I Spy: Pedestrians

WALK you animals
- The Gaper. Hapless in shorts, the foreign and the naive amble and pause, pointing pocket cameras at the Chrysler building from three blocks away, flash plinking feebly.
- The Commuter. Roll-sleeved shirts and ties move in straight impatient lines, juggling Blackberrys and maintaining optimum viewing distance from the flimsy sundress walking ahead. Commuters suffer from animosity toward Gapers.
- The Hailer. One arm urgently aloft and the other heavy with expensive shopping bags, the Hailer demonstrates her greater need to be somewhere, chin high and confident. Note: Manhattan only. Cab drivers understand that the Brooklyn bridges are made of wet papier mache and lead to a grim land of flesh-eating zombies, and will sooner sauté their grandmothers’ kidneys than take you anywhere off the island.
- The Shuffler. The downtrodden and homeless shuffle slowly. Loose, worn knitwear and battered sandals. An ancient walkman looping something through earphones shorn of foam. Without destination or focus they make their steady, glassy progress, foot, over foot, over foot, like wind-up toys.
- The Trolley. Bent with weight into their shopping cart, sisyphean. Bags full of the recycleable and dubious. Grim with apparent purpose.
- The Batshit Loonball. The truly mad travel less; the consistency of a neighbourhood some measure of comfort given wild internal weather. On my block, the Japanese lady asks questions angrily of the sidewalk, sharp foreign consonants and a baffled lack of response. She moves off toward 10th Avenue, carefully walking using her right knee instead of the foot; a loping, unnecessary, uncomfortable tribute to John Cleese.
- The Courier. Heralded by the hated blast of car horns, the brakeless courier careens across the junction through another red. No problem, no worries, no fear.
- The Scooter. Mothers on Xootrs wait carefully for the crossing signal and push off, leading their line of helmeted ducklings on wobbly toy-wheeled Razors home.
- The Inliner. Muscle-topped and tanned, the gay ‘liners power their olympic way around the greenway circuit, legs sweeping out, side to side to side.
- The Skater. The hipster hat and sunglasses glide along behind the row of parked cars. The tarmac growls loudly of skateboard wheels. Dogs follow the unnatural noise and bark taut against the leash. On Union Square, the skaters take turns passing up and down in front of the steps like mediaeval jousters, stretching out manuals, kickflipping, cashing in their hours of practice for short-lived glory.


A million years in the monochrome past when I lived in the arctic hellhole of Aberdeen, Scotland, I fervently frequented a great comics shop called
And by that I mean Attention Deficit Disorder, not some 
You ask a colleague for directions to a sandwich place. You are directed underground to the
You can get all kinds of neato stuff by trawling for torrents.
1. Actually bothering to edit Wikipedia



