When New Yorkers Talk With Tourists

One of the long-held myths about New York is that it is an unfriendly place.  I never found it so, even when visiting for the first time.  In fact, especially when visiting for the first time, I found people more than happy to give directions on the street (even if sometimes incorrect) and to give advice (don't go see that show, but the one at the Palace is great) and to give way ("after you..." as they opened the door for me).

But perhaps things have changed on that score, too.  At least it looked like New Yorkers' tolerance for visiting dignitaries attending the recent United Nation assembly was wearing thing.  It reached the breaking point, in fact, one day last week when heavy rains conspired with traffic snarls to make midtown Manhattan an impassable mess.

I spent way too long on a bus going twenty blocks up Madison Avenue.  The bus was "Express" in name only.  What should have been no more than a ten minute ride became nearly an hour.  Side streets were off limits because of dignitaries traveling--often by limo-- on their way to and from the UN, and our usually efficient police force seemed unable to get the streams of traffic to cooperate with one another.

On our bus, grumbling turned into outright complaining, not only to the bus driver ("Let us OUT OF HERE") but then beyond the bus and its driver to the UN and why New York has to put up with all these visitors from elsewhere.  "We have to get work done" and "Can't they just give the UN people a couple of streets and confine them to those to get crosstown?" were cries from some.  "New York doesn't need this influx of visitors" said another.

Really?  The UN folks bring tourist dollars to this city just as other tourists do.  And we need that income to maintain all those streets and buses that so many of my fellow bus travelers want to keep to themselves.

 

So when I saw the cover of the October 3 New Yorker, I had to laugh at its cynicism.  In Bruce McCall's brilliant cartoon, tourists are confined to a stretch of sidewalk while New Yorkers have the freedom to walk wherever they like.  And the billboards and ads along the street are cynically promoting things that are bad for you, from bad food to bad theatre to come ones of other types.

No, Mr. and Mrs. Tourist, that's not how we feel.  We love your visits.  We ask, though, that you don't come on the same five days and demand that we re-route traffic so you can get your limo crosstown.  We don't like that one bit.   But ask for directions and we'll happily engage in conversation. 

Well, some of us will.