Manhattan Mojo for a Walkable Neighborhood

Foot Rage: It was a sunny afternoon in Yellow Springs, and the village was filled with people and cars as if it were a Saturday in July. I was walking to the grocery store when I had one of those sudden foot-rage experiences (yes, non-drivers also feel rage) which would either (1) guarantee I survive to be an irascible old man; or (2) give voice to the final words that should be carved on my tombstone — not for their eloquence, but their passion.

The light turned green, for me and other through traffic on Dayton Street, as a black car approached the intersection from Walnut Street. Instead of stopping, the driver rolled into a right turn on red, right in front of me. I stepped halfway off the curb, then stepped back. I waved my white cane. And, well, I shouted what I shouted.

After my heart rate settled down, I remembered a similar experience in New York 40 years ago. It made me smile. And I needed to smile then.

I had just arrived in the city and checked into the Grammercy Park Hotel. I decided to walk over to the offices of the American Foundation for the Blind, where I would give a seminar the next day. I had a shoeshine and a newly tailored three-piece suit. I was a man about town, and I felt like I belonged there.

I felt like the guy in that Joni Mitchel song, “I was a free man in Paris, unfettered and alive.” Except it wasn’t Paris, it was New York. I hadn’t gotten my Manhattan mojo yet. I needed to settle into the tempo of the street, the people and the traffic.

As I stepped off a curb a taxi careened around the corner, blaring its horn. At the same instant a tattooed arm swept across my chest and held me back. Two skinhead kids on either side of me shouted in unison at the taxi, “AW, FUCK YOU!”

Then they nodded silently toward the street. OK to cross now. We’re a platoon.

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