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By Time Out contributors, edited by Sophie Harris
New York, city of a thousand enchantments (the Empire State Building! the Algonquin cat fashion show!)—and home to the worst drivers in America, according to most yearly rankings. But those drivers are not you, right? They're all those other jerks, speeding up, honking their horns and blaring out summer songs so loud it makes you queasy. What else can you expect to see on the streets of New York next time you're out for a spin? Read on, brave New Yorker…
1. The best parallel parking you've ever seen
2. The worst parallel parking you've ever seen
3. Someone eating a three-course meal in their stationary vehicle, pulled up by the side of the street
4. The loudest hip-hop thudding out of the biggest car stereo you've ever heard. Seriously, the vibrations are traveling from that dude's car through the tarmac and up into your car. Multiply this by 7,000 times in summer.
5. Dogs in cars, speeding down Flatbush
6. New York drivers almost hysterical with despair as they take the wrong turning off the NJ Turnpike again
7. Dinged-up bumpers galore. There is not a car in the city that isn’t scratched to hell at both ends, thanks to the parallel-parking mentality of, “Little more…little more…KERUNCHHK…perfect!"
8. Pedestrians walking straight in front of your car on a green light, headphones in, phones in front of their faces—who get really angry when you nearly run them over
9. Hundreds of cyclists apparently all hell-bent on committing suicide in the messiest way possible
10. Street carts selling gigantoid pretzels strung from their parasols in the grime of the midday traffic. Delicious!
11. Drivers flipping the bird
12. People napping in their cars while waiting for the street cleaner to come so they can then move their cars momentarily to the other side of the street and then move them back, convincing themselves this is not a totally ridiculous thing to do five times a week
13. Cars speedily riding the coattails of passing fire trucks and ambulances as you curse their behavior (but secretly wish you had done it)
14. Dead birds
15. Dead rats
16. Turn signals. Haha, fooled you! No one uses turn signals in New York. Sigh.
17. People employing literally every other form of transportation known to humankind (including their feet), moving way, way faster than you as you inch down a crosstown Manhattan street
18. Yellow taxi drivers defining the meaning of the word gumption before your very eyes
19. The party mobile
20. People driving like animals
21. A lady singing along to an R&B song with so much heart it looks like she's going to cry. Wait, now she is crying.
22. "Funny" license plates
23. Drivers honking their horns in the belief that it's an effective way of moving traffic
24. Occasionally n entire block of backed-up traffic waiting patiently, not honking, while an Access-a-Ride van unloads. A round of applause to you, Gotham!
