There are a few things I’ve noticed in my journey as an intern this summer.
First of all, I’ve decided that the law forbidding people smoking inside has severely hindered New York City air. On my commute every morning I walk twenty streets and four avenues. During this walk, I smoke countless cigarettes in a secondhand fashion. Now the reason I partially blame the law is because every other block there will be someone standing outside their office building taking massive drags and breathing all over the walkways. Some offices believe that putting a “No Smoking Within 25 Feet of This Sign” sign outside there building will alleviate this problem. It won’t. There will always be a bad-ass smoking next to a no-smoking sign.
This is similar to the no loitering signs. I don’t know why but one distinct memory I have from one of my early high school years is this kid bragging about how he loitered on a no loitering sign. The only thought in my head was “Wow, I didn’t even know this kid knew what the word loitering meant.”
Anyways, I digress. Back to smoking. My new strategy is if I smell smoke to hold my breath and increase my walking pace until I feel the air is clear, which can have disastrous effects. Every now and again I will not account for the person crop dusting the cigarette behind them and finally take that breath only to inhale a huge amount of the poison. Not exactly the early morning treat I was looking for.
You may be wondering what kind of a nerd/loser I am. In fact, I am both but I’m happy with who I am. The real reason I don’t like the smoke is because I’m a soccer player and don’t need any extra disadvantages, my game is already shoddy enough.
The next thing that caught my attention are homeless people. When you walk almost the same route every day, you see the same homeless people because they like to stay in the same exact spot asking for money and such. The problem I have with some of the homeless people is that they do not seem to use any of the money they get each day to better themselves. Don’t get my wrong, I could be totally wrong and ignorant, but I’ll give you an example.
I see this guy sitting outside a theater on Broadway every day. The thing in particular that sticks out to me is he is wearing long pants with MASSIVE holes in them. The holes are held together with a net of safety pins. Now I’m not talking one or two safety pins, I’m talking close to 100, and he wears these same pants every day. A few things come to mind everyday I see him.
First, where did he get all those pins. When homeless people beg for money, people don’t usually drop safety pins in their cups. This leaves me with two options: he used some of his money people gave him to purchase the safety pins or he stole them. If he used the money, the amount of pins would have to be at least a buck or two. He could have used that buck to go to a goodwill store and bought a full pair of pants. If he stole the pins, why go through the risk of stealing pins, when he could steal a pair of pants for almost the same risk with a much greater reward.
The only logical conclusion I can think of is that he keeps his pants like that on purpose for a certain image. This image may be more able to elicit sympathy from a person that only sees him once, but as an every day city-goer I’m tired of his pants. I may grab an old pair of shorts from home, drop it on his lap as I walk by and never look back.
Another thing I’ve grown to despise are tourists. Whenever there are tourists they are always in a larger group. Rather than behaving like the rest of the population and walking in condense lines to allow people to pass, they like to walk in one large line. In their mind, the more space on the sidewalk they can take up, the better. I have three minutes to walk five blocks to catch a train, but its cool; I love it when you guys take up the whole sidewalk and walk at a pace that should be illegal.
I violently walk on each side trying to dodge around them before I decide I’d rather walk in the street and get hit by a car then walk behind these people.
Thankfully I have yet to get hit by a car. Today I came really close. I was halfway down some street crossing from Fifth Ave to Madison Ave when I decided it was time to cross. I look all the way down and no cars were in sight so I stepped into the street and began crossing. After a couple of steps I was inches away from being hit by a motorcyclist who was going about 45 MPH. The guy WHIZZED by me. I literally jumped in the air because it startled my so bad.
With three more days left, I will continue this streak of never getting hit by a car… I hope.
Anyways, I hope I was able to entertain you for at least a few minutes. You clearly have nothing better to do since you’re sitting here reading some asshole’s blog.
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