City Slicker Rules for Visiting Tourists

1. Don’t chit chat with people on the subways. Its an unspoken rule to be quiet, as the subway ride is almost a zen meditation time for commuters – the only part of the day where the phone doesn’t work, you can’t move or go anywhere, its just calm and still. This rule may even extend into someone not responding if you say something unnecessary (ie, a comment about the weather, or etc). Its fine to ask a question if its something necessary (ie, does this train stop at 45^th?).
2. If you don’t understand the orchestrated walking symphony *see prior post*…then stay to the side and out of the way (this applies on the streets, too). You are messing with our harmony!
3. If the Taxi light (these are the numbers on top of a taxi) is OFF, THE TAXI IS FULL. No need to get frustrated or angry at the cabbie because he didn’t stop even though you were very clearly waving both arms and yelling at him. Also, if the taxi light is ON, cabbies will be looking for you. He’ll probably make it across three lanes to pick you up even if you accidentally lift your arm in the air and really aren’t even meaning to hail a cab. Its actually pretty hilarious when I see someone who can’t figure out why no cabs are stopping for them!
4. More rules to come later…

Quiet Thoughts

Everyday I see people who look familiar, and almost I always I can place who I think they look like. Is that Phil? Wow, that really looks like Phil. And her by the stairs – that looks just like Lauren! This was happening so often that I really started thinking about it…

Our brain is just a complicated system of relationships, right? Our memory is based on associations to prior experiences. “Yellow” is linked to bananas, sun dresses, starbursts, bees, etc. Exponentially more complex, but you know what I mean. I think that when I moved here my brain was trying to use these relationships on a huge group of new inputs…all these new people had to be integrated into the memory system so I started subconsciously making these associations (he looks like Phil, she looks like Lauren). But I think that if I had known this new Phil or new Lauren in Denver, I would never say they looked like my old friends. Pretty deep stuff, I know. Sorry. This is what I was thinking about one day on the subway ride to Grand Central. And that got me thinking…..

What would it sound like if you could turn on the sound to all these thoughts in this train car? No one talks (more on this in a later post). So what if you could hear what everyone was thinking about? It would be really loud! And what if you could do it for all subway cars? I cannot get my head around all the countless things that are thought even in just five minutes on the subway system of New York.

The Mole People

And speaking of Grand Central Terminal, there are huge communities of thousands of people who live underground in New York City – the largest of which is under Grand Central, up to 7 stories down. Sometimes during rush hour these underground dwellers open up old forgotten subway entrances from the inside and prop the door open….thousands of city commuters just using a faster way to get to their train and likely not realizing who has opened this gate for them, not noticing the person standing there or sitting there or smoking there by the door. He’s not homeless, he chooses to live like this with no rent and no responsibility. He might even have a shower, and wallpaper in his “apartment” and he might even have a job. Some underground dwellers are drug addicts or other rough crowd types, but some are just regular people (sort of). I find the whole thing rather interesting (so different!) and recommend the book “The Mole People” to anyone who’d like to hear more about how the communities work and function. I promise you will be surprised!!

City Slicker Swimming

At first it took me awhile to understand what was going on. When I walked through grand central terminal, people walked across the main concourse both from and towards all directions. Sometimes on the phone, sometimes even texting on the phone, a person would cut out from where the train was emptying at a diagonal across 5 to 10 rows of people all headed in an opposite direction. And it worked! There was no stopping and starting, just a smooth transition through the crowd as if a computer was arranging the commuters in a way that at just the right time people fit through the spaces between other people and continued on to their destination across the floor uninterrupted.

Then it was a game: how efficiently can I get from the subway entrance to my train platform? Can I do it without my usual urching and almost running into people and having to change my gait and a shuffle step every few feet and look all over the place and even watch over my shoulder? How do they DO this?? This is nuts.

And then one day it was an epiphany. You don’t look all over the place and you don’t watch any individual person to make sure you aren’t going to collide with them. You don’t watch anything, in fact. You watch everything. What looks like a blank stare on my face is really a whole new way of looking at the world. Its watching everyone else’s movements but not seeing their faces, just figures in my array of vision space. And then you don’t ‘watch out’ for other people, as the saying goes, but you make slight adjustments in advance to fit through the spaces between people.

I had a new understanding of how fish swim in schools. The collective movement is actually quite beautiful….so many people who understand how it works and the way to see the crowd and how to adjust slightly to the right or left or slightly slower or faster so that no one has to change their gait or shuffle step or look all over the place. Collective, combined, systematic chaos. All without even one word, just an unspoken understanding. A different level of communication and respect. This isn’t nuts. This is New York City.

Here is a: Time Lapse Video Grand Central Terminal...this is actually the route I take every morning. The first train you see is the 7 train (where I get off in grand central), and then I go up the escalator shown, and then into the hallway, and then into the main concourse....

And PS – when you get into a taxi and the driver doesn’t pay attention to the white lines…don’t worry! He understands also, and the cars are playing the same orchestrated road symphony as the one in GCT. Pay attention to how he moves slightly right or left in order to make sure he keeps his position but misses another car or ….well, you get the idea. And you get to your destination most efficiently.