The Fucking Tourist Index

I wrote recently in a much more somber context about the New York Times article on the gap between people who were in New York when the towers fell versus those who have moved here thereafter. It has long been my view that one is officially a New Yorker when you catch yourself muttering "fucking tourists." (This is usually a reaction to a family of visitors strung out across the sidewalk hand in hand forming an impassable human chain as they saunter along looking upward at those great big buildings, causing all the people who have to be somewhere to clamber around them or walk in traffic to get past; or perhaps this family of visitors is taking up half a subway car, popping up and down every few seconds to look at the map, generally in groups; or maybe they are simply stopping short as they step off the subway escalator to take in the marvels of an urban transit station while the people behind them are forced to backpedal because the visitors are blocking their egress from the moving stairs . . . you get the idea--and now know what not to do when you get here if you want to blend. See, it's not just all about wearing black. Which, incidentally, tourists never do.) But I have come to think that the "fucking tourist" measure can be further refined.

• Lifelong New Yorker: Never passes through Times Square under any circumstances, because it's full of fucking tourists.


• Assimilated New Yorker: Same as above, but used to pass through Times Square sometimes before he/she knew better. Knows exactly where the Good Morning America studio and the MTV studios are as a result of this prior experience.


• Partially assimilated New Yorker: Still passes through Times Square periodically because he/she is still secretly enthralled with the Blade Runner spectacle of lights and signs and videos and news crawls, but is still ticked at the fucking tourists he/she is forced to wade through. (This would be me, pre-9/11; I was in Times Square just after the first plane hit.)


• Converted New Yorker: Missed the fucking tourists when they went away. Walked through the mostly deserted Times Square, fighting tears at the site of cops from Florida and New Jersey standing in for our own, who were busy downtown. Reflexively wanted to mutter "fucking tourists" at the few who came and who, upon finding the rare genuine New York City police officer or firefighter who was not otherwise engaged at Ground Zero, wanted a picture taken with him/her. Didn't mutter "fucking tourists," though, because it hurt too much to think about why they were so thin on the ground.


• New New Yorker: Goes out of his/her way to help those families stretched across sidewalks; either slows down to walk behind them (even if it makes him/her late) or asks them really nicely to move and explains why. Doesn't call people fucking tourists, and when he/she finally assimilates enough to do so, won't feel the tension between the gladness at finally feeling healed enough to bitch about fucking tourists again and the irony at the memory of when we missed them so much.