gucci mane at 11:12 PM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

New York remains the one city where people actually walk like they're not killing time before heading out to dig their own grave and jumping in to lie down and die. New Yorkers walk like they have places to fucking be and those places are not the sidewalk.

Spoken like a person who has never been to Hong Kong.
posted by Dysk at 1:15 AM on July 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

And don't even get me started on the 8th Avenue bike lane at rush hour.

Oh, sorry... didn't realize it was you. 8th Ave at going-home time is indeed rather a crush.

I'm out in the street because the sidewalk around 45th is blocked by people queueing for Shake Shack. Or trying to decide whether to queue for Shake Shack. Or whatever.

But yeah, it's pretty much a free-for-all, and the place could really do with wider sidewalks.

And, of course, in NY every one-way street or bike lane is turned into a two-way street or lane by the restaurant delivery guys on their bikes. I now find myself looking both ways before crossing a one-way street anywhere in the world.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 1:16 AM on July 1, 2016

I now find myself looking both ways before crossing a one-way street anywhere in the world.
That's probably a good idea
posted by thelonius at 1:31 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

So, Manhattan wasn't designed for my personal comfort and ease? I'm outraged.
posted by chavenet at 2:47 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I pin the blame squarely on idiot tourists who walk four-abreast, stop to check the maps on their phones, keep gawping at All The Tall Buildings, and generally get in the way.

This is, of course, the original definition of "jaywalking", a term which was coöpted by the motoring industry to make exactly the argument lots of people are making here: that the city's streets are not for people, but for dangerous polluting anti-social high-velocity machinery that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year from collisions alone.

I am very sorry if driving your motorcar is inconvenient. Continuing to use it in these conditions is a choice you are making, perhaps in wilful ignorance of your real options.

If there isn't enough room to walk, perhaps we need to allocate more space to pedestrians, eh? That's the argument we repeatedly made for cars during the 20th century, after all.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:05 AM on July 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

he stopped in the middle of the staircase

You just reminded me of the time on the South Bank in London when I came dangerously close to shoving an entire family of eight down a staircase.

They hadn't just come up it. They weren't going down it. They weren't even contemplating going down it. No, they had instead managed to spread themselves across the entire twenty-foot-wide staircase while they checked their map or whatever.

After briefly considering murder, I gave them the two regulation increasingly-loud "Excuse me"s required in the Magna Carta, then barged past them and down the stairs. No one was actually hurt, but I kind of wanted someone to be, just in the name of negative reinforcement.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:10 AM on July 1, 2016 [18 favorites]

rum-soaked space hobo Oh, no, I wouldn't drive in Manhattan if someone put a gun against my head. I get out of the subway, and I walk to work. If my commute has a fifteen minute lead that evaporated because the trains got held up, get the hell out of my way on the sidewalk.
posted by SansPoint at 4:34 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

So apparently the collective NYC population has decided that infirm, elderly, and very young humans aren't welcome on the sidewalks? Because I read that article and every single person quoted in it sounds like a self-important, entitled asswipe. Sure some people do stupid annoying shit when it comes to sidewalks, stairs, and escalators. So do you.
posted by jfwlucy at 4:52 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

8th Avenue bike lane at rush hour.

Jeez, I want to clothesline all the jerks walking in the bike lane, even when the sidewalks are medium-crowded at worst. Zero excuse, other than being a jerk. Not that you should walk in the bike lane anyhow, but.

Just pay attention and be considerate, like you do when you're home

That's the thing, though. I think that lots of people who haven't lived in cities where walking is the default mode of transportation don't realize that you should get the fuck out of the way if you need to check a map or have a conversation or whatever. It just doesn't occur to them because they almost never interact with (so many) other people in that way.

