THE MAN AND THE HAND.(The Talk of the Town)(change to pedestrian signals in New York, New York)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 27-OCT-03

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

On the one hand, pedestrians ought to be impressed by the uncharacteristic stealth with which city workers have changed most of New York's Walk/Don't Walk signals. On the other, they should be concerned; if such a radical transformation can go more or less unobserved, we may be even more vulnerable to, say, a terrorist attack than previously imagined. Picture the city trying to repaint every taxi in town U.N. blue--people wouldn't stand for it! But, if you'll notice, pedestrians, for whatever reason, have kept on obeying and disobeying the crosswalk commands, with the usual resignation and disdain, as though the new signs weren't, in fact, completely foreign and strange.

The old Walk/Don't Walk signs,...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.