Tuesday, June 15, 2010

It's A Thin Line...


Sometimes I can be a bit behind the times when it comes to news, but a friend of mine posted this on her Facebook page and I thought this was so funny, I just had to write about it. Improv Everywhere, a group of people here in New York who perform missions "creating scenes of chaos and joy in public places" came up with the fabulous idea of expediting sidewalk traffic by dividing our walkways into two lanes: the "New Yorkers" lane for speedy Manhattan residents, and the "Tourists" lane for the slow, pointing, picture-taking crowd. The majority of New Yorkers do not drive or even own a car. It is very costly, and there is simply no place to park. We take a taxi or use public transportation - the buses and subways, and then walk to our destination.

How many New Yorkers have thought of this brilliant idea before, but just never seen it put into motion? I love it! I work in Times Square, the number one visited tourist destination in all of New York City. Every New Yorker knows that if they want to get to their desired location quickly, they should avoid Broadway at all costs - especially at the pre-theatre hour. It is just jam packed with people. We can spot a tourist a mile away. Instead of looking straight ahead and walking with a purpose, they look up, usually with their eyes wide and mouths open, in awe of viewing our great city and its massive skyscrapers. They walk slowly. They take thousands of photos. They stop abruptly when they see something exciting. Simple maneuvering on our sidewalks can get to be quite a challenge. When you're behind huddled masses of people moving at a snails pace, it can get quite frustrating getting to and from work.

It is also a matter of personal space. New York City is composed of 5 boroughs: Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. According to the US Census Bureau, the population in 2008 was 8,363,710. That number grew in 2009 to 8,391,881. In the borough of Manhattan alone, there were 1,634,795 people who lived here in 2008. In 2009, that number dropped slightly to 1,629,054. This slight decrease in Manhattan residents was due primarily to the recession and to Wall Street's failing economy. On the 22.96 square miles that is Manhattan, that means there are over 71,000 residents per square mile. We have skyscrapers because we have no room to spread out! New Yorkers are used to living in smaller spaces, cramped apartments, we have a much closer distance of personal space. If you are visiting from Texas for example, where they have tons of wide open space, your comfortable distance of personal space is much further away. You can spread out. You walk and talk with your friends at a further distance than we do. I've whizzed closely past slow walkers and startled them because I entered their uncomfortable area of personal space, where a New Yorker would think nothing of it.

Tourism is a huge industry here, and keeps our economy booming. We love the fact that we are a global city and have people from all over the world visiting here. Statistics show that in 2008, New York City had 47 million people visiting us from international and domestic locations. In 2009, the number dropped slightly, again due to economic impact, to 45.6 million. There are a lot of tourists here, there are a lot of New Yorkers here. We love having all of you visit, we just wish you were more conscientious of the others around you while you're here. What a fun way to solve this issue, even if it only lasted a few days!

http://improveverywhere.com/2010/06/08/the-tourist-lane/

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