My wife, god bless her, gets annoyed with me on vacation sometimes when I try to get the fuck out of the way before checking a map. Like, hey, where are you going? I'm trying to find a wall or a lamp post to lean against so I can get the fuck out of people's way. To her credit, sometimes there aren't people to get out of the way of. But there might be. And I don't want to be in their way.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:59 AM on July 1, 2016 [18 favorites]

jfwlucy Woah, we're not monsters. If you're hobbled, wrangling a toddler, or anything like that, we forgive. It's understandable, though if you're a slow walkers, it is highly encouraged to stick to the far right on sidewalks wide enough for multiple lanes of pedestrian traffic. The locals know this. The tourists do not.
posted by SansPoint at 5:25 AM on July 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

"So apparently the collective NYC population has decided that infirm, elderly, and very young humans aren't welcome on the sidewalks? "

Heh, the infirm and the elderly fly past the problem pedestrians. The problem is not with the speed of the problem pedestrians but their walking patterns. If they drove like they walked then they'd end up dead or heavily injured. Walking backwards, walking forwards while looking continuously to the side, starting to walk into a direction without seeing if anybody's nearby, stopping all of a sudden in the middle of the street, etc. Actually, yesterday I saw somebody start crossing the street because one lane of traffic was stopped because a car was turning. The other lanes had traffic moving just fine in them but this guy couldn't comprehend that and so kept walking without looking and almost got hit by 2 cars.
posted by I-baLL at 5:32 AM on July 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

jfwlucy: Every comment here is about the entitled tactically-unaware fucknuggets who don't realize there are other people on the sidewalk. Most of the quotes from the article are about general crowding and how it's a problem, and the ones complaining about specific groups of people are complaining about tourists.

So, what article/thread are you reading?
posted by XtinaS at 5:34 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

i feel incredibly inspired now to spend my travel dollars in your lovely city.

If the tourist answer to crappy tourist behavior that's crappy tourist behavior anywhere is petulance, then the city/locality they're visiting gets to be petulant right back, particularly if it's a place like NYC. And there are millions more who will spend in NYC even if you, or I, or anyone else who ever uttered that silly phrase never go there in our lives.

So apparently the collective NYC population has decided that infirm, elderly, and very young humans aren't welcome on the sidewalks? Because I read that article and every single person quoted in it sounds like a self-important, entitled asswipe.

That's not what the article said, and there are also self-important, entitled asswipes in the smallest hamlet in Appalachia.
posted by blucevalo at 5:39 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I work in the Financial District right on top of a touristy part. People who are slow because of babies, age, disabilities, or some combination thereof: I am patience itself.

The people who stop abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking people going both ways (how), because they received a text and they gotta read it immediately: flames on the side of my face. Same for people who manage to walk four abreast on a three-abreast sidewalk, slowly, and then have the unmitigated gall to say New Yorkers are so unfriendly amirite. Yeah, I'm unfriendly! You don't have the common courtesy God gave a goose!
posted by XtinaS at 5:42 AM on July 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

The flow is sacred in NYC. When I moved out, I was appalled to realize that other cities were just full of people who would leave their shopping cart blocking the whole aisle, or get off an escalator and just stop.
posted by entropone at 5:44 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

My point re: the elderly, etc. is that the people (those in the article rather than in the comments here) seem to be so deeply furious about those blocking their way that they are willing to break rules, smash into people, step on heels, etc. Whereas you are correct that people probably would not do this to a visibly elderly or disabled person, I'm wondering why people are so unwilling to extend the same compassion to others who might not be visibly disabled, or who are lost or confused.
posted by jfwlucy at 5:47 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

That's the thing, though. I think that lots of people who haven't lived in cities where walking is the default mode of transportation don't realize that you should get the fuck out of the way if you need to check a map or have a conversation or whatever. It just doesn't occur to them because they almost never interact with (so many) other people in that way.

Yeah, I think that's what it is: walking in foot-traffic is a skill, and it's a skill that a lot of Americans never have to develop. And it's not like you go to pedestrian school or get tickets if you mess up: the rules are mostly unwritten. You have to know the rules, which aren't as intuitive as they seem, and I also think you have to develop a kind of awareness about other people and whether you're in their way.

