You'd think, then, that these new, wide walkways would be easy to navigate. You'd also think that Americans would be immune to the dubious charms of a dangerous buffoon such as Donald Trump, but here we are.
My partner and I were moseying around downtown the other day when we came upon a sidewalk roadblock. Two women stood still and cheerfully chatted. A man standing next to them toyed with his smart-phone, a thickly padded baby stroller resting in front of him. The three of them took up the entire sidewalk, forcing the rest of us to eddy around them like river water around mossy boulders.
Being a man of great charm, I muttered muted imprecations as we passed, although, courageously, not loud enough to be heard. "It's called a sidewalk," I grumbled, "not a sidestand."
My partner and I spent the next ten minutes riffing on possible correctives: sidewalk on and off ramps, slow lanes and fast lanes, pull-off areas for the phone-consumed, police foot patrols to slap tickets on walking texters. "Maybe," I mused, "people who block sidewalks with double-wide baby strollers should be sentenced to watching an unending loop of 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians.'"
This is not the first time I've noticed--and groused about--those who stroll cluelessly. Indeed, it is my long-held theory that people walk the way they drive, and each falls into one of three basic categories.
There are the determined walkers, who stride purposefully toward a focused goal. On the highway, these are the fast-lane folks who just want to get there.
Then there are the sidewalk drifters, who sort of shamble about, veering hither and thither with no apparent objective. On the road, these people change lanes without signaling--shortly after traveling six miles with their signal blinking to no purpose.
Finally, there are those walkers who simply stop in the middle of the pathway, attentive only to their own own internal Global Positioning System, which, as it happens, does not exist. On the road, these are the people whose car you find inexplicably stopped perpendicular to the roadway as they attempt a fifteen-point turn.
When driving, we all agree to follow the laws governing the road. When walking, we implicitly agree to follow the more misty principle of the social contract, which suggests that, in a public space, it is our duty to be aware of those about us. Public space is shared space, and sharing with others--as most of us learned in kindergarten--requires cognizance of them.
This idea is at the root of common courtesy, itself a seemingly archaic notion in this season of degraded political and cultural American discourse (hello, Twitter trolls). Indeed, so devolved has our communication become that the very idea of common courtesy now seems a radical one. Civility rests on the idea that each human being possesses inherent dignity and deserves basic respect; civilization itself, then, rests on our ability to mute otherwise unchecked passions (hello, road ragers) for the common good.
There is, of course, no one way to walk on a sidewalk; varying approaches will arise from varying cultural mores. Fifty years ago, the San Francisco Peninsula was largely Caucasian; now, happily, it is a dynamic mix of people from India, the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe and the Asian/Pacific Islands, as well as of Americans who see their roots stretching back to Africa.
People from varied cultures will naturally employ differing ways of walking (and driving). The social contract, then, has to expand to meet everyone's needs and customs. Only someone who ultimately stands foursquare against cultural diversity in their neighborhood promotes the threadbare idea that their way--and their culture's way--is right, while all other ways are wrong. This is tribalism at its least enlightened.
At its finest, inhabiting the public space, including strolling on sidewalks and driving on roads, is like a sort of improvisational dance. Any dance benefits from partners' awareness of one another. This requires attention and anticipation. Yes, many of us wish to freestyle--I'm looking at you, the group blocking the rest of us as you saunter four abreast--but in the end, we all benefit by noticing, respecting, and perhaps even occasionally deferring to our improv partners, don't you think?
Now, about the cleanliness of the sidewalks--ah, but let's leave that for another time, shall we?
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