What New Yorkers really think about you

“GET the hell out of my way!” A New Yorker has confessed what she really thinks about tourists in her city, and it isn’t glowing.

OK, I admit it. Tourists of New York, I walk pretty fast. You may not have noticed me coming up behind you on the sidewalk at the precise moment you decided to flail your pointing finger in the air, identifying for your equally amazed companion a tall building, or a snazzy brand, or an internationally recognised landmark.

No doubt about it. It’s exciting to be here. And I know things drift along a bit more leisurely in Bavaria, or Des Moines, or wherever.

But here’s the thing, my dear tourist shuffling slowly along the sidewalks of Midtown: Get your freaking arm out of my face.

Out-of-town visitors, there are eight million residents of our fair city, not including the approximately 80 million of you who show up at Christmastime to wander around Rockefeller Center baffled in a slack-jawed daze — so here’s a little clue to help you pick up the pace: the streets and avenues? They’re numbered. Do you now know where you’re going? Could you possibly then start perambulating at a pace that exceeds that of the average earthworm? I have places I need to be.

And while you’re at it, please stop randomly thrusting out your limbs to point at everything as I hurry past. Your index fingers have just missed gouging my eyes out. Your forearms swished within inches of my chin. Your knuckles have very nearly boxed my ears.

Sure, tourists are a valuable resource: You dump loads of tax revenue onto the city, you don’t clog up the good restaurants — as long as there’s a TGI Friday’s around — and you largely stick to a given corner of the city.

Welcome to New York, now get out of my way.

But Times Square happens to be where I work all day and where I go to movies at night. If you happen to see yourself on the Gargantutron screen near the American Eagle store, there’s no need to hurl your hand out in the ether and directly into my airspace as I’m trying to negotiate the mob and traverse the six blocks to the movie theatre in something less than 30 minutes.

Please: Use your words. Try these: “Darling, to your left there is a billboard you might find amusing.” No wild gesticulating is necessary.

Another tip: When you move in large groups, often wearing brightly coloured matched clothing, it’s OK to break up a little to let others through your artery-clogging people-bolus. Try it: If Sherri and Terri get more than 6 inches (15 centimetres) away from you, it’ll all be OK. Don’t make me want to punch you in your fanny packs.

And here’s a word about human chains. These are best left to once-in-a-lifetime protests. If, in rare circumstances, you need to hold hands to express solidarity with your fellow man, or form a human fence around a nuclear plant because you think it’s about to melt down and wipe out every living thing in an 80 kilometre radius, I get that.

Walking down Seventh Avenue while panic-gripping one another’s palms, however, is not necessary. It creates a logjam of seething humanity behind you. It makes you look weak, small and (worst of all) un-New York.

Times Square.

You may have heard the canard that New Yorkers are rude. Not at all. What we are is efficient. We don’t ask the supermarket cashier how her day is going — not because we care any less than you might in Oklahoma City, but because we realise the person behind us in line wants to get out of here as quickly as possible.

New Yorkers, on the whole, are respectful, welcoming and eager to lend assistance to those in need of directions. In return, could you waddling out-of-towners kindly get the hell out of our way?

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and is republished with permission.