Also, in New York, in particular, there's the illusion that it's a free-for-all, because people jaywalk all the time. It seems like there are no rules for pedestrians. But there are: they're just a totally separate set of rules than the ones that are outlined by legal statute.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:48 AM on July 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

Remember to cut through the alleys with your kids; it's the only way to get the Batman we deserve!
posted by blue_beetle at 5:48 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

jfwlucy: I'm wondering why people are so unwilling to extend the same compassion to others who might not be visibly disabled, or who are lost or confused.

Because they have the ability to get out of the way. Well, maybe not the ones who are non-visually disabled, but the rest? If you need to look at your map, step out of the flow of traffic. This is common sense, which is rarely common among people who haven't had to navigate busy, densely packed urban sidewalks.

If a lost tourist asks any New Yorker for directions, we'll help. We're good at that, and most of Manhattan is easier to navigate than you think. (Seriously, it's a grid. The street numbers go up as you go north, and down as you go south. The avenue numbers go up as you go west, they go down as you go east.) The subway can be really confusing for a tourist, but we can point you in the right direction.

But when we're on the cusp of being late for work during rush-hour, haven't had our coffee, and the subways have been delayed yet again, compassion can often be secondary to just getting the hell to work.
posted by SansPoint at 6:03 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

A little story:

In 1988, I was 17 years old. I was on my way to a year of school and work in Israel. My Tower Air flight was to take off from JFK but prior to that I was to meet the 21 other people I would be spending a year getting to know. I stayed at the Hyatt near Grand Central station. I was a teenager with opinions that were surely the best opinions. I knew all I could possibly know and I would be spending the next year 10,000 miles from the only place I ever called home in Los Angeles. I was cocky and sure of myself until the very second I exited my first revolving door onto 42nd Street where I FROZE in horror.

Where were all of these people going and how the fuck would I merge into this traffic!? I had been driving the streets of Los Angeles for two years, but nothing had prepared me for the teeming masses of New York City. I ended up back in the lobby because I couldn't figure out how to get out of the revolving door and learned an important lesson that day. New York City is nuts.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:10 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Actually, if you pull out a map in New York, people will immediately stop and help you find your way. My friend moved to New York from California, and it was one of the first things she commented on. New Yorkers won't look you in the eye and get freaked out if you smile at them, but the second you open a map they will stop to help you. At first she thought it was some weird, secret New York niceness, but she said that she figured out really quickly that it's self-preservation: things just run more smoothly when people know where they're going.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:11 AM on July 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

I get that. I walk in NYC. I've walked in Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. And I love a good bitch fest about clueless tourists as much as anyone. But the sheer level of rage and self-importance shown by the people in the article just kills me.
posted by jfwlucy at 6:11 AM on July 1, 2016

I read the article and I really don't see what justifies calling them "entitled asswipes." Certainly they are dismissive of other people, but this is by no means an attitude unique to NYC.

On that note, I don't think New Yorkers deserve to be called out more on this front than other Americans. It's just that in NYC, this phenomenon manifests itself in pedestrian traffic, which is a relatively unique thing for the US. In other parts of this country, these kinds of attitudes show up in driving (which is obviously the dominant form of transportation outside NYC and several other select large metropolitan areas.)

For every entitled pedestrian New Yorker I'd argue there's a similarly entitled driver showing behavior just as bad (honking at people driving the speed limit, tailgating dangerously close, cutting other drivers off, ignoring people crossing in the crosswalk, failing to signal a single lane change while shifting crazily and repeatedly between lanes, all of which are behaviors I'm sure nearly every driver in this thread has observed.) In the driving situation it's even worse, really, since all of those entitled asswipes have tons of metal at their disposal.
posted by andrewesque at 6:21 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

I was in NYC last week visiting colleges (Columbia and NYU) with my nephew. We mostly stayed on the UWS around Columbia, but he wanted to go see the statue of Liberty. Great! We take the 1 train down to South Ferry...but wait! It only goes down to Chambers because of construction. OK, there is a free bus transfer down to South Ferry. Take that and step out into the worst group of clueless tourists I have ever witnessed. We were so fed up with dodging the idiots who kept stopping in front of us, that I rushed him to Battery Park, saw the statue from the shore and we promptly left.

