Just How Big is NY Again?

So - the official stats first. According to Wikipedia the island of Manhattan is 21.6km long, 3.7km wide and has an area of 58.8km squared. Approximately 1.6million people live on Manhattan itself, a further 1.45million people commute to the island every day to come to work.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because where I live you don't actually feel that NY is huge. A lot of the streets are the same scale as the Sydney CBD - this is because the financial district follows the original layout of Manhattan when it was still New Amsterdam. You only hit the classic grid pattern when you get above 14th St. But every now and then I stumble across something that smacks you in the face and makes you realise how big this place is. "And what, pray tell, was the most recent event?" I hear you ask. This time it was the annual Inflate the Balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. "But surely!", I hear you cry, "You mean the actual parade?" No. I left that one bloody well alone after risking life and limbs the night before.

You see, it all went down somewhat like this. I was supposed to be flying out today for a couple of weeks in the London office. Unfortunately the project I am working on is delayed and the trip was cancelled. So I did a bit of a web spank to find out about the parade - coz hey, its just so gosh darn American and has featured in like EVERY sitcom that ever made it to Australia. In doing so I find a Q&A page that as the very last point mentions that they inflate the balloons the night before and that if you want you can go up and see it happen between 76th & 80th streets. Well says I, that sounds like much more fun than standing for hours on end waiting for a parade to wander past. So I hop onto the subway like a good little boy, visions of whacky cartoon character balloons gradually inflating and breaking the surly bonds of gravity spinning around my naive little head. Me, casually strolling around, taking the odd picture and composing a nice little blog entry about same.

Oh how quickly I forgot the lesson of Halloween. Oh yes, what a foolish mistake. (A tale for another time).

You see, the thing is, NY is a big city just chock full of people. It has the highest population density in America - almost 67,000 per sq mile. During regular days NY copes admirably with this number of people. Sure traffic can be harsh - but I survived Bangkok traffic. A place where the unwary has to cope not only with insane tourists hurtling around on death machines called Tuk Tuks, but also the occasional local driving an elephant through town. And the subway can get a little packed during peak hour - but I have survived the London Underground during the height of summer.

But when a special event is on - all hell breaks loose. Because every man and his dog is heading towards said special event. No, not just every man and his dog, but every man, his dog, the cat, the cats' extended family visiting from Russia and one of those weird pets that only boys seem to find appealing - you know, the kind that has more than 4 legs and can only eat something exotic.

I should have realised something was up when I had to queue to get off the subway platform and up the stairs. Aha thought I - obviously this was a small choke point and all would be remedied once the street opened up. (I can do a wonderful combination of blind optimism and stupidity). Having achieved ground level I attempted to orient myself and quickly realised I was in mortal danger! A rather determined looking woman with a stroller the size of a small SUV was bearing down on me hell for leather. It would appear that she had finally achieved some momentum in moving through the crowd and woe betide anyone who got in her way. This wasn't an ordinary stroller - no sirree! This was one of those "Jeep" models with the huge wheels and the children sitting side-by-side rather than one behind the other - for maximum street sweeping effectiveness no doubt. I frantically looked around for salvation. I couldn't turn and dive back down the subway stairs for safety as people were pressing at my back. To the left of me was a sheer granite wall in the form of a 15 storey apartment building. To the right of me was the press of the crowd. With an avenue of escape eluding me - and wheeled death approaching ever faster - I started sizing up whether or not the lamp post was sturdy enough to take my weight, not to mention whether I thought I had it in me to scale something so vertical. Luckily salvation came when the starboard wheel of the stroller (I had started to think of it in nautical terms as from this distance the thing resembled an ocean liner) struck a protruding bit of the fence line and they careened off in a slightly different direction. With the port wheel whizzing by at what must have been eye level my mind found a sudden burst of clarity. Flinging myself behind the contraption I followed in their wake until I could get to a relatively quiet bit of the street. Sitting off to the sidelines - idly wondering whether I could run for a city council & outlaw side-by-side strollers - I attempted to gather my wits and figure out just what the bloody hell was going on.

You see - if there is one thing that the NYPD know, its crowd control. You only have to think about having something at street level that involves more than 4 people and WHAM! The place is flooded with police and metal fences about waist high. It is actually pretty impressive if I am honest. So, unlike muggins here, the NYPD knew that the place would be packed and had responded by fencing off anything that looked like a person might walk along it. The Avenues in NY run North/South and are the biggest roads, the streets rune East/West and are generally smaller. They were inflating the balloons in 5 of the streets between the avenues of Central Park West and Columbus. The NYPD had fenced off the sidewalks and basically were funnelling people into the worlds biggest rat maze. You walked about 800 metres up the left hand side of the avenue, crossed over, and then criss crossed the streets watching the balloons being inflated, before being spat out at the other end to menace innocent Australians popping out of the subway. No doubt having covered 8km of ground!

I had read the other day that there has been a 35% increase in children living on the island since 2000. Tonight I could believe it. Untold millions of the little tykes all over the place. Of course what the article had failed to mention was that the island had adapted. You see, you can't swing a cat in NY without hitting some kind of street stall selling something. Hordes of people set up a couple of planks of wood on top of milk crates and sell everything from NY themed hoodies to dodgy versions of DVD's for movies that you swear they only finished filming last week. At times like this they devote themselves to all things flashing, pointy and slightly dangerous for children. I turned the corner and spotted the entrance to this massive maze, a horde of people with what appeared to be a ratio of 76 children per adult - with all of the children waving pointy swords with coloured lights, flashing hair band thingies and what can only be described as a truly bizarre combination of a flashing spinning top encased in a clear plastic cover errr... thingie. Combine this with the never ending flash of cameras and it looked uncannily like a shiny, happy, disco version of the zombie apocalypse.

I managed to find a convenient mail box to shelter behind to watch said spectacle. Trying to decide whether I wanted to fling myself into the crush, I suddenly had a vision of reaching the half way mark surrounded by a rather truculent bunch of children armed to the teeth with flashing swords - a horde of children tired of walking and giving some thought towards harnessing any beast of burden that was handy aka the nearest convenient adult. Having read Lord of the Flies I decided that wandering into the midst of heavily armed children was too great a danger and beat a hasty retreat to the subway. Quite a tense journey I can assure you - what with one wary eye peeled for rogue strollers and the other for sugar hyped kids waving flashing swords around their head and intent on recreating an epic scene from Lord of the Rings!

The end result of the evening? A new found terror of strollers, a couple of blurry shots of the crowd and a glimpse of a balloon being inflated. Oh and a strong need for a stiff shot of whisky to steady my trembling nerves.