The “big city phenomenon” is an explanation of weird things one may see if one is out and about in off-peak areas.

The phenomenon first got its name during a very late night drive in Toronto some years back. I don’t remember now why we were outside at 3AM, but there we were. And so were thousands of others. Traffic on the highways was just as heavy as it tends to be at times like 11AM or 2PM, that is outside the morning and lunch-time rush. There were still people walking on the streets, and suicide bikers on the roads. What were they doing there, when all normal people should be pillows? One could only guess. The sheer constancy of activity resulted in the christening of the subject term:

Big City Phenomenon. n. The tendency for a city to have so many people in it that every tiny subpopulation of weirdos is large enough to make the place look crowded.

This goes double for a place like New York City. I and some cow-orkers spent an hour or two mingling with the natives in downtown Manhattan yesterday. The place demonstrates that it is possible to be totally crazy and normal at the same time. Traffic lights? Merely hints – or entrapment for the optimist. Traffic lanes/regulations? Catechism from a despised religion. Courtesy? Not to be found on the street, though there is plenty in the restaurant where the acting-career-bound waiting staff tries to impress with suave persona rehearsals.

I have not seen so many people in one place before. Plus it’s a big place. Manhattan alone is perhaps the size of old Toronto, but it’s entirely built-up-and-up like that smaller big city’s downtown core. There is no room for anything. Dog walking parks are paved fenced enclosures 8m by 20m. Grass comes in multiples of city blocks on one of the several parks, which teem with people. It would be suffocating, if it weren’t also hilarious: the miracular adaptibility of the human race is on display here. Except to see the opposite end of the economic spectrum (the sand/cowdung trading economies of dark Africa), there is no need to go elsewhere to see people operating at peak environmental stress. Dirt, noise, poverty, insecurity, ostentatious wealth, private oases of silence, it’s all here.

The city that never sleeps. Of course – how can anyone sleep at all?