Sometimes you're just dealing with different local customs, and sometimes you're just dealing with a gibbering idiot

A portion of the original 1972 NYC subway map designed by Massimo Vignelli, celebrating its 40th anniversary -- still the basis for the map currently in use

by Ken

I'll get to the gibbering idiot, whom I encountered today, about an hour ago, in a minute. It'll be more fun to start with the local customs, because that encounter was altogether lovely.

It was on the third and final leg of Jack Eichenbaum's three-part series of Walking Tours for the Municipal Art Society though neighborhoods that are commonly lumped as the South Bronx -- this one in Morrisania. It was a pretty good turnout (for a really terrific tour), and among the tour-takers was a family from London -- Mum and Dad and two very young daughters, the older one having seemingly just made the gentle leap from infancy to toddlerdom, meaning that there was just the one stroller in two for her little sister. (Naturally the proceedings included a fair amount of toting of both girls.)

While attending carefully to the young uns needs, the parents were keenly interested in everytning around them, and seemed to enjoy chatting with everyone in the group, and since they were bright and aware and amiable, everyone enjoyed chatting with them. I should have asked how they came to be in New York for three months (I guess I didn't mention that they were in New York for three months), and where they were in their stay, but my natural instinct is to mind my own damned business.

I found it fascinating that they had found their way to a walking tour in a hardly heralded area of the Bronx. In fact, they had been doing all sorts of fascinating-sounding things that probably most New Yorkers will never do in their lifetime. When I mentioned that I live in Washington Heights, Dad mentioned that they had just been there -- to the Cloisters (in Fort Tryon Park, along the Hudson River) and also walking around the neighborhood). Actually, Dad owned that they don't do this sort of thing much at home! More power to them for seizing the opportunity while they're here.

One thing that was stilling hanging up the young mum in particular was the street-crossing habits of New York pedestrians. Basically, the way most of us look at it, if we need to cross the street and there's no traffic coming, we cross the street, even if it's in mid-block or against a traffic light.

Now it's true that there are New Yorkers who take this a step further and really don't worry much about the traffic -- they simply go. Just today, following the incident with the gibbering idiot, I was walking back to the subway and waiting at an intersection for either the traffic to clear or the light to change, when I watched, crossing from the other side of the street, two women who didn't allow their clearly very important conversation to be interrupted either by the street, the red light, or the cab coming toward them. I'm a little sorry to say that the cab did stop, and with a vague sense of annoyance the women just kept right on ambling.

Ooh, this makes me so mad! It not only shows a damnable contempt for, well, all the other people living on the planet, but give a black eye to those of us who cross responsibly against the light or in midblock. Of course the cabbie would have been in a heap of trouble if he hadn't been able to stop. I often fantasize about a modification to our legal system which would decriminalize anything that might be done to people in such circumstances -- people who have, after all, effectively suspended their status as members of the human raace for the duration of their obliviousness. (Same deal with, say, who stroll down sidewalks -- or, so help me, on stairways -- futzing with their smartphones.)

To get back to the Bronx, first bear in mind that we in a very lightly trafficked area, just emerging from our walk through a portion of Crotona Park. To have waited for each light to turn red, would have meant long waits when not a single car passed in either direction. As I pointed out later in the conversation (oh yes, a conversation developed), if I saw a New Yorker simply standing at a corner in those circumstances, I would have to wonder what that was all about.

Not so in London, our visitors explained. And of course I'm aware that this is also the case in other American cities, where your first clue is that other people don't seem to be jaywalking and your second clue is the looks you get from locals when you do. Londoners, it seems, take this very seriously. In fact, Mum recalled, she had committed this unpardonable offense once while she was pregnant and been upbraided in the sternest moral tones for endangering the life of her unborn child.

It was, altogether, a wonderful experience -- thanks both to the pleasant encounter with these charming and intriguing folks from Someplace Else and to the rubbing-up-against-each-other (I hate to call it a "clash") of cultures. It was enough to restore a person's faith, at least for one afternoon, in the human race.

And then there's the Case of the Gibbering Idiot.

It was at one of the New York Transit Museum's educational programs, this one a continuation of the "Inside the Archives" series, where the Transit Museum's team of archivists get to share just a little of what goes on behind the scenes in the acquisition, sorting out, and handling of the treasures that find their way to them. Today's program was devoted to transit maps, themed to the 40th anniversary of the version of the NYC subway map originally designed by Massimo Vignelli, which, although substantially modified over that time, still forms the basis for the map currently in use.

The team had brought a number of the maps in the collection, and archivist Carey Stumm gave a nice slide presentation highlighting the museum's map holdings. And then there was lots of time for questions.

And there was this guy, who happened to be seated right behind me, who started launching a series of question about future transit plans. It started with a question about whether there is a map of future transit projects, which had a vague ring of legitimacy in that among the exhibits in Carey's presentations were indeed a couple of maps of proposed plans that were never built, a subject that always strikes a chord with transit aficionados,

But as the asshole continued with follow-up questions about projects that apparently he would like to see happen, it became clear that what he wanted to know had nothing to do with the Transit Museum archives. He seemed to think he was talking to someone involved in transit policy planning for the MTA. As it happens, the Transit Museum is administratively part of the MTA, but it has nothing to do with transit operations or planning. It isn't even, as Carey pointed out, and official archive for the MTA; such archival material as it has been given was material that was being effectively disposed of by MTA agencies or departments, which of course have their own archives.

It would have been easier all around if Carey had just told the jerk to shut his piehole, but she tried gamely and politely to answer his questions -- from her vantage point as Transit Museum archivist. His amazed indignation that apparently there are no projects being planned made it clearer than ever that he had no idea where he was or who he was talking to.

Sure enough, after Carey handled a bunch of other questions, jerkface resumed his crusade for transit projects he would iike to see happen. While he was taking a breath, I turned around and asked him if he understood that he was talking to an archivist. (It was too complicated to point out, "and not even the MTA's archivist.") He shot back indignantly that plans are stored in archives -- and at that level of bellicose imbecility, what can you say, except something like, "No, they aren't." Well, of course, eventually they are, when they become, you know, archival material.

I didn't want to start a whole thing with the piebrain, since really my objection was that he was hijacking the session to the detriment of everyone else present, and I didn't want to add to that. But man, if I'd had the device I often fantasize about, an Instant Liquidator to deal quickly and efficiently with people who have declared their unfitness to continue their membership in the species, he would be one sorry asshole now.

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