Escalator rage: an open letter to tourists

Dear visitors to NYC,

We need to talk.

In between the receipt of your economic stimulus checks, the arrival of springtime, and the recent opening of a movie featuring the world's most idealized vision of New York, I understand that the city has suddenly become host to, how to put this, rather a lot of you.

Indeed, you are cropping up everywhere. I see more of you every day. You are standing confusedly on the subway platform with maps in hand. You are running across the street in gaggles. You are even, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, thronging to midtown Manhattan and clogging the checkout lines at H&M and Old Navy. (Would I be out of line, dear tourists, to suggest that you use your time in New York more wisely, perhaps by seizing upon the opportunity to shop in places that don't exist elsewhere? And in a part of town that does not so closely resemble the pit of despair?)

As a resident of this city, albeit one of its outer boroughs, I understand that New York has an incredible draw. It's one of the biggest, brightest, most exciting places in the world. And you, darling tourists, want to experience it -- of course you want to experience it. And because I can utterly relate to the desire to visit New York, particularly in vacation-sized bursts that allow you to return to a quieter way of life just when the crowds and noise start to make you feel like your head is inside a washing machine, I am generally okay with all of the little....er, idiosyncrasies that you bring to the city along with you.

For instance, I do not get upset when you wander in slow-moving clumps, oftentimes taking up the entire sidewalk, along busy streets where there is a lot of foot traffic. After all, people move very quickly here -- much more quickly than in other parts of the country -- and all that walking you've been doing has probably tired you out.

Similarly, I forgive you for stopping, all at once, in the middle of the sidewalk in order to crane your necks upward for a view of the very, very tall buildings. Sure, it halts the flow of pedestrian traffic in both directions and forces people into the street where they sometimes get hit by taxis and die, but then again, if you're from the cornfields of Iowa, you don't have tall buildings to gawk at. So when you're in New York, which does have tall buildings -- nice ones! -- you should look at them.

I don't even get mad when I run up against one of you clogging the subway entrance, ineffectively swiping an empty MetroCard and then hurling yourself against the turnstiles like a trapped insect before shrieking back over your shoulder, "It's broken!" Hey, I get it -- other parts of the country don't have a subway. You're not used to it. And I'm the first to admit that ours, especially, has a bit of a learning curve (and even then it doesn't work half the time.)

Dear aforementioned tourists, this letter is not for you.

But to the tourists in Macy's today -- the ones who were riding the wooden escalator up to the 5th Floor -- you, YOU GUYS, have some explaining to do. Because while other tourist faux pas can be explained away by ignorance of and/or a lack of familiarity with New York City's little uniquenesses, you have me baffled. I cannot even fathom what would cause you to ride up the escalator together, all TEN of you, and then, upon reaching the top of said escalator, take one step off and then just stand there mooning around like a bunch of cows.

Oh, my darling, darling, incorrigible little tourists. They do have escalators where you come from, do they not? You are aware, aren't you, that an escalator is a moving staircase which by its very design necessitates that people step off of it and continue moving, lest they create a horrific bottleneck at the top that threatens everyone behind you with the very real possibility of being sucked into the escalator? Because, and this is key, the escalator is a mindless machine which does not care that you have somehow found yourself in the menswear section rather than the perfumerie, and cares even less that you are sure you were heading in the right direction? Seriously, sweet tourists, FUCK YOU. It works the same way in Macy's Herald Square as it does in every other part of the country: You get to the top of the escalator, you step off, you move out of the way so that your fellow escalator passengers do not stack up like unruly flapjacks against your immobile, and, dare I say, rather ample posterior.

And if you don't, then at the very least you most certainly do not give a dirty look to the girl who, rather than be sucked into the ever-moving escalator vortex of death, accidentally brushes against your fanny pack when she attempts to step off the escalator herself. Because she may find herself briefly, or even not-so-briefly, entertaining the idea of grabbing you by the throat and forcing your face into that lovely jagged place where the escalator track meets the immobile floor and laughing maniacally as your eyebrows get sucked off.

Speaking hypothetically, of course.

Very best wishes for your stay in New York,
Kat