New York state of mind

In every city in which I spend time, there are traits that are unique to that place and that will always be the defining characteristics I associate with the location.  With my hometown in Indiana, it's always how green it is, the sound of the trees rustling, seeing dogs in yards and basketball hoops in driveways, and how people are quick to trust.  At my family's cottage in Canada, it's the peaceful lap of the lake waves, the small-town feel of time slowed so much it still feels somewhere in the 1950s, the helpful neighbors who make friends in a heartbeat, the beautiful sunsets over the lake best enjoyed with a scoop of ice cream from a shop on the street leading to the shore....  And in New York City, it's crowds, loud noise, and an endless collection of different personalities creating curious moments that make me cock my head like a dog or shake it in amusement.

Some particularly curious and uniquely New York moments I've observed during the week:

- On a warm sunny day in the 70s, a 40s-ish woman decked out in a Columbia zip-up down jacket and snow pants, using snow-hiking poles, hiking along the urban NYC sidewalk terrain....  So was she practicing for a future trip, looking for attention, or in possession of a messed-up internal thermostat and in need of walking support?  Sadly, I'll never know.

 

- That curious phenomenon that in my experience is unique to NYC where a bunch of people back up into a line or clump in the entrance vestibule of a building, waiting their turn to exit because a bunch of other people are entering at the same time and not allowing a break for the exiting people....  This doesn't seem all that odd until you take into consideration the fact that in what I shall call the please-let's-waste-some-time-together-in-this-vestibule phenomenon, there is a second and unused door directly to the right (never to the left -- the popular door is always the left-side door when standing on the inside) of the one everyone is so anxiously waiting to exit....  But apparently that second door has cooties, because no one will dare open it and just walk out, preferring instead to wait unnecessarily and get irritated with the wait...  and then when someone DOES dare open it (and by "someone" I mean me) and just go out the cootie-filled door rather than wait for the privilege of using the popular door, people sigh with great annoyance and scoff like it personally offends them that someone might actually NOT want to just waste two minutes of their day for no reason whatsoever other than because New Yorkers are supposed to wait in as many lines as possible to raise our blood pressure and make us anxious and on edge so that we look like the typical stereotypical New Yorker.  This happened to me twice today.  Both times I used the cootie-filled door, and I'm still standing.

 

- Two teenage girls on the subway decked out in designer duds using every other word (alternating with "like") to discuss what they were going to tell their stylists to achieve their desired looks on prom night, covering everything from what kind of dresses their stylists should buy for them to what kind of hair and makeup their stylists should do.  Not that I ever went to prom, but I'm fairly sure that if I had, my suburban Indiana "look selection" process would have been rather different.  One of the girls, nervously biting one perfectly polished red nail, rebelliously declared to her friend, "I think this year I want to be really different from everyone else.  I think I'm going to do my own makeup instead of having my stylist do it.  What do you think?  Is that too risky?  Do you think I can do it?"

 

"You should totally go for it!  You'll be the only one -- you'll totally stand out," her friend responded encouragingly (...or cattily? Or both?)

 

What teen movie did I just walk into?