How to Handle a City of Tourists

I used to live in Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan back in the early 1990s, and as I walked to work through Times Square every day, I’d find myself in the strange role of tourist attraction. Charter buses lined the sidewalks of the theater district, breathing out hot exhaust fumes. Their inhabitants wielded cameras and gazed out at those of us on the sidewalk as if we were part of a strange urban show.

Sometimes I would wave at them and say, “Welcome to New York!” I guess I was half being genuinely friendly and half trying to shock them a little. A few waved back. A few laughed. Some looked embarrassed. Some looked away. It was easy to catch them off guard. It was as if they thought I was an animal in the zoo, incapable of looking back at them in an intelligent way. As if I had caught them in some kind of clandestine act.