One forgets what it looks like, until one is confronted. Theatre at 1:00 pm on New Year’s Eve Day. Found the time strange. and only when I arrived at the corner of 44th an 8th. did I understand. You could only proceed further if you had a theatre ticket in hand. The theatres had clearly staggered their beginning times in order to make the process more manageable. But that is a tough process. Out-of-towners who understand so little of how the City works in the best of times, were flummoxed at the detour and wait. I had to navigate around them to get to the line to pass through. The Sanitation trucks were doing barricade duty and the policemen were many. The trash cans all had locks on them, allowing trash only to be deposited in the clear bags attached to the outside of the trash containers. These soon were overflowing and the trash was spilling over onto the street. The reverse was true when we exited the theatre, three hours later. The only way out was via the 8th Avenue way we had entered. That was fine with me as the A line is right there. Glad to see it was still accessible. Apparently there was some ‘threat’ and the precautions were in place. Suddenly I realized that the sanitation driver, who normally is ignored in society as he drives the vehicle with the basket-emptiers-hanging on to the rear bars, was putting his life on the line for all of us. If there was a bomb to go off, he would be in harm’s way. Do they get paid extra for this.
From the news I gather there will be 65- 20 ton trucks weighted down with an additional 15 tons of sand. This is to prevent the truck-driven disasters of Nice and Berlin.
