The Eight Types of People You Walk By in Manhattan

On any given day, there are four million people traversing the streets of Manhattan. If you’ve ever been a part of that moving mass of humanity, you may have noticed something about Big Apple bipeds: they fall into groups.

Before I go on, I cannot stress enough how little research has been applied to this. I couldn’t have used less science if I was a creationist. These are merely the observations of an anonymous member of the Manhattan horde, putting his two harmless cents right in your face. Thank you for volunteering your face to me.

Here are the eight kinds of people you walk by on the streets of Manhattan.

1.  The Wide-eyed Forest Foundling

Our first kind of Manhattan pedestrian has both their mouth and GPS app always open. Not all touring visitors fall under this distinction: perpetually awe-struck, slack-jawed observers, who don’t walk so much as scuttle along like mollusks taking selfies. And they’re not necessarily folks from Malaysia or Fucknuts, Alabama either. People from Jersey can be this way. It doesn’t take distant origins to be overwhelmed by New York City, just an adorably simple brain. (Awwww.)

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2. The Cantankerous Long-time Resident

Grumpy, slouchy, furrow-browed, and probably dragging a small dog alongside them, the CLTR has a contemptuous side-eye for anyone and everyone. Favorite vantage point from which to side-eye? Along the sides of trees as they let you begrudgingly pass on the sidewalk they’ve lived near for thirty-seven years. You can be a tourist, a transplant, or just someone making their way from point A to point B (how dare you!). You could be Jesus Christ healing the sick on Eighty-Sixth Street. Your presence, to the CLTR, will not be welcome. For the CLTR is their own planetary body and we are all just space debris sullying its Nantucket-sweatshirted orbit.

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3. The Rhinoceros

This species of pedestrian is characterised by their head-down, unwavering forward charge through any and all bodies. A Rhinoceros can be any shape, gender, size, or class, and they don’t necessarily need a horn protruding from their head – although a few of them would want one. They are most commonly seen during AM and PM rush hours in Lower Manhattan and Midtown and tend to keep the momentum of a cannonball no matter what soothing audiobook is playing in their ear.  No one knows for sure what happens when two Rhinoceroses collide head on, an unstoppable force meeting an unstoppable force. It’s safe to assume a hole in the continuum will violently burst open, sending reality as we know it into an interdimensional spiral. Or they’ll just curse each other out.

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4. The Involver

Oh, you’ll know everything about this archetype within a second’s passing. Whether they’re with someone else or on their “own” (streaming themselves) doesn’t really matter. The spirit in which they openly talk about their own super interesting lives and recent audition/poetry collection/financial maneuverings/improv group/original shakshuka recipe is the same: zealous. Conspicuous gesticulation often accompanies the behavior of The Involver, so that you and all others in the general radius are feeling their unmistakable Main Character Energy. Remember: it’s their world, you’re just an uncredited background extra in it.

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5. The Solicitor

Armed with a clipboard, a pile of fliers, comedy tickets, or, sometimes most unnervingly, nothing at all, The Solicitor takes you entering public life as an invitation to sell you a thing. Of course, why else would I walk to the park with a brown-bagged tallboy except to buy stuff that’s described to me. But hey, I get it, we’re all just trying to make a living. There but for the grace of the gig economy go I. Still, I hate when anyone tries to sell me anything. I won’t even let the young kids selling candy for their basketball teams give me their pitch. I just take six Twix bars, leave them a twenty and go on with my day. Best of luck on the hardwood, boys!

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6. The Silent Film Comedian

Being a dad at the helm of an oversized stroller, I’ve become especially familiar with this ilk of local migrator. The Silent Film Comedian is the one who contorts and compresses their way around, over, under, and sometimes through obstructions on the street, to avoid being within proximity of other walkers. Their timing, adroitness, and flexibility puts them right there with the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. If you captured them in black-and-white and gave them a jaunty piano score, they’d be shown in film schools. Sometimes, when I know a Silent Film Comedian is coming, I anticipate the tight space they’re going to eventually work their way through, on the edge of the sidewalk, between the sideview mirror of a van and a mailbox, without breaking stride. The amazing thing, they almost always make it through seamlessly. An expert head tilt and a balletic hip swerve and they’re good. Do they practice such evasive dexterity at home? When they finish up in their own bathroom, do they get up and go around the back of the toilet to get out?

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7. The Gauntlet

These are often out-of-towners, but they can also be arrogant locals almost doing it on purpose. Those creating The Gauntlet didn’t get the memo that other people use the sidewalk too. The Gauntlet moves in a shoulder-to-shoulder formation, like a Roman legion, allowing no one to pass them on either flank – forcing other pedestrians to A) either maneuver around into oncoming car traffic, B) walk at a slowed, creepy pace directly behind them until there’s an opening, or C) break the formation asunder, essentially declaring war.

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8.  The Wild Card

You might see this type coming from blocks away, but you just have no idea what to expect from your imminent path-crossing. What kind of human is this exactly? You start doing process of elimination in your head: Are they crazy? Tough to tell. Physically ill? Don’t think so. Maybe just European? Nah, too weathered. Homeless? But those shoes are brand new. Crime-scene fleer? Could be.  Ventriloquist? Nah, no puppet.

Wait, my bad, it’s one of those Tibetan monks selling beads. Weird, that was tough to tell from the corner.

Oh no, he sees me. Shit, he’s approaching. Damn it, he’s jumped categories! He’s a Solicitor! No! Fine, fine, just give me six holy necklaces and go, please!

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