First, a note to the owner of a white Lamborghini who chose to interrupt my daughter’s graduation ceremonies by running his engine. You are proof that Lamborghinis have very loud engines but very small horns.

I have always said that I’d kill the boy.  In this case, I’d simply key his car. Repeatedly.

But that experience got me to a’Thinkin. On any vacation, you really send most of your time trying to get from place A to place B, or some reasonable facsimile of place B.  You’re shooting for Tavern on the Green, you end up a Gray’s Papaya. Eh, close enough.

Getting around the Big Apple takes a bit of work. This is a city that has not a single apple tree, but lots of cabs; their honking is why it is a city that “never sleeps”. More to the point, it is an experiment in Social Darwinism. Only the strong survive.

Choose wisely. Here are your options to visit NY:

Buses – You see them, but never take them

The city has a bus system. But as a tourist, you’ll be told that you have to take the “hop on/hop off” tourist buses.

Simply put, avoid these. A picture is a thousand words, so look at this picture that we took from our hotel window:

Yep – you have a bus in the rain. To be clear, it was parked. Really, you had all these people sitting on the roof of a bus in a severe thunderstorm, including lightning. They are sitting ducks.

Which proves our point that Darwinism works. All these people are sitting there getting wet, and no one thought to say “why don’t we go downstairs out of the rain and lightning”. 

Subways – Yes, they smell like that.

I absolutely love the SNL Skit “The Californians”.  They absolutely nailed the experience of living in LA.  But spend a few minutes in NYC and you’ll find that New Yorkers do the same thing, just with the subways.

To prove it, here is an actual SNL Script, where the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Script:  Pan into a local Starbucks on the Upper West Side. Local because they are in every building in NYC. Debby and Vinny are inside sipping a Grande Veinte Mocha Soy Frap-o-latte with Unsweetened Caramel and Pumpkin Spice.

Don Pardo: And now the New Yorkers…..

Debby:  [to Vinny]  Maybe you’d better get going before Tony gets here.

Vinny:  All right. I waz thinkin’ of taking the A train to Penn Station, then taking a right, going through the tunnel to the 1 train and taking that to South Ferry. Unless the Express comes by first, and then I’ll jump trains at Chambahs Street.

Debby: That’s a good idear.

[They kiss. In walks Tony]

Tony:  Hey Babe, I bought us some Rolexes. Dis guy I know was sellin’ em on the cohner of the 72^nd Street Station and… Vinny? What’r youz doing heah!

Debby:  Tony – what gives, youz being heah so early?

Tony:  I skipped the local 1 train and took the B train to 72^nd street. I made a right, walked to Broadway, took a left and talked to Guido at the door.

Vinny:  Eh…I just came over to fix the Wifi on Debby’s phone. She can Facebook pretty good no. Howz ya doin, Tony?

Tony:  I think youz should go home now Vinny.

Debby:  There’s nothin goin on Tony. Fohget aboutit.

Tony: [emphatically]: I said GET OUTTA HEAH Vinny. Get back on the 1 train at 72^nd street, take the tunnel through times square to the S train, go to Grand Central, and take the 6 train to Queens, where you belong.

OK, I write crappy dialogue, but you get the point.  Locals in New York devote a huge portion of their day just trying to figure out the subway system to go from point A to somewhere in the approximate vicinity of Point B in a vain effort to get there 5 minutes faster.

That said, one day after the apocalypse, when future archaeologists dig up Manhattan, they’ll find a subway map and wonder for centuries what it means.  “Lets see, sometimes there are letters, sometimes numbers, some appear to loop around at different times….  This must be some form of ancient ritual practice.”  Note – they would NOT be wrong.

NY City Taxis – You’re taking your life in your hands…..

Let’s be clear – there is NO reason to ever take an Uber/Lyft type ride in New York City. An Uber driver might try to actually follow the posted rules of the road, such as speed limits, red lights, and signs that clearly say “don’t drive on the sidewalk”. 

Cabbies will have none of that. By the time your Uber driver shows up, one of 10,000 cabs has passed. You could have grabbed one, paid the same fare to the same place and been there about an hour earlier than the Uber.  

I swear to you this is true – on our ride home we get downstairs in the Midtown hotel we’re staying at.  There is a couple waiting (and waiting and waiting) for a car to pick them up.  We tell the bellman we’re getting a taxi.  The bellman, who probably has a side hustle going, says he’ll get us a car.  He starts phoning this guy, effectively saying “where are you”, while cab after cab passes. He calls back repeatedly, every 10 seconds, getting louder and louder.  A cab pulls over on its own, we hop in and head to the airport.

The other couple is still waiting at the curb.  For all I know, they are STILL waiting at the curb.

Sounds great but there is a catch. To ride in a NYC taxi one must be willing to suspend his belief that human life is sacred.   If not, you will never forgive yourself for what is about to happen to you and your fellow man.

New Yorkers that walk the city soon learn that they are the herd of gazelles and the cabbie is the lion.  This is why New Yorkers jaywalk everywhere – it’s safer that way. Mi wife, having never lived in New York City, does not understand this principle.

On our ride home, a nice family of Grandma, Mom and Grandkid were trying to cross a small street that our taxi was going to turn left on.  The light turned green, they stepped off the curb.

An Uber driver would probably wait the 15 seconds until they crossed the street. Our cabbie split right between them.  The younger Mom and Daughter scampered across safely to join the herd, but poor Grandma, her face aghast, was split apart from her family diving headfirst back to the curb. Fortunately she made it. This time.

As for my wife and I, we did precisely nothing.  Sorry Grandma.

Why?  Because we had to get to the airport, and traffic in midtown, the bridge, the overpasses and airport was saying that it would take over an hour and a half. We made it in 45 minutes.

How?  We (by that I mean our cabbie) broke the law; we were accessories to the fact, and glad for it.

Here’s how he did it:   we’re on the expressway, in the right lane, heading directly for an exit at speeds approaching Mach 1. The lane is an “exit only” lane. Where the road forks to the exit and the expressway ends, the cabbie slaps on the brakes (which were last serviced in the Kennedy administration based on the grinding sounds that I heard), veers over the median back towards the freeway off the curb, ends up in the emergency lane and hits the gas.  He goes as far as he impossibly can before skidding sideways to the left back into traffic without checking his sideview mirror.

And here’s the thing – he is not alone. At one such exit, our guy passes a whole line of taxis doing the exact same thing.

I cannot speak for New York.  However, in California, when I took drivers ed, they taught us repeatedly to remember that you “do not pass on the right”.  It was a question on the written test, it was asked to me by the instructor in the driving test, and it came up in driver’s school when I got a speeding ticket.  But I assume in NY, the correct answer when asked if you can pass on the right is “Yea, whatevah”.

So, yes, we knew this was highly illegal, and much scarier than any roller coaster I’ve ever been on. But like before, we did precisely nothing about it.

So, there you have it.  The “rules of the road” to get around the big city.

Good luck, and wear track shoes.