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Speaker 1: It's been a couple of months since the New York

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City Council legalized jaywalking in town, and nobody has noticed

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this because everybody was doing it anyway. New Yorkers have

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been jaywalking since before there were stoplights. No New Yorker

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would stand on the sidewalk with no traffic in sight

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and wait for the walk sign. Nobody, not even baptists

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or accountants or people suffering from severe clinical anxiety. Only

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tourists from the Great Plains would stand and wait for

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the light to change, and this is a clue to

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pickpockets to lift their wallets. The main hazard to pedestrians

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in the city is bicyclists who jay ride wildly, flying

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down the bike lanes, whizzing through red lights, bikes and

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scooters whipping silently through the dark, riders dressed in black

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like vampires, riding the wrong way on a one way street,

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and especially treachers are the delivery bikes. New York cops

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ride around in squad cars, and during rush hour, a

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squad car has zero chance of catching a speeding outlaw

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bicyclist racing through the three foot gap between parked cars

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and cars stuck in traffic. The delivery bikes are busy

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because eating in became popular during the pandemic, ordering food

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online from a rest run to be delivered, and eating

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at home. Many people who work from home also eat

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in an invisible population that only ventures outdoors when they

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need to see their ophthalmologist. Have a tooth filled, pale,

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stiff legged, people who are uneasy in a crowd and

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wear masks and avoid eye contact. New Yorkers, of course,

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expect prompt service, even ordering exotic tie and Indian dishes

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with special instructions as to spice and sauce and whether

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broiled or steamed. They phone in the order and they

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expect it to be at their door on the fifteenth floor,

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delivered by Carlos the doorman, within twenty minutes, or they'll

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call the Moogli Temple Cafe and threaten legal action. And

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so you have men on bikes racing through narrow gaps

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on jammed avenues with a backpack full of shrimp curry

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and podtai. Meanwhile, an elderly man me on his way

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to the drug store to pick up some alka seltzer,

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stands on the curb, peering into the darkness for some

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glimmer of light, some sign of motion, some clue as

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to approaching bicycles. This is the adventure of life in Manhattan.

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Serious bodily injuries from bicyclists delivering exotic food at high speed.

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To stay at home software programmers. This is why I

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pay extra to live in a doorman building. Felipe will

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deal with the guy on the bike. He will accept

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the charred walk vegetable medley and the crispy calamari and

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the drunken noodles with peanut sauce, and he will hand

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the bag to Lenny, who will bring it up to

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the twelfth floor and leave it at our door, and

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the food will still be hot, though the restaurant is

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a mile away. This is a remarkable amenite. It's not

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the cold weather that keeps my sweetheart and I indoors.

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It isn't the fear of stick ups. It's the fear

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of being run down by bicyclemen delivering food to other people,

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the fear of lying in the street while covered with

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garlic sauce. Nonetheless, I like New York. I'm glad to

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be done with lawn mowing and snow shoveling. We live

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two blocks from the subway where the downtown train will

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take me to the main library or Lincoln Center or

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lunch in the village. And then there are the little

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human contacts that make your day, like my visit to

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the walk in clinic on Columbus Avenue to have a

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plastic pad that had become detached from my hearing aid,

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removed from where it got stuck deep in my ear canal.

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Not a critical problem, but you can't just walk up

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to someone on the street and say, could you a

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pencil and get something out of my ear? You can't.

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So I sat in the waiting room. I was called

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in to be examined, and I met a doctor who was,

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I could tell, sort of amused at the problem. The

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pad was way in deep in the ear canal thanks

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to my trying to dig it out with my finger.

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I said to her, you are a little over educated

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for this, but where else could I go? And she laughed.

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She had a nurse hold of light and she reached

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in with tiny forceps and she extracted it. She was

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from Seattle, she lived in New York for twenty years.

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She liked it, so do I. No matter what's your problem,

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there's someone in this city who can deal with it

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You just need to watch out for bikes.