Going Places.(hurrying)(Brief Article)

I am a New Yorker, and I want to get there. Where is that? Wherever I'm going, but I want to get there fast.

I was coming out of the 72nd Street subway station on the Broadway line recently when I was struck by this truth. This particular subway station is notorious for its congestion, having few staircases up from its platforms, and few exit doors aboveground. It sits in a traffic island, bound by one street flowing north, another flowing south, and a third flowing both east and west. Slowly and laboriously I was rebirthed from the station in a polliwog mass of a hundred other New Yorkers. Topside I saw that the DON'T WALK sign over the street I wished to cross was flashing red: a warning that the waiting cabs and buses were about to resume their mad scramble. To make the light, I would have to weave, broken-field, through the dozen human molecules jostling in Brownian motion on the traffic island, then spr-int across the crosswalk. If I waited through an entire DON'T WALK sign, I might lose all of 15 seconds. I did what any New Yorker would do, and made like O.J. (pre-murder). I want to get there.

If speed is of the essence, why take the subway? The subway system is transformed from the late '70s, when I first used it, and every graffiti-swirled car and station looked like Son of Sam's rec room. But it is still early-last-century technology, and the subway user must run the risk of delay (explained over the scratchy loudspeakers thus: KKHHWWKKHHWKKWWK), as well as views of the odd scuttling rat. A good cab on a straightaway can beat the Canarsie line hollow, and there are no fauna in it either (generally speaking). Why then go underground? Because, at certain times of day, the subway does have a competitive advantage. Rush hour is the subway's peak of crowding and stress. But it is also the time when aboveground traffic comes to parking-lot stasis, especially in midtown. Then New Yorkers, like Zarathustra, go under.

We walk for the same reason-that other means of motion have failed. I was going to a black-tie function at the worst possible time and place (rush hour, midtown), which is the time and place of all such functions. Traveling in a cab, my momentum died somewhere on Madison Avenue behind St. Patrick's Cathedral. The clock hanging outside the Tourneau store mocked my immobility; since it is composed of three clock faces fused together, it mocked in triplicate: Ha! Ha! Ha! There was nothing for it but to pay Ali, the driver, and hoof it. My patent- leather shoes are a little stiff for the purpose, but the soles are good.

The key to rapid walking is always to be aware of a whole half block ahead of you. It helps me that I am tall. What can I advise short people? Tough luck; I have the competitive advantage. The worst place to be is the wall; you won't perish there, like Dale Earnhardt, but you often get boxed in. Curbs are ...