When lost in Manhattan, remain calm while consulting your Hertz rent-a-car map of the city. They don’t mark all the streets, but if you keep turning left you’ll eventually get to where you want to go. In Pittsburgh for a day, then six hours to NYC, sleep poorly, then to JFK and back twice, up the BQE, over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Manhattan (with some detours), into the Holland Tunnel and then another six hours back to Pittsburgh. Enroute, I discovered there are five rules to honking in New York:
- Honk when the light turns green. It doesn’t matter if you are 30 cars back from the intersection — honk anyway.
- Honk when someone makes an illegal maneuver that you feel could be slowing you down.
- Honk when you are about to make an illegal maneuver that will help you get ahead of other cars. It is ok to run red lights and cut other people off as long as you are honking in the process.
- Honk in answer to someone else’s honking. It is more effective in stereo.
- Honk whenever you feel like it, if none of the above are convenient.
There was a sign on Broome St., (labelled as “Bromme St.” on the Hertz map) on the way to the Holland Tunnel:
Well they don’t even know. You can also drive wherever you want, as long as your car will fit through the space. Lanes are pretty irrelevant and they don’t bother painting them much anyway. The practice was useful since I returned to Pittsburgh on “residence hall move-in day” and had to honk and cut off at least five people from campus all the way to the Liberty Bridge.
Are we done yet? I just want to sleep.
