Catch the ebb tide at the Met; Learn to walk
Each year, Mark Hurst writes a gift guide for POGs (Parents of Geeks), which tells the earnest parents of technophiles what camera/computer/cheaper gizmo to give their young cyborg this year. The Gift Guide is useful, though pretty standard (no-brainers like “get ’em an iPod”), and the Almanac section is a humorous catchall ranging from good advice (How to Decide Which Seafood to Eat) to pedantic instruction (How to Leave a Telephone Message). Somewhere in between lay these two tips for New Yorkers, permanent or touristical, on When to Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and How To Walk in New York City:
“The Met” is one of the busiest tourist attractions in New York City, on weekends. If you go to see one of the more popular exhibitions, you can wait in a line minutes or longer, then only to be admitted into a gallery space packed with visitors. Here’s a way to see the Met with no lines, no crowds, and no fuss: go on the busiest day Avenue, the street outside the Met. This would be the Sunday in June of the Puerto Rican Parade, the most popular Fifth Avenue parade of the year. Once you make it through the crowd into the Met, you’ll find that you have the museum almost all to yourself. […]
Walking in New York is like driving on a highway. There are rules, and there are safety risks if people don’t follow them. Even if you don’t live in New York City, you can apply walking rules to wherever you live and walk. Here is the most important walking rule: Don’t make sudden changes in course. Don’t suddenly stop, or change your speed. Don’t change directions suddenly for no reason, and don’t make a surprise about-face. Just like driving on the highway: don’t act unpredictably. If you have to walk (or drive) slowly, at least do it predictably, so that people around you can travel safely.
(found on BoingBoing)
