STREET SCENES

Summer is over and I’ve come to realize, once and for all, how very different the streets of New York are from the streets of London.  I don’t just mean the very obvious differences, such as the grid system that characterizes NYC, or the lack of ancient buildings.  The whole experience of walking is totally different.

     When I first brought my daughter over to New York for a visit many years ago, I carefully explained the numbered streets going north and south and the avenues going east to west.  I devised “Men Pay Less” so she could remember Madison, Park, Lex, and CAB for Columbus/Amsterdam/Broadway.  Now she knows her way around even those areas my generation once feared to tread:  the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, Hell’s Kitchen are nothing to Kit. And I never get asked for directions here.  In London between May and October I might as well have opened a booth on the Brompton Rd. for all the directions I was handing out.   The winding streets, the leafy squares (many more trees in London!), the haphazard connection between what were once an assortment of villages are nothing like the calculated and deliberately planned street system of the Big Apple.

     New Yorkers walk differently too.  Maybe it’s the broader pavements/sidewalks but there’s definitely a difference in walking the walk.  Londoners tend to play a never-ending game of chicken with one another.  You head directly for the on-coming person and see which one of you will step out of the way first, generally at the last moment.  New Yorkers can’t be bothered with that; they have no time for such games and want to get on, diving in and out of the oncoming population like a mountain climber looking for the next foothold.

     Since some form of English is the native tongue of both cities, one would expect to hear that language on the streets.  But how times have changed!  In NYC you are likely to hear almost equal parts Spanish and English with a smattering of other languages. Since Britain entered the EU, you are most likely to hear almost any language in London other than English.  OK, so a few people still speak it but only just. 

     But it’s the actual people on the streets who are so very different.  First of all, Londoners just do not eat while out and about.  I’m not talking sidewalk cafes here; I’m talking hot dogs, pretzels, and the myriad of ethnic foods available from street carts in New York.  In London you might possibly see someone surreptitiously licking an ice cream cone or taking a gulp of their Starbucks on the way back to the office but that’s about as far as it goes.  Londoners are just not that big on that touch of carcinogenic ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ in their food.

     Finally:  men in Bermuda shorts?!?  Alright, I admit London hardly has the weather for it, but even when it does you just don’t see this.  And what I want to know is this:  where are these men going in NYC wearing their Bermuda shorts?  Are they going to the office dressed like that?  Maybe it’s because New York has easier access to beaches than London and therefore the men get tanned more readily that they feel they can go out and about wearing shorts while their London brothers would die of embarrassment before showing pale white knobby knees.  I pointed out the Bermuda short factor to Kit once and she replied that in London men who went to Ibiza wore shorts.  Obviously, they were tan!

     But here’s the thing:  the Brits actually invented them!!!  Once, many years ago, I was staying at Reid’s Hotel in Madeira with my parents.  It was then a very grand hotel, a sort of last outpost of the uncrowned heads of European dynasties and was exceedingly formal with 5 course lunches and 7 course dinners for which one naturally “dressed.”  My parents and I were waiting for the lift (elevator for you Yanks) when the door opened and there before us was a gentleman in his evening attire:  dress shirt and dinner jacket (tuxedo jacket) and DRESS Bermuda shorts with knee socks and dress shoes.  Even Wikipedia describes this:  

   “Bermuda Shorts, also known as walking shorts or dress shorts, are a particular type of short trousers, now widely worn as semi-casual attire by both men and women…. They are so-named because of their popularity in Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, where they are considered appropriate business attire for men when made of suit-like material and worn with knee-length socks, a dress shirt, tie, and blazer.”

     We couldn’t stop laughing as soon as we were out.  Maybe that’s why Londoners don’t wear shorts on the streets?