If you know that you are going to be getting onto a boat you wear your sensible flat shoes with rubber soles and a comfortable outfit to move around in. That way when the boat rocks back and forth you'll be ready to anchor yourself into the floor. When you head to the mall for your day of shopping you wear your sensible flat shoes with rubber soles for comfort and to be able to conquer all the escalators that you will encounter through out the day. Before you leave your house you dress for the day ahead.
If you are a New Yorker, your habitat is that of pavement, grates, potholes and yes, the subway car. What some citizens in smaller US capitals might consider a carnival ride, New York women master than their pilates equipment.
Cue Vivaldi and picture a high performance vehicle please…
To start, New Yorkers give themselves the exact amount of time that it's going to take to get where they need to get. They are not trying to be rude if they don't stop when they bump you...they just have a place that they need to be in exactly 20 minutes and from the locking of their door the obstacle course begins.
Women fight their way onto trains with the 8:45 am rush-hour masses in tight blouses and severely restricting skirts, while stepping over bags and avoiding baby carriages in 4-inch heels. Then they stand crammed in over-packed subway cars, barely able to hang on to the hand rail, while managing to keep their balance as the subway gyrates back and forth as well as abruptly starting and stopping for the next 15 minutes (the average ride time that is unless the subway car breaks down… which it usually does), all while avoiding people spilling their coffees, as well as making room for the subway performers singing "Under the Boardwalk" as they push their way through the already packed vessels. When the subway train stops they have 10 seconds to fight their way through the other riders and out the door without getting their tote bags stuck or a heel in the crack, to begin the next obstacle of their daily routine.
Most subways don't have escalators, and these same women in tight skirts and 4-inch heels maintain their 6-mile-per hour walking speed up cement stairs that are covered in soapy water and other mysterious liquids, again avoiding the masses that are headed down into the subway at an equal speed of 6 miles per hour, not to mention littered Starbucks coffee cups and a half eaten hotdog thrown on the floor. Even rubber soled flats are tricky around these obstacles, but the sophisticated dressers of NYC can't be stopped by such novice hazards. They push on.
When finally up on ground level these women now pop it into 5th gear and show off their best performance handling as they zig-zag through the crowds of apparently lost tourists who cause these speeding high-heeled professionals to swerve off path into gutters and dirt patches, proving their off-roading abilities are as sharp as their street skills. There is no time to wait for traffic signals while crossing the busy street so they must avoid speeding taxis and the deadly messenger biker while not missing a beat of their 20 minute timeline. And you can't forget that the pavement is covered with cracks, potholes, manholes, and construction sites. In the end 9 out of 10 of these women make it unscathed.
And in January they do it all in snow.
-Stephen Brennan
-Stephen Brennan
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