He later told me that he loved NYC but we should not go down to that area again. People were too clueless.
posted by Benway at 6:23 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

He later told me that he loved NYC but we should not go down to that area again. People were too clueless.

Yeah
Nobody goes there anymore
Too crowded.
posted by entropone at 6:25 AM on July 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

I fight rage on this every single day in Philadelphia. Checking your phone while on the subway stairs is THE WORST WHAT IS THIS EVEN.

It's not just the tourists doing it, though. Not here, and not in NYC. Not unless by "tourists" you mean "people who live and work in NYC but are less interested in efficiency and common sense than you are."
posted by desuetude at 6:35 AM on July 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

I lived in NYC for 15 years and I'm here to say that the idea that this behavior is wholly or even primarily attributable to tourists is horseshit. Sure they're worse at it on average, but the dipshits having a conversation at the narrowest part of the sidewalk in a non-touristy part of town, or the pack of parents pushing strollers four abreast up Court Street, or the dillhole riding his bike on the sidewalk (and the jogger next to him jogging in the fucking bike lane) are all locals, not clueless tourists, and they are every bit as infuriating and arguably even more culpable because they should know better. You can maybe make a case that New Yorkers are better than average at walking, but I don't believe for a second that even the scantest majority of them are actually any fucking good at it.
posted by saladin at 6:38 AM on July 1, 2016 [12 favorites]

Not sure how accurate these numbers are, probably not very, but it says Manhattan has added over 100,000 additional residents in just 15 years. It also says NYC has added over 500,000 total in that same period.

When cities grow that fast, it's virtually impossible for the infrastructure to keep up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
posted by Beholder at 6:53 AM on July 1, 2016

....the dipshits having a conversation at the narrowest part of the sidewalk in a non-touristy part of town, or the pack of parents pushing strollers four abreast up Court Street, or the dillhole riding his bike on the sidewalk (and the jogger next to him jogging in the fucking bike lane) are all locals, not clueless tourists, and they are every bit as infuriating and arguably even more culpable because they should know better.

Yes. THIS. There are some tourists that do this, but in my experience the worst offenders are trust-funder hipsters, power traders and other various kinds of spoiled-rotten.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:54 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

My wife, god bless her, gets annoyed with me on vacation sometimes when I try to get the fuck out of the way before checking a map

I'm a pedestrian in a neighborhood that is packed with food traffic, including many tourists. For a long time I would try to get the fuck out of the way if I needed to stop for a moment except any lateral movement means there's a very good chance I will almost get hit by the cyclist riding their bike on the sidewalk instead of the bike lane, which is right there, two feet away. (It's that solid green lane with pictures of bicycles.)

Look, I know what it's like when people are wandering around aimlessly, or stating down at their phone. It can be frustrating, but this is where I live, and it isn't Groundhog Day. And like I said, I tried not to be part of the problem but it was too dangerous. But if you're walking so fast that you're nearly running people over than maybe just leave a few minutes early.

Yes. THIS. There are some tourists that do this, but in my experience the worst offenders are trust-funder hipsters, power traders and other various kinds of spoiled-rotten.

Just as in the travelers thread from a few days ago, I find it's the locals who act much worse than the tourists.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:07 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Room 641-A But if you're walking so fast that you're nearly running people over than maybe just leave a few minutes early.

Even if you leave early, the subway can obliterate your lead time. Subway delays are on the rise due to overcrowding, and I have lost count of how many times I've been late for work despite leaving thirty minutes early, because the F train got Fucked after I got on board.
posted by SansPoint at 7:26 AM on July 1, 2016

I was in NYC last week for the first time in several years. (Grew up in NJ so I used to spend most weekends in the city as a teenager - wouldn't you, if your alternate choice were suburban New Jersey?)

