Benjamin Kabak

I found myself on Monday afternoon at around 1:15 p.m. confronted with a daunting task. I had to walk from 50th St. between 6th and 7th Aves. to the corner of 44th St. and Broadway. I could skirt pedestrian traffic until 48th St. by using some of the midtown mid-block cut-throughs, but that still left me with three blocks on Broadway before the glorious pedestrian plaza began.

And so I readied myself for a mash of gawking tourists, slow-moving folks ambling through Times Square and workers on their lunch breaks scurrying to and fro. It was a mostly beautiful, disorganized, urban mess of pedestrians, and all was going well until those slow-moving folk became too much. At a certain point, I could have either shoved some people out of the way or come to a dead spot until the congestion cleared. It was then that the sidewalk rage set in.

The concept is a simple one, as Shirley Wang of the Wall Street Journal explored earlier this week. Behavioral scientists have discovered that pedestrians can suffer from the walking version of road rage. She writes:

Researchers say the concept of “sidewalk rage” is real. One scientist has even developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as “intermittent explosive disorder,” researchers say. On Facebook, there’s a group called “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head” that boasts nearly 15,000 members.

Some researchers are even studying the dynamics that trigger such rage and why some people remain calm in hopes of improving anger-management treatments and gaining insights into how emotions influence decision making, attention and self control…

Signs of a sidewalk rager include muttering or bumping into others; uncaringly hogging a walking lane; and acting in a hostile manner by staring, giving a “mean face” or approaching others too closely, says Leon James, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii who studies pedestrian and driver aggression.

For the cool-headed, sidewalk rage may seem incomprehensible. After all, it seems simple enough to just go around the slow individual. Why then are some people, even those who greet other obstacles with equanimity, so infuriated by unhurried fellow pedestrians?

The article delves into the psychology of sidewalk strollers. The people who want to go faster get unnecessarily annoyed at those walking too slow, and while Wang and the scientists she spoke with seem to want to graft anger management issues on to everyone annoyed with someone moving slowly, I’ve always thought it’s a matter of human nature and selfishness.

We want to get where we’re going at our pace, and we expect walking to be orderly. Fast people on the left; slow people on the right. Don’t walk four across; don’t stop suddenly. It’s common decency. Yet, we don’t see aboveground, and we don’t see it underground.

Although Wang’s story focuses on the city’s streets, the findings in her piece are equally applicable underground. While walking from the lower level platforms at West 4th to the exit every day, I see disorder on the staircases. People who can barely mount the 16 steps hover on the left while other slow walkers climb up the right. Those wishing to leave with haste can fend for themselves in the middle or huff in the back. The drama plays out at every staircase and even on the climb to street level. Slower walkers do not adhere to the rule of the right.

It would be easy to generalize this behavior. Perhaps the selfishness of speed is why straphangers blast music out of leaky headphones, why they take up too many seats and why they litter throughout the subway. The researchers Wang speaks to suggest looking up and staying calm. That’s always good advice for a frustrating walk through the subway system too.

A group of norteno musicians serenade the 7 train. (Photo by flickr user ChrisGoldNY)

For many subway riders, the appearance of a Mexican band during a commute home may often be an unwelcome one. The music is loud; the panhandling aggressive. It’s a disruption to the privacy of a subway ride. Still, it’s easy to forget that these musicians are oftentimes poor immigrants looking to make a few bucks and exploit their skills.

Over the weekend, The Times ran an excellent profile of these musicians — properly known as norteños for the type of music they play — and I found the piece a fascinating glimpse into a world often unknown by most of us. Kirk Semple spoke with a variety of these norteños to draw up a picture of the bands. He writes:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s rules of conduct include an array of regulations that could, and often do, snag the bands, including a prohibition on playing musical instruments on subway trains. Fines, often $75 each, are a regular part of the job, several musicians said. So is detention, often involving an overnight stay in jail and sometimes a punishment of community service, if rarely anything more severe than that. For those in the United States illegally, civil violations like those are usually not enough to prompt a check of immigration status.

But even though $75 is a good day’s earnings on the subway, the musicians seem to regard these penalties as tolerable occupational hazards. “Our babies have to eat something; we have to eat something,” Mr. Tigre, 41, who is divorced and has three American-born children, said with a shrug. “If I had a steady job, I wouldn’t play in the train.”

The groups’ growth has paralleled the rising number of Mexicans in New York and the surging popularity of norteño music. A decade ago, the musicians say, there were only a few norteño bands plying the subway system. By the estimates of several players, there are now at least 15, though nobody is sure of the exact number because the groups are continually forming, changing members and dissolving. Their paths usually cross only underground, in quick, joking encounters that allow them to swap gossip and information about police sightings.

The article delves into the ins and outs of navigating the system as well. Some bands play only on certain segments. One, for instance, avoids police by sticking to the B or D trains north of 125th Sts., and most musicians say they try to avoid the mid-afternoon when school kids “heckle and yell, push and shove.” Some adults too grow hostile and abusive toward the musicians.

It might be annoying to find these musicians in a subway car, and it might be illegal as well. But it’s annoying and illegal with a little bit of character. I’d take the norteños over a crazy preacher any day of the week.

Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Omura

Take a look at this pile of trash. SAS reader Jeffrey Omura spotted it on at the 157th Street station on the 1 train a few weeks ago, and he noticed that it never went anywhere. For approximately a week, this pile of garbage remained at the end of the platform, neglected by all but a pack of rats that settled in for the long haul. By the time it vanished, the scene had turned disgusting.

Perhaps, then, as we have explored who is to blame for subway rat infestations and as one politician has tried to ban food in the subways, we should also keep an eye on the MTA’s garbage-collection policies. I often see workers dragged ripped and leaking bags of trash across station platforms, and I’ve noticed garbage cans overflowing with refuse. Keeping stations clean should be everyone’s responsibility, and right now, no one is picking up the slack.