New York's "Energy"

I took a short walk yesterday afternoon up towards NYU’s main campus to get outside in the nice weather. The tourists were out in full force along Broadway. As soon as I step outside of my building I have to navigate swarms of people meandering up and down the street. Tourists don’t seem to understand the rules of sidewalk pedestrians in New York. I just want to yell at them to keep moving at all costs. Even if they’re lost and are going in the wrong direction, they need to keep moving so they don’t throw a monkey wrench in the whole process.

There’s nothing more annoying than being entangled in a throng of people, hemmed in on all sides, when the person in front of you stops suddenly and pulls out a map. You nearly run into them, are forced to look behind you as if you were changing lanes on a superhighway, frantically waiting for a small opening to accelerate around and past the human obstacle, cursing them in your mind and under your breath as you pass. The absolute worst part of the city during the daytime is the area encompassing Times Square and Penn Station. I’ve never seen so many people in such a condensed area. None of them know where they’re going, many of them don’t speak the language, and all of them are generally in my way.

People often mention to me that there are two things that are appealing about New York: First, some vague sort of ‘energy.’ We’ll get to that later. They also say that they admire the fact that people here generally tolerate one another, because if they didn’t then there would be multiple murders. I used to think these types of people were correct, that deep down within, all New Yorkers had a greater capacity for tolerance than people in other parts of the country.

I now know that this notion is totally false. New Yorkers don’t tolerate one another; we dehumanize each another. You couldn’t exist here if you cared at all about strangers – there are too many people doing too many stupid things. There’s the woman floundering on the sidewalk in front of my building in a mermaid outfit; the man dressed in a see-through women’s leotard and thong jogging down the street; the transvestites being obnoxious in the subway; the scary guy in the subway saying he’s going to ‘kill me a bunch of white people’ before he dies.

At first these types of things are novel and exciting, but after a while you just cease to care. And for me, it’s not so much “live and let live” but rather “I wish they would just get out of my way.” Maybe the reason that people feel such energy here is that everyone is desperate to feel heard. In a city of 8 million weirdos it takes a lot to stand out.