It took a couple of minutes to get my walking-around-midtown sea legs back but then it was super-fun to remember how to zip in and out around hordes of people. Felt just like home again. I did have to check my phone once or twice going to a new place, but I promise I stepped out of the line of traffic to do it!
posted by Stacey at 7:48 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

(I'm mostly focused on tourists because I work right on top of a high-density touristy part of downtown Manhattan. Residents are probably just as bad! I just don't go outside unless I'm going to work or 2 minutes away to daycare.)
posted by XtinaS at 7:49 AM on July 1, 2016

I'm one of those people who walks in the streets, although I'm pretty sure I do it almost exclusively around Herald square (and that one time I was dumb enough to try to run an errand in Times Square. Don't do this. Take the subway somewhere else, even if it's an extra 20 minutes.). It's not that touristy a location, it's just that crowded. And there is always scaffolding along 33th, 34th, 32nd, 31st, 35th, etc. It's like it pops up on whichever street I try to take, mysteriously vanishing from the others.

Widened sidewalks would be great. I'd be cool with congestion charges too. Driving in the city is already a traffic jam, the loss of a street is not going to make it perceptibly worse.
posted by Hactar at 8:23 AM on July 1, 2016

Hactar My partner and I have a theory that the scaffolding is actually some sort of parasitic organism that sucks life energy out of buildings before sneaking off to another building overnight.

We were very disturbed when there was suddenly scaffolding on our apartment building one morning.
posted by SansPoint at 8:41 AM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

I am honestly surprised that personal motor vehicles are still legal in NYC.
posted by aniola at 8:43 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

San Francisco has this problem too. Particularly on the east-west avenues, where sidewalks are at best 20' wide and often more like 5' wide once you subtract all the bus shelters, parking meters, newspaper boxes, etc. The north/south streets do better.

Paris also has this problem, but that's because of the city's age. Also the balance of cars/pedestrians is such that walking in smaller streets is reasonably safe, although you do have to watch out for the random gutter cleaning flows.
posted by Nelson at 8:59 AM on July 1, 2016

Sanspoint, life sucking scaffolding would make the best animation ever. You could have this innocuous, rusty pipe just lying against a building one day, then the next day there are two, slightly less rusty. Then more and more, while the building gets more decrepit. Final scene -- it spawns!!
posted by jfwlucy at 9:34 AM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Spoken like a person who has never been to Hong Kong.

Fair enough. The one city in the US. Even in vaunted San Francisco people saunter. GTFOTW people, your neighbourhood smells like human feces but I need to walk through it so let's hustle.
posted by GuyZero at 10:02 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I live in Chinatown and I am kind of used to the crowded sidewalks. We have a lot of tourists walking around gawking at things, yes, but there are plenty of locals - very slowly moving elderly people, often pulling a handcart of groceries behind them at a nearly horizontal angle, and lots of children walking around unpredictably. People will suddenly stop to buy something from a sidewalk vendor. And we have a lot of food carts and fruit stands and people pushing around carts full of boxes and so on. Sure I would love it if everyone on the sidewalks could always walk at a reasonable pace in predictably straight lines and never stop, but it's just part of living in any big city in the world.

And the tourists are rarely the issue, it's just easy to hate on them. The people who sit on the subway stair steps during rush hour are pretty bad though (and those aren't tourists, nor are they asking for money usually, they're just... people who got tired and decided to sit down in the middle of throngs of people climbing and descending the stairs?). Also the people handing out free newspapers in the middle of the subway exits - I know it's their job, so maybe I should be hating on their employers, but I wish they could just stand to the side or something.
posted by pravit at 10:09 AM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Okay, that thing that people do when they meet someone they know, and then both of them fucking turn perpendicular to the flow of traffic? Those people can die in a fire.
posted by Etrigan at 10:23 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

We take the 1 train down to South Ferry...but wait! It only goes down to Chambers because of construction. OK, there is a free bus transfer down to South Ferry. Take that and step out into the worst group of clueless tourists I have ever witnessed.

