bedtime

New York is the city that never sleeps...unless there is a transit strike.  I tell ya, once those subways and busses are gone this place becomes a ghost town.  Every store, shop, restaurant, and gym was closing at eight or eight-thirty the last couple of days.  It is awful hard to finish up your xmas shopping when it takes longer for you to get everywhere and your window of opportunity has drastically shrunk.

 

As I made my way home around nine last night, having completed *almost* all of my last minute shopping, I could not help but noticed how deserted the streets were becoming.  Even the people who were left walking were practically sprinting, trying to get home as fast as their little legs would carry them.  It really felt like a small town where everyone goes home to have dinner with their families or something.  I don't really know where those people in small towns go, they just do.

 

Living here you often hear how NYC transit is one of the select few systems in the world that runs all 24 hours of every day.  After this strike experience, I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg; do the subways and busses run constantly because we need them to or do we stay awake until all hours because we can?  If the subways were to shut down for a couple hours every night, would we become a more pure city, partying less and sleeping more?  Would we experience less excess and more morality?  Look what happened with the smoking ban - take away the accessibility and the usage dropped. 

 

Thank god no one in this city wants to stop the excess.  We like our 24 hour party, thank you very much.  Knock on wood.