Early Observations of the New Year

Walking back to the apartment in New York City early (around 3 am) on January 1 is a true epiphany in many ways. If you’ve not indulged to the point that you can’t appreciate the whirl of humanity around you (and we hadn’t), you can see things that are probably universal but are concentrated with so many people in such close proximity.

The first thing you notice (after being grateful that it is almost balmy outside, especially compared to other holidays here) is that the cabs aren’t stopping. Once they have a fare, they are RACING down the street and, since pedestrians still have to navigate some significant snow and trash mounds curbside, if you’re not careful they’ll throw water / slush up on you.

In more than one case, it seemed somewhat intentional, but we quickly learned to step back a bit while waiting to cross the street.

We knew from prior experience that there was little to no chance of catching a cab back to our place. This was fine, because the place we’re staying this year was actually closer to where we ended up than before. We only had to go up 10th from about 22nd to 43rd, a mere 21 blocks.

That’s a significant walk, although I’m not sure how far it really is. If you’re just strolling along and enjoying the sites and not freezing off parts of your anatomy, it’s enjoyable enough.

As might be imagined, there were a number of people out who had obviously over-indulged. Significantly. There were lots of ambulances going down the street with people being loaded into them, although it wasn’t clear exactly why.

One well dressed young man, probably in his early 30’s, was heroically acting as a buttress to a fence that he apparently thought was in danger of falling.  His eyes didn’t seem to focus very well and he was engaged in conversation with an older black man who was saying, “Bud, you need to sit down before you fall down. That’s what I always do. You don’t hurt yourself that way.”

I suspect that the young guy’s expensive wool coat and dress slacks hadn’t ever sat in a puddle on the sidewalk before, but they probably did that night.

Walking on, a young, stylishly dressed couple who couldn’t have had a combined waist size of more than 30 inches merged into the sidewalk engaged in a substantial disagreement. He was giving her what-for, and she had that hunched shouldered, “just hunker down and survive” look about her. They weren’t actively engaged in violence, though, so there didn’t seem to be any reason to get involved. He acted like he was going to walk off and leave her, but she kept following him.

One has to suspect that they may not be celebrating next New Year’s Eve, 2012 together.

Drunk people wander around the sidewalks the same way they float all over the lanes when driving. What’s interesting is that many of these people are obviously lightweights, although they ought to be old enough to know their limits.

One woman, dressed in a houndstooth pencil skirt, black wool jacket and a cashmere sweater was taking up all the lanes of the sidewalk. She was about 50 feet in front of us, and we thought she was going to go to the mat a couple of times. Finally, we gained on her a little and realized why she was having so much trouble walking.

She’d lost the high heel off of one of her shoes.

Like a Mack Truck with a flat amongst the 18 wheels, she didn’t realize the problem for a while. Eventually, when we thought she was going to do a face-plant for sure, she seemed to recognize the issue, took her shoes off (!!) and walked on down the street.

Although the sidewalks are pretty dry at this point, there are still some big puddles out there. Frostbite would be a very real possibility were it not for her forethought to take on sufficient antifreeze to avoid this problem.

Soon we were home, tired but having enjoyed our annual late-night extravaganza. Morning didn’t come quite as early the next day – we slept until after 7:30, then dozed for a while longer while wandering back and forth to the coffee pot.

It’s going to be a good year.