Reader, I live there. I live literally upstairs from that transfer bus stop, which is in the tiny Bogardus Park at the Chambers Street 1/2/3 stop. And every weekend morning we go downstairs to get coffee at the Worst Starbucks on the Planet (TM) and there are approximately umpteen million tourists waiting for that bus, and guys trying to sell them tickets for the ferry (which is free, but they don't know that), and people staring at the little maps on their phones looking for the World Trade Center which is (again literally) looming above them so that if you gently clear your throat and they look at you and you point at the sky, they will look up and grin and take a selfie.

And my sons, who are very bad boys and I do not know where they get this, have taken to yelling "Just walk!" at the enormous crowd of tourists waiting for the bus transfer. Because it's a lovely walk down to South Ferry and you go right by the World Trade Center (of the Freedom Tower, or Fort Awesome, or whatever they call it now) and you can take an even better selfie and the entire walk will take about ten minutes through some amazing New York landmarks and you're going to be waiting a lot longer than that for the bus and you probably won't get on the first one anyway.

Plus, if you start walking you won't go across the street into the Starbucks, which is staffed by excellent, friendly people and sells a perfectly palatable product and is only the Worst Starbucks on the Planet (TM) because of all the tourists in there who have never been to a Starbucks or, evidently, any other retail establishment in their lives and would like to befriend the poor, beleaguered staffer at the register and engage in extensive personal conversation prior to requesting a description of each available menu item and then, maybe, on a good day, ordering.

But still. It's very impolite to yell like that at strangers. I don't know who told them it was OK. They should stop. I will mention it at some point.
posted by The Bellman at 11:33 AM on July 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

> Boy, NYC sounds like a swell sorta place.

What a tiresome comment. Yes, it is a swell sorta place, but it's a big city with big-city problems about which people are entitled to complain. Feel free to spend your time in lovely downtown Podunk, where they don't have these problems.
posted by languagehat at 11:37 AM on July 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

I remember one time I was Typical New York Motoring Down the Sidewalk (walking west on 43rd Street to catch the Brooklyn-bound D home) at like 5PM and I was getting to 5th Avenue, focused on getting across it in one piece and a tiny child crashed into me and fell down on his butt (I mean he was like 6 or something, not a toddler), and I immediately stopped and looked up and (presumably) his parents were about 50 feet away ON THE OTHER SIDE OF 43RD STREET LOOKING AT A MAP and I was like WTF parents you're tourists walking down one of the most crowded sidewalks of the biggest city in the country at high rush hour and you're not holding your child's hand AT ALL TIMES?

I made eye contact with the dad to be like "dude, I'm not helping your kid up because I don't want you freaking out that I touched your child, but you need to get your ass across the street RIGHT NOW" so he did, muttered a "sorry", and I continued on my way.

This is the sort of thing that is rage-inducing. Not old people who have lived in Manhattan all their lives and know to stick to the right. Hell, I was in a boot (walking cast) two separate times for weeks, and I stuck to the right on the sidewalk and never had any problems. I did have problems getting up stairs in the subway because the second time my right hand was broken and had to hobble up the left side, but New Yorkers are generally a lot less forgiving in the subway (justified or not.)
posted by Automocar at 11:44 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

No one was actually hurt, but I kind of wanted someone to be, just in the name of negative reinforcement.
posted by Mr. Bad Example

Eponysterical! Except not, because the inherent dilemma in shoving a herd of tourists down a staircase is deciding whether to trod smugly on their faces as you descend, or defenestrate them in service of keeping the stairway clear for others.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:45 AM on July 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not sure how accurate these numbers are, probably not very, but it says Manhattan has added over 100,000 additional residents in just 15 years. It also says NYC has added over 500,000 total in that same period.

When cities grow that fast, it's virtually impossible for the infrastructure to keep up.

And yet Manhattan is still 700,000 people below its peak population a century ago. Of course, since then, cars happened.
posted by alexei at 12:08 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

A hundred years ago, people referred to 11th Avenue as "Death Avenue," because so many pedestrians, mostly kids, got killed in traffic accidents there. I think they were mostly hit by the trains that used to run up and down the street.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:12 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

And yet Manhattan is still 700,000 people below its peak population a century ago. Of course, since then, cars happened.

