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First sentence is strange to me > Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. In other
by galdosdi 10y ago
First sentence is strange to me
> Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change.
In other parts of NYC maybe, but in most of Manhattan I can't imagine anyone doing this more than a few times. They'd be more likely to just "jaywalk." Signal phases are very short and "jaywalking" is so accepted and normal that it seems odd here to have a word for it.
The real irony is that (so I was told) "jay walking" comes from an old derogatory term, "jay" meaning someone from the country not familiar with the city. But in Manhattan, it's the other way around -- the tourists are usually the ones that scrupulously _don't_ jaywalk.
- taneq 10y ago> "jay walking" comes from an old derogatory term, "jay" Really? I always wondered where the term came from, the best explanation I could think of is that the original offense was walking most of the way across the street and then doubling back (so walking in a 'j' shape) which would confuse traffic and lead to more collisions.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoReally. To make it better the term really came into its own because the automobile industry ran various PR campaigns using it in order to combat the many campaign groups who were against bringing large numbers of vehicles to the city. Pretty standard smear campaign.
- will_hughes 10y agoThe TV Show Adam Ruins Everythign has a cute little bit on the origins of jaywalking[1]. At work without headphones so can't verify if this clip covers the origin of the term, but the whole episode does. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s