thought for the moment

By me:

If it's tourist season, does that mean we can shoot the tourists?

I often ponder, several times of the year -- mostly Christmas and summer -- the fact that the residents of Alaska, every single one of them, get a check every year from the state, their cut of the state's income from oil revenues. Because we New Yorkers are supposed to believe, during those seasons when the sidewalks and subways are clogged with people from Iowa or wherever who don't understand the etiquette of navigating a crowd, that it's Good For The Economy that we get frequently inundated with people who don't know to move the fuck to the right on an escalator so those of us who are in a hurry and cannot freakin' stand to stand still just because the stairs are moving at a snail's pace can get by because we have somewhere to be. I ponder Alaska and its oil-revenue checks to citizens because it never happens that I get a check for the State of New York for my cut of the tourist income. And since I'm the one who has to deal with a herd of slow-moving Nebraskans spread out across the entire width of the sidewalk and gawping up into the air because they've never seen buildings more than three stories tall, I think it would be only fair if I were to get a sliver of the hotel taxes they're paying.

One time, not more than a year or two ago, I pointed out to a group of tourists that they were blocking the sidewalk. And one of them had the nerve to ask me what I was doing in Times Square if I wasn't a tourist. And I, being the polite New Yorker than I am, refrained from reminding her that Times Square is not Disneyland, and that people actually live and work there.

I cannot wait till the kids go back to school, because then I will be able to move on the sidewalk again at a pace that assures I will arrive at my destination before 2029.

(Technorati tags: New York City, tourists)