Standing in line for an absurd amount of time to get a decent seat in a theater to watch the most anticipated movie of the year isn't at all unique to NYC...but having to listen to the hipster couple in front of you explain The Hunger Games in the most buzz killing way to their friends who obviously live under some kind of rock most definitely is*. They had matching gray sweaters. I should have known better than to get in line behind them, but I was distracted by her leopard** ankle boots. I digress...
Oh & more on the movie later!
I can tell you from experience that walking out of a movie theater and encountering 50 NYPD officers is more than unsettling.
Why the excessive police presence?
Occupy Wall Street.
My first thought?: "BLURGH!"
Why? No offense to the occupiers because I know they're fighting for the 99% which I am very much a part of but I was just kind of hoping that my train would be running so I can get home. While the 1% can afford to jet pack to their penthouses, the rest of us have to slum it on the subway, so shutting down union square really does affect us more than it affects them.
By all means protest!...just don't get in my way.
Thats the native new yorker in me...
So I make it to my train, i'm sitting in my corner seat reading The Hunger Games (yes, after seeing the movie) & the stop comes for me to switch over to the train that will take me all the way home. I walk on to the E, wait for the doors to close, lean back, & keep reading but then something says "check out your surroundings" & I look to my left at the other end of the car & what do I see?
A man passed out on the floor.
He looked like a corpse.
my first thought: "he better not be dead"
my second thought: "why hasn't anyone done anything about this yet?"
my third thought: "i hope no one says anything until after i get off the train"
my fourth thought [after seeing the man roll over and go back to sleep]: "oh hes alive" ::goes back to reading::
again those are the thoughts of a new yorker (& possibly any other big city dweller)
When/how did I become so desensitized?
I used to be all about protests. Now if I see one I just hope they don't get in my way.
& If a man is just passed out on the floor of a train car how do we not first think to help him up? How can we just silently hope that no one pulls the emergency break or alert the conductor so we're not stuck at the station - or possibly even worse - in between stations so we can just get where we need to go.
How often are you only feet away from a possibly dead man & not feel a thing other than concern for the length of your commute?
Is this what New York has done to me? to us? is this why New Yorkers favor wearing all black?
Is it not only because we all look so chic in "all black everything"?
Will moving out of this city lighten up my soul a little?
Or will having been born & raised here make survival anywhere else that much easier?
Do the police officers in your city/town walk onto a train car, see a man passed out & rolling all over the ground, & go about their business?
*I think the fact that i've been called a hipster one too many times has fostered in me this disdain for the thick rimmed glasses wearing, PBR tall boy drinking masses
**Leopard over everything
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