What the Sun Can Do!

Perhaps it had something to do with all that direct sunlight, or the time shift, or the first decidedly warm day of the season?but whatever it was last Monday, it was instilling New Yorkers with some kind of collective madness. It wasn't the good kind, either?it was the savage, nasty, ugly kind, which transformed the simplest of leisurely strolls down the sidewalk into a run through a gauntlet of hatred.

After a cloudy and cool start to the morning, the skies cleared, the sun began to pound the asphalt and by 2:30 the temperatures had peaked in the low 60s. Jackets were carried or left behind in offices altogether. Street vendors who hadn't dragged their wares outside since last September reappeared, and the sidewalks were suddenly and unexpectedly more crowded than they should have been at that time of day.

Something else was different, too. Instead of the breezy, happy-go-lucky?even jaunty?smiles you normally encounter under these circumstances, a sense of an almost-forgotten lightness in the air, every face seemed to carry a scowl, a bitter insult seemed poised on every tongue.

A middle-aged woman, obviously new to the game, was handing out yellow fliers on 7th Ave. in the mid-20s. The way she was dressed she could've easily been some middle-management type in some office somewhere?but instead, here she was out on the street, handing out fliers. She jumped around the sidewalk, frantic, swinging her arms, not looking where she was going, desperate to shove a flier at every single pedestrian who passed her. People tried to avoid her?not just the fliers, but her?and not all of them succeeded.

She spun again in an attempt to snare a couple who were just about out of reach, took three big steps backward and slammed herself into a 40ish businessman carrying a briefcase. She snapped around after the impact to glare at him, her eyes filled with rage.

"Excuse me," he said, as he stepped around her and continued.

She stood stone still and remained silent until he was perhaps five yards away. Then she exploded.

"Hey, you!" she began to shout after him. "You!"

He kept walking, not acknowledging her in any way.

"You! Come back here!" She'd momentarily forgotten all about those fliers she was supposed to be handing out.

When he still didn't respond, she let loose with a sharp, piercing whistle. "You! C'mere!"

She ran after him for a few yards, then stopped, perhaps accepting the fact that she had lost.

"You need to get fixed!" she bellowed at his back.

Three blocks later, two tall teenage boys were staked out on the sidewalk themselves, selling those boxes of peanut M&Ms "for the basketball team." They were having about as much luck as that flier lady. Salvation seemed to be on its way, though, in the form of a 300-pound woman lumbering toward them. Her long, straight hair had been subject to perhaps the shabbiest magenta Manic Panic job ever performed on a human being. Her Birkenstocks had seen better days, too, and her eyes?hidden behind enormous wraparound shades?were aimed pointedly at the sidewalk. She sure seemed to have a nose for the M&Ms, though.

As she drew closer, one of these young Jaycees, apparently in an effort to nail the sale right there, screamed, "Hey?buy some candy...ya freak!"

She altered her trajectory slightly, and sailed on past them.

Fifteen minutes later on a downtown train, an old woman began a familiar spiel:

"Excuse me ladies an' gentlemen, I'm sorry to disturb you...but me and my two children are hoping to be able to get something to eat and a place to stay tonight, so anything you can spare..."

I would've placed her in her 60s, initially, but cases like that, you never know. Things happen to the human face.

As it wore on, her initially sincere, earnest, even apologetic spiel grew angrier. Soon, she was shouting down the car.

"I see ya, lookin' away! I know what that means! Ya don't wanna look at me, it means ya don't wanna give nothin'! I know how you people work?I been doin' this long enough that I know a little somethin' about how you people work!"

On it went, as she worked her way along the aisle, and more and more passengers averted their eyes.

"All you people are terrible..."

"Hey, you have a nice day there, lady," one man offered as she passed him.

"Fuck you!"

Yeah, maybe it simply became too warm too quickly, I began to surmise. Or maybe people were just having a harder time than usual this year getting adjusted to that extra hour of daylight.