Left is the New Right

I've been thinking about this for a long time, but now that I have to take the subway to and from work every day it's become just too much. New Yorkers are weird, and apparently left is the new right.

Scenario: I'm walking down the street and spot a Duane Reade (basically Walgreens for New Yorkers). It has two door next to each other. I reach for the one on the right. After all, people in America tend to drive on the right, are right handed, and think that the political left is bad. But as I walk through the door I collide with someone exiting. After an apology and some sidestepping, I turn around and see that the left door is actually the one marked Enter and the one I just walked through Exit. Maybe it has to do with the proximity to the checkout area, you say? Well, you'd be wrong - the checkout is right next to the Enter door. That's weird.

But it's everywhere in New York. Every Duane Reade with two doors is set up like this. Sometimes it makes sense because of the position of the checkout area, sometimes it doesn't. I walked into a Staples (I'll do some advertising here while I'm writing) and it was the same thing. It's confusing, and I keep bumping into people because of it.

The worst part is that it is starting to come into play in other parts of New York. Thankfully, drivers still drive on the right. And large swarms of people stay to the right. But the flow of things is consistently opposite what it should be. Case in point: every day I want through the underground tunnel connecting the 42nd Street subway station with the Times Square subway station. It's narrow and it's hot, but it gets the job done. The stream of foot traffic sticks works just like a road in that the flow stays to the right. But the faster lane isn't in the middle (the left), it's all the way against the wall to the right. It bothers me. It shouldn't, but it does. Every day for 10 minutes I have to go through this primitive traffic design, and with all the body odor floating around and no airflow it just drives me nuts.

So if you live in New York and do things on the right side, from eating to driving, be cool and be the first to start doing it on the left side. It's the hip thing to do. Bikes are already going against traffic everywhere in Manhattan. See what you can come up with!