Skip navigation

Wherever a new job lies, the habitual commute emerges quickly and is fairly immutable. There is nearly always a fastest route, and barring construction, dead trains, or desperation for variety, there’s no reason to change it. Given two or more paths nearly equal in length, I switch between them, but even that switching will start to take on a predictable pattern.

When walking through Manhattan, the regularity of the experience can be shocking. Previously, when leaving from my girlfriend’s apartment, I would get my coffee, smoke my cigarette, walk down to Grand, turn right, cross Forsyth, turn left at Chrystie and walk next to the park, then right at Hester, after which it was a straight shot to Baxter.

Unfortunately, I always ended up having to wait for a light when crossing Chrystie at Hester, which meant always having to wait for a light at Bowery, and those are both long, cold lights this time of year. The Keep Moving Principle is important to optimizing a commute, so this bothered me. I eventually noticed that every time I got to Chrystie, the light was about to change in my favor decided to risk the nasty stretch of Grand between Chrystie and Bowery in the hopes that it would get me to Bowery in time. Unfortunately, the stretch is bad enough that it’s always about five seconds too slow to make the very short light on the other side.

Still, that put me in the game on the long block between Grand and Hester. This block is pretty clear, except for one guy handing out restaurant flyers approximately 30 feet south of the Grand and Bowery corner, and I walk pretty fast, but there isn’t quite enough time to make it the whole length of the block before the lights cycle back to the long wait. However, since traffic is pretty clear, when the light turns in my favor, I can cross about 35 feet before the actual crosswalk and weave through the stopped cars on the far side, thus traversing the Chrystie/Bowery portion without stopping.

To summarize: wait 5 to 10 seconds at Grand and Chrystie. 40 seconds down Grand, turn left, pass the flyer guy at 30 feet on the right, cross 35 feet before the crosswalk.

Every. Single. Time.

And it will be exactly like that until someone changes the timing on the lights or the weather warms up and slows everybody down. Though today a guy crossed the sidewalk in front of me with a freshly butchered pig over his shoulder, so that was new.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *