Please Disregard Aerosmith's Instructions

As I mentioned earlier, I hate cars. I hate getting around by car. I like to live places that I can get around by public transportation, walking and riding my bike. One of the very few nice things about Boston (the other being the squirrels that you can feed from your hand in Boston Common) is that it is a very walkable city. Well, it should be a very walkable city, but the people who live here go out of their way to make sure it's not.

Aerosmith had their biggest hit about, what, a hundred years ago with Walk This Way. I'm certainly not claiming to know exactly what message these deep thinkers of drug-fueled arena rock were trying to say with this little ditty, but they are from my own little personal hell-hole that other people call Boston or Beantown or (for a reason unknown to me) the HUB. So I hope that the message in their biggest hit song ever (Thank you Run-DMC) is not to walk "this way," as in the way Bostonians walk. You are just asking for trouble and a life of tense misery if you follow that advice. First of all, people in this town like to walk with the same attitude as the one they drive with.

The walking in Boston is a lot like the way they drive, which is the absolute worst in America. People cut you off without looking where they are going, the ones coming at you in your lane think they have the right of way even though they are obviously on the wrong side of the sidewalk (just so we're clear, the concept of move to the right to let people by coming from the other direction seems to work just about everywhere else in this country. It is, of course, the only time that moving to the right is a good thing). So you either end up bumping in to people or walking off the narrow sidewalk just so you can get around. If you stick to the sidewalk to get by these people they will in no way make even the slightest amount of room for you to get by. A group of people could be walking toward you, spread across the whole sidewalk, and you get over to the right and, the thinking goes in most places, that they will move slightly over to give you space to get by. But guess what? More often than not they won't even give you the break away soft shoulder. You just get plowed through like you weren't even there. This has happened to me on the Harvard Medical School campus from a medical faculty member. I got knocked into a wall because she refused to move her bag back a little as she went by me and I went full-on into the wall that I was already hugging because I saw her coming toward me and wanted to get out of the way. No "I'm sorry" or "Excuse me" or anything that even acknowledged what she had just done.

Walking in Boston is most like high school than anything else I've experienced in adulthood (except for the moron popular kid getting elected president). Everyday it feels like you are the unpopular kid in the hallway in high school that gets bumped all the time walking down the hallway and knocked up against the wall with "hard shoulders" all the time.

And it's competitive like that too. Or like the way people drive has bled over to how they walk here. People actually will cut you off a mere inch in front of you for no real reason. I've been tailgated many times by people who had plenty of room to walk around me, but they chose to walk as close to my butt as they possibly could. Twice now I've been in those situations and decided to just stop. They, of course, then bumped into me. And they give me a look like I somehow did something wrong. Seriously, do you know how close you have to be walking behind someone to not be able to stop fast enough not to run into them? It's the combination of the competitiveness of these people and their weird lack of any real comfortable personal space. I can be standing at a crosswalk by myself and one other person will walk up. Now, there will be a whole area of curb, sidewalk and road shoulder to stand. But people here seem to like to choose to stand right next to me so close that our shoulders are almost touching. They don't seem to have a clear idea of what personal space is all about. I think these are the same guys who will stand right next to you at a urinal, even though there are ten urinals and only the two of you in there, and strike up a conversation. Weirder still, that seems to be the only place in Beantown that anyone ever strikes up a conversation. Which is really the only place I'd rather not.

And for the competitive nature of the walking in Boston, try this little trick sometime you're in town. I usually walk at a pretty good clip if I'm going somewhere and I'm by myself. There seems to be walkers in Boston who are a lot like drivers in a lot of places, that is the attitude of "I have to get past this guy even though he's not going slower than me I just have to be in front" You've seen all of them on the road before, I'm sure. It's a bizarre alpha-male thing for sure, when it's just in driving. But to do this when you are walking around the city is absolutely nuts. And how I know it's not just that they want to walk faster than I am walking is that I've tested it. First off, the people who just want you to go faster are the tailgater types I've mentioned earlier. They don't want to pass you, they want the world to move at their speed and think they can force it to by riding your ass. The passers just want to be in front and it doesn't really make a difference on how fast they get there. I like to play a little game with them. As I'm chugging along down the sidewalk or pathway in the Common and one of them comes up along side me to pass me by there's something I like to do which gives me minute and minutes of fun. See, as I'm starting to get passed by one of these guys, which is happening slowly because I'm walking at a really good pace so these guys have to really kick it up to get past me anyway. But when they get alongside me in their passing mode I slowly start picking up my speed. Just a little bit at a time so it's not even really noticeable but he just can't quite make it past me. This forces them to make a decision, pick up their speed to make sure they pass me or just give up and be happy with your own pace and be content that you will be getting to where you need to go in plenty of time. They always choose the former. It is delicious fun watching them try to pass me when I'm fucking with them. They are so determined that one guy even decided to just start running and be done with it. That kind of entertainment has gotten me through some days here in shittown. I'll be laughing at the guy a good hour later.

I figure I helped him get his exercise for the day.




Next: The two worlds collide. And collide. And collide...