Herald Square Photos courtesy Holter Graham
- Herald Square photo Herald Square Photos courtesy Holter Graham
- Lower Times Square photo Lower Times Square Photos courtesy Holter Graham
- Times Square photo Times Square Photos courtesy Holter Graham
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New York has attitude. It's just that simple. If you live here, you have to: there's too much going on at any given moment for people to not need a pretty good sense of self and purpose to survive day-to-day. For a long time New York had a bad rep as a city of mean people. But we're not mean, we just have stuff to do and somewhere to be, so we're gonna get to the bottom of the matter, get it handled, and move along. Not a lot of time for chit-chat.
But a New Yorker will—in fast clipped tones and with some foul language thrown in for fun—stop whatever they are doing to help a tourist find Ground Zero, help a recent immigrant get across town to the FedCap job center, or lift the front half of the baby carriage up the subway stairs.
New Yorkers are good people, we just don't have time for any crap.
We create 77% less Greenhouse gasses than the national average per person here in NY: You got a problem with that?
So when Mayor Bloomberg brought the next phase of his GreeNYC plan to bear on Times Square, we New Yorkers got right to it.
"Get that friggin' car the hell outta my Broadway. Whaddayouse, stoopid?!"
That's the Gotham way.
It was a lazy Sunday, and I was reclining in my apartment watching the Sparrows, Jays and Pigeons aid in pollination by attacking my bird feeder then flying off into different tress and walls of ivy—yes, we have that even in the heart of the Manhattan—when I shot up with a start:
"Today's the day they close Times Square to traffic!"
I threw on some shorts, slid a National Geographic into my pocket (I highly recommend military surplus shorts because you can carry reading material with you easily) and started walking, which creates no greenhouse gasses.
At 6th Avenue and 34th Street, in front of Macy's were the first stocky orange and white traffic blocks. (First Photo Above Right) The full GreeNYC implementation will take some time, but the cars were not allowed onto the block that is emblazoned with the "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" street-paint any more. There were tourists and locals alike, milling with pleased discomfiture in the middle of the street.
I then followed the new bike and outdoor seating lanes up to Times Square proper, where I was rewarded with a glorious sight: (Second Photo Above Right) 47th street to 42nd Street, was a veritable army of orange cones, and there were people of all stripes an nationalities pouring all over the pavement, standing, taking photos, stumbling off the curb, or just looking at it all.
You could tell the locals easily: we weren't looking up, and we all had this little smirk.
You see, locals always walk in the street in Times Square. The sidewalks are for the tourists, and the tourists are slow and are looking around and don't know the walking rules of a big city—they sway and walk three abreast and don't stay in straight lines. Love to have them, here, thanks for your dollars, but I'll take my chances with the cabs, thank you. New Yorkers have somewhere to be, and we'll risk a little bus exhaust and getting clipped by a livery cab to get there on time.
So the locals were standing dead in the center of the street kind of smiling at the new openness, the new sense of human-powered ownership of one of the most famous paved slabs on earth. (Third Photo Above Right)
Cars will still run down 7th Avenue, and the traffic dynamics specialists have shown that all the traffic around will eventually benefit from the elimination of this confusing angled avenue we call the Great White Way from the rush. But for now, I was content to just amble through it all, stand on a lane-marker, and grin.
I walked up the middle of Broadway today. Because I could.
Love New York as much as Holter? Don't miss the Rockin' Out in Staten Island Episode of Wa$ted!
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