Isolation in the Big Apple

Despite its immensity and the throngs of people that crowd the canyon-like streets, New York is a lonely city. You can always spot a New Yorker in the Deep South because they walk around with a look of deep suspicion. This wariness is triggered by the warmth, solicitude and hospitality of southerners. In New York City we do not speak to one another unless we have to. Riding the subway, packed in like cattle, elbows mashed into ribcages, we New Yorkers manage a remarkable paucity of verbal communication. The advent of ever increasing personal audio technology in the form of iPods, CD players or cellular phones has only served to deepen the isolation. New York is a city in which myriad tongues are spoken but there is one universal form of communication among us all-the quick glare of the eyes that signifies "leave me alone!" or "get out of my way!"

What could have triggered such iciness and lack of feeling between people? There are many reasons New Yorkers are so unfriendly. Firstly, while everyone in the city understands that crowding is a fact of life, no one likes it and we all bristle at the slightest imposition by strangers. For example, there is a way to walk down the sidewalk that facilitates pedestrian traffic. Walk briskly down the right side of the sidewalk and stay in your "lane." If you are walking in a group, walk close together or single file. To New Yorkers these are simple tenets of getting where you are going efficiently. Nothing angers a New Yorker like finding in their path a family of tourists waddling five-wide slowly down the left side of the sidewalk and staring at the tops of buildings while they take up the whole walkway.