Yep, the century-long campaign to make the street solely for motorized vehicles means that all over America (not just New York) the space for pedestrians is much more constrained than it was pre-internal conbustion engine.

I mean, just check out this photo of Little Italy in the 1880s.
posted by Automocar at 12:33 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Feel free to spend your time in lovely downtown Podunk, where they don't have these problems.

Regardless of whether or not that comment is tiresome, that is still a terribly crappy thing to say about where someone who doesn't live in a major city lives.
posted by Kitteh at 12:51 PM on July 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Why? Not having problems is a bad thing now?
posted by languagehat at 2:06 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I went to Midtown and Herald Square today! And walked around a lot - from the main post office, up 8th to 36th street, over to Macy's and then out the Herald Square side, down to the 34th street subway station, then around Chelsea a little. And because of this thread, I decided to keep a personal census of the worst sidewalk offenders. They were:

1. The dude pulling a rolling briefcase through an artificially-narrow sidewalk, hemmed in by construction at the post office
2. A woman standing on 34th and 8th loudly informing passersby that the only book that plantation owners gave slaves was the Bible "because it's the only book we ever needed"
3. A guy sitting on his walker right bang on the corner ramp at 35th and 8th
4. Four dudebros walking four abreast, slowly, by Macy's and loudly discussing whether Five Guys Burger was superior to Shake Shack
5. A Red Line bus tour guide spreading his map out, perpendicular to the flow of traffic, before a family of four to show them the scope of the "hop on hop off" route
6. Two young women, arms laden with shopping bags, pausing right at the top of the exit to the 22nd street atop to check phones

Make of that all as you will.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:26 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

OK So you know how for driving there are slow and fast lanes? And multi-user paths have bike lanes and pedestrian lanes?

It sounds like we need marked fast/slow lanes for walking and biking, too.
posted by aniola at 9:42 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Even if you leave early, the subway can obliterate your lead time. Subway delays are on the rise due to overcrowding, and I have lost count of how many times I've been late for work despite leaving thirty minutes early, because the F train got Fucked after I got on board.

That sounds horrible, but that's a train problem, not a clueless tourist problem. And neither is this, from TFA:

"The problem was aggravated in some areas by sidewalk clutter such as construction scaffolding, large garbage bags, vendors and fixtures like lights, signs, newsstands, benches, planters and recycling bins. “

I'm not just sympathetic to the problem, I have a personal interest on it. Not to X-post, but last week I made an FPP about a short film that documents these very changes in NYC.

it's a big city with big-city problems about which people are entitled to complain.

Absolutely! I did it myself in this very thread. But let's not pretend that if it weren't for those rubes from their unsophisticated hometowns where people walk wrong, the problem would go away. I guess my attitude is, of all the people causing me problems or getting in my way, the tourists are the only ones who aren't doing it purposely and deliberately to be assholes.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:21 AM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Absolutely! I did it myself in this very thread. But let's not pretend that if it weren't for those rubes from their unsophisticated hometowns where people walk wrong, the problem would go away. I guess my attitude is, of all the people causing me problems or getting in my way, the tourists are the only ones who aren't doing it purposely and deliberately to be assholes.

Makes sense!
posted by languagehat at 7:48 AM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Portland Tells Builders: Give Pedestrians and Cyclists Safe Detours. From the comments, this German PDF has all sorts of related city planning pictures and diagrams that look cool.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:56 PM on July 4, 2016

I've lived in NYC for over 35 years and my wife for over 40. When I'm not with her, I walk medium quickly, and people behind me can pass me any time they want. When I'm with her (she's 73 and somewhat disabled), we walk at her pace, and anyone who doesn't like it can ... pass us any time they want.

So there are lots of people other than tourists who have *@#$ good reasons not to racewalk.
posted by johnwcowan at 10:01 AM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]