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This layout is an Act of Clawed.

Did you ever get one of those weird feeling that there is something moving in the world beyond what we can see?

In the semi-monthly dumping of my email, I ran across this, dated September tenth, and suddenly it was as though someone had dropped ice cubes down my shirt.


A Good Move, After All
New Yorkers Are Rude, But at Least They're Getting Somewhere

By Rick Newman

Sunday, September 9, 2001; Page B01


NEW YORK -- The people are rude. The traffic's a hassle. The subway is Third World. The streets are spattered with bodily fluids, imparting a tangy aroma during the warmer months that no other American city can match. Or would want to.

After living in and around D.C. for a decade, I took a new assignment in my magazine's New York bureau this summer. I headed north with trepidation. I had known many people over the years who had moved here only to flee the metropolis after a few years -- broke and exhausted, like Balkan refugees.

I prepared for the worst: It would take hours to get to work. I would acquire a viral sheen as I traveled throughout the filthy city, thinking always of my next shower. Toll collectors, parking attendants and maitre d's would be dunning me for $20 or $50 every time I turned around. I would hear that accent every day.

New York turned out to be all that. What I didn't expect wasto discover that there are all kinds of ways in which New York is an improvement upon D.C. I'm not talking about the usual Big Apple boasts: J. Lo sightings, Broadway productions so great that ordinary people won't be able to see them for years, the "city that never sleeps." I found I have absolutely no need for 5 a.m. karaoke. The only "Producers" I'm likely to see are the guys putting out the vegetables at my supermarket.

What I have learned to appreciate are some of the more mundane aspects of life in New York. There are virtues in an overcrowded and stressed-out city. New Yorkers understand that there are too many people here. The system is crammed to the point that one little snafu will grind the whole thingto a halt, unleashing potential riots and mass suicide. So they move things along with a haste that borders on panic.

At the deli in my building, there are always two people working at the cash register. One takes your money while the other puts your food in a bag. The whole transaction happens in less time than it takes to get your pocket picked. Instead of the customers losing patience with waiting "on line," as they say here, it is the cashiers who seem annoyed that the customers can't get their change into their wallets and get out of the way fast enough.

Compare that with Washington, where most people think they live in a bustling northeastern metropolis -- except for service workers, who think D.C. is some laid-back corner of Dixie. This is a volatile mix, producing frequent scenes like the one I swear used to take place every morning at about 11:30 at the Georgetown post office: Ten people would wait in line for two clerks, one of whom was busy with some eccentric who wanted collectible stamps from two years ago. That clerk would wander off toward the stockroom in search of the stamps, with nary a glance at the line of people whose expressions begged her not to leave. The other clerk would calmly (read "slowly") be helping a woolly bike messenger who needed to buy 100 money orders. Line rage would begin to wear down the customers behind him who just wanted to mail a package or buy an airmail stamp. They would start making loud, sarcastic remarks to each other -- but not directly to the cashiers; that would have been rude. Not even after the first clerk would return and give the eccentric her collectibles, promptly close her window and go on lunch break.

The system in New York has been fine-tuned in ways to keep humanity from tearing itself to shreds. The city, for instance, has moved well beyond the mentality that regards traffic signals as speed bumps. On some of the north-south avenues, there are times when you can catch every green light for a mile or more, if you drive just a few miles over the speed limit. In D.C. and in so many other cities, by contrast, traffic lights are designed to slow car travel to what it was during the horse and buggy era. The inevitable result is that people drive at twice the speed limit, which is the only way they can ever get through the next light.

New York has figured out another secret of traffic management: If there's nothing you can do to improve traffic, at least pretend that you care.All around the city, there are electronic signs that tell you how long it will take to get through major choke points. This is particularly important to those of us who live across the river in New Jersey while we save up for a shack in Manhattan.

Driving into the city, my spirits soar when I spot the sign telling me there's a 20-minute delay at the George Washington Bridge. The sign does absolutely nothing to get you to your destination any faster. But it makes you feel as if somebody's paying attention to the problem -- like maybe there are empathetic authorities in a big control room somewhere, fretting over the backup. It gives you a sense that you're not alone out there, that when your head explodes, at least somebody will notice.

You'd think that the traffic gurus in the Washington area would have found a way to show motorists that they care, especially with so much bad traffic to work with. Instead it seems the opposite is true. You're on the Beltway at 7 a.m. You figure you have beaten the morning rush hour, but one of those "instajams" materializes out of nowhere like downpours in the rain forest. You try to divine the cause and duration by listening to the traffic report, but all you hear about is the story of an overturned truck on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, the 93rd this year. Your run-of-the-mill backup doesn't even rate a mention. You sit there, with no control over your fate and no idea how long you'll be stuck. At least you can take heart from one thing: Virginia and Maryland officials have regular discussions about the environmentally damaging, prohibitively expensive new roads that would alleviate this mess if the two states could actually join forces and build them.

Dislike being around New Yorkers? Find them pushy and rude? I always did and still do. But I also realize that they are doing their part to hold chaos at bay. Institutionalized rudeness has a way of forcing people to play by the rules, or at least raises the cost of breaking the rules. If you try to cut the line for a bus, for example, you are going to be pilloried by a dozen self-appointed queue monitors. Play by the rules or suffer mob justice. Do anything to disrupt the flow of life, and you'll be insulted and browbeaten. I was driving in the city one day when I stopped momentarily behind a truck, assuming it was waiting for the light to change. The driver stuck his head out the window and yelled at me, "What are you, stupid? Pull around!" He was letting me know, in the midtown manner, that he was parked for a delivery, and that I should move past him. As I drove by I waved to thank him for doing his part to keep the system moving.

There is no passive-aggressive problem in the Big Apple. When people are displeased about something, they don't huff and sigh and hope somebody will notice their discomfort. They don't let frustration and resentment build all day long by failing to verbalize their anger. They just blast away the moment they feel the slightest bit of oppression. At some level, these must be the most balanced, stable people in the country.

Some of the other famous foibles of the city have their advantages, too. Women in New York are notoriously neurotic, and therefore delightfully thin. Men in New York are vain and superficial, which makes them very stylish and pleasant to gaze upon. There are no seersucker suits. And New Yorkers have a high tolerance for the outrageous, which means I can get away with base generalizations like those I just made. In D.C., by contrast -- well, I'll bet the editors of this paper had a big debate about whether to cut out this paragraph, lest it provoke protests from women's groups, men's groups, not to mention advocates for the neurotic and the insecure.

The importance of trendiness in the fashion capital of America can be socially liberating. At cocktail parties, people rarely ask, "What do you do?" This forestalls windy discussions on health care policy and the latest G-8 meeting. Instead, New Yorkers want to know, "Where do you live?" Your neighborhood will tell them everything they need to know: your income level, social pedigree, sexual persuasion, whether you're left-brain or right-brain, practical or romantic, adventurous or timid, new economy or old. And most importantly, whether they should keep talking to you or move on to somebody else.

Perhaps it seems shallow, this informal way of cataloging people and quickly labeling them as worthies or unworthies. But you have to remember, this is a city of 8 million people. You'll never meet the right ones if you waste your time with random conversations. You gotta have a system. And keep the traffic flowing.

Rick Newman covers business for U.S. News & World Report and now takes his bagel with a schmear, whatever that is.



© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Oh, fun, now the whole freakin' site is down..

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