The Sandbox

Many times, a group of people walking down a busy sidewalk will come to a place where they want to stop.  Either they’ve reached their destination and can’t immediately enter, or they want to renegotiate.  Unfortunately, these people suddenly find they are standing too close.  The walking formation may have been tight, but they didn’t realize it until stopped.  So, the outside wings spread away, and everyone moves a step or two away from each other.  The busy sidewalk suddenly has a clog, the artery is jammed, and pressure rises until flow is restored.

The faregates are one of the biggest chokepoints on the metro system.  People who know, walk in a relatively straight line towards the most open faregate.  If a different one sudddenly becomes available, and it’s easy to switch without cutting someone off, you do it.  But the thing not to do is to walk slowly, in a slant pattern, across the front of the faregates.  Especially bad if there are two of you and you’re both wearing large backpacks.  It’s like a zone defense, keeping pretty much everyone from simply walking up to the faregate.

Once luggage was too heavy, too bulky to drag around on city sidewalks.  Then some very smart person put wheels on the bags, turning the smallest person into a potential baggage-mule.  That doesn’t make it a good idea to outfit mom, dad, and little girl each with a wheeled carry-on and form up in line-across-the-sidewalk formation for a stroll/drag down Connecticut Avenue.  To be fair, Dad was doing the worst job of moving in a straight line, blocking those who tried to get around the “darling” little girl with his serpentine defense pattern.  Call a cab.

  When I’m a pedestrian, I often pretend not to see cars as I enter a crosswalk.  I get territorial and refuse to back down when a car is clearly going to violate my territory.  But I’m not pushing a stroller.  Sometimes you see a mother or nanny poke the stroller out into crosswalks, or even into the middle of the street, with a “you wouldn’t hit a baby, would you?” expression.  Almost everyone will stop, if they see the stroller.  Which almost everyone will see.  So that means everyone minus two “almosts”.  Is that really safe enough for you?

Don’t stand square in front of the doors.  People need to get off before you can get on.  The more you stand back or to the side, the more quickly this can all happen.

onto a crowded sidewalk, while talking on your cellphone, is just dumb.  Yet it happens, over and over.  Alternatively, we get the backwards conversation, sort of a ta-ta on exit, while facing into the store.  People are walking both ways on the sidewalk, they barely register people coming out the door, let alone distracted idiots looking at where they came from.

Then why the heck are you using the complicated fare-card machine?  There are, like ten machines that sell fare-cards for cash.  There are, exactly, two that will take credit cards or recharge your smart-card.  One of these two is always broken.  So if you’re just using cash, why not use any of the other ten machines?  Especially if it’s going to take you an extra three minutes to figure out the only one that will do the job for me?  Can’t you see it has way more buttons than you would ever need?

Umbrellas have little poking things when open, and one big poking thing when closed. Think about where those poking things are pointing when you have it open and are cruising through a crowd while talking on your cell-phone. (eye-level).

Also, think about where that big pokey-thing is pointing when you are swinging it loosely behind you into a crowd you aren’t looking at. (crotch-level)

Travel in a group of people who don’t have exact change, don’t speak English well, and insist on holding up a busload of commuters while you bicker with the bus driver.