It is two o’ clock in the morning and I have been inspired to take up my pen. During one of my late night perusals of the news before grabbing some shut eye I happened upon an article on the BBC news site by Home Editor Mark Easton titled “Advice for Foreigners on How Britons walk.” The title alone was eye catching. As I read about the “accepted autonomy of the pedestrian,” and “the anarchic spirit of British walkers” I found myself wishing that someone would write a piece on walking in New York City. —Let me amend that statement. I actually found myself wishing that some worthy politician or city council would begin to aggressively pass laws governing walkers in the Big Apple.

I don’t mean laws against jay walking. I mean laws designed to clear up sidewalk jams throughout the city that never sleeps. I reveled in the idea of the Fast Lane campaign reportedly proposed in London nearly fifteen years ago. Imagine a lane for slow walkers and an entirely separate lane for fast walkers. I was reminded of a popular You Tube video made by puppet web series Glove and Boots that was created to advise visitors to New York City. —Some helpful dos and don’ts for tourists. In the video, a wonderful puppet by the name of Jonny T advises tourists that there are two speeds in New York. —“Move fast or get outta da way!” I have watched this comedic video dozens of times, perhaps to savor hearing Jonny T tell tourists what I long to yell from the rooftops of the entire Empire state. In fact, I have passed the link to this particular video on to friends who all laugh knowingly at Jonny T’s advice on how to be a successful pedestrian in New York City, and not simply a tourist, which according to Jonny equals a “jerk.”

The fact is that New York is a pretty intense  town. I believe that most New Yorkers — myself included— feel that there is some sort of invisible clock that begins a count down from the moment you step out of your door each day. Time, it seems, is against us. If we don’t move as fast as we possibly can we’ll be late. If we’re late… Who knows how many awful things could happen, the least of which could be running late to work in a city with over 8 million people in your way, blocking the streets twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and twelve months out of the year. With minimal knowledge of this kind of anxiety can you imagine the Steeple Chase-like event that the morning commute becomes for us New Yorkers? Sweating is never an option here.

For many the commute begins by fighting one’s way onto a crowded subway car where we are repeatedly taunted by the voice of a train conductor or recorded voice “thanking” us for our “patience,” and “apologizing” for the “train traffic” ahead of us or in other cases the seeming whimsies of the train’s dispatcher. Upon escaping the cavernous Nether World of the subway, many of us have a few scant minutes to make it into our place of employ and still maintain a reputation for being a timely and worthwhile employee. Here begins the real drama. Upon ascending to street level we are greeted, not by crowds of well wishers rooting us on to the finish line from the sidelines, but by hundreds of thousands of living obstacles. Some call them tourists. Now don’t get me wrong. As New Yorkers we are more than happy to share our city with guests from out of town, out of state and around the world. It’s just that we’re often unhappy about sharing our sidewalks and our streets with our wonderful visitors.

Its seems that tourists have an innate ability to do things in pedestrian spaces that every New Yorker knows is a clear violation of our Never-Yet-Printed Rule Book for Walking. As a New York City native I have often expressed with great irritation that tourists behave as though no one has to get to work, or any other place for that matter, in this city. You ask for examples? I’ll give you some that I believe drive serious side walk stompers crazy.

When is it ever a good idea to stop and have a conversation with several friends in the middle of a crowded street? As logical people struggle to find a path around the clog that is now formed, why doesn’t it occur that stepping aside and clearing the walkway would be best? Then there is the girl with the rolling suitcase and the huge bow in her hair. She walks blithely down the street, staring up in awe at all of the tall buildings that most New Yorkers have never actually seen the tops of. Making her way down the avenue, she trips anyone that comes within a few feet of her with that deadly weapon called luggage. —The Italian tour group waiting smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk for their bus to Woodbury Commons, prompting angry glares from the proletariat that have just completed a harrowing trip from New Jersey or Pennsylvania and are making a frantic dash to the office after being run through the strainer that is the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

What about that group coming out of a Broadway matinee just at the precise second you’re let out of work or school? Your only guiding visions are that of your own fireside and the grueling sequel to your earlier commute that lies between you and your door. But here they come. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. Their many companies boast captains that carry flags as they march down Broadway like wildebeests heading to the Serengeti. My personal pet peeve is to see tourists walking in the bike lanes or in the street along the curb on busy avenues like Seventh Avenue, Eighth Avenue, or Broadway. Don’t they know that those “lanes” are reserved for really serious, street smart, fleet footed New Yorkers who have places to be and people to meet? It is here that one fights road or “pavement” rage the hardest. Here you are doing your darndest to make it home in Gotham, when some lummoxy tourist lumbers in to the path. After all, they’re on vacation. What do they care if you never make it home? You feel your arm beginning to extend and the tips of your fingers begin to tingle with that unsavory impulse to shove the slowest object in front of you. But, almost at the last moment you desist. After all, that’s no way to treat a guest. Did I mention that New Yorkers love having visitors?

There isn’t enough time to report in full detail of tourists with flash equipped cameras that pop out in front of you just as you’re about to swing around the corner in hopes of some yet undiscovered shortcut. —The family that walks five or six abreast unswervingly down the main thoroughfare as if they own the block. I will resist regaling you with tales of trying to walk through Times Square or down 34th street between the hours of four and six. I won’t recite accounts of entire out of state school groups loitering at the entrances to busy subway stations while you wonder just where the police are in this town anyway. I will even forego stories of trying to pass through Rockefeller Center during the Christmas Holiday season, while attempting to retain a street legal level of sanity.

While this may seem like the rant of another “rude” New Yorker, I’d just like to say— You’re absolutely right! It is! However, in all seriousness, as Jonny T clearly establishes in the Glove and Boots You Tube video, New Yorkers appreciate and even respect tourists. “We want you to come experience our beautiful city,” but when you do, just remember one thing. “Get outta da way!”