A city balks at its big talkers

On the streets of New York, there have always been people talking to themselves. But these days, it is as likely to be an investment banker as a paranoid schizophrenic who’s mumbling into his chin. Of course, in every hamlet in every corner of Earth there are now men, women and children yakking endlessly into their cell phones. But because New Yorkers live so vividly, so compactly, on the streets, the relentless cell phone culture is more noticeable here -- and often more infuriating.

About a year ago, New York banned hand-held phones in cars. And city cops sporadically have gone on binges ticketing drivers including my husband, 30,578 other one-handed drivers and me. City politicians now want to ban cell phone conversations from “public spaces” such as theaters, concert halls, buses and subways. Only the mayor is against the ban, arguing that it is unenforceable. But in a city known for its vigilante justice, this new legislation may save as many lives as a great many of its citizens believe the car ban has.

A recent Harvard University study blamed cell phones for an increasing number of highway deaths, now estimated at 2,600 a year. It’s not clear yet whether New York’s ban is saving lives but it has apparently cut by half the number of drivers whose attention isn’t fully on the road, according to a preliminary study by the city. Still, most of the country -- including California, which has aggressively put the screws to smokers -- is lagging behind New York. But maybe it’s the importunate nature of the crowds or the unforgiving gridlock of the streets, the swallow-you-whole aspect of the subways and the shove-and-ride culture of the buses that makes this great, proud city ready for a new etiquette.

Six rings of the same cell phone twice interrupted a classic vocalist at Carnegie Hall recently. During intermission, a member of the audience yelled, “TURN THAT THING OFF, YOU.... “ The screamer got as much applause as the singer did.

A professor was concentrating on a crossword puzzle on a packed bus when a businessman got into a full-blown conversation on his cell phone. No dirty looks or loudly pained sighs could shut this guy up. Finally, the professor stole a minute from 13 Across and bellowed, “Louder, louder!” at the businessman.

Once again, there was applause.

From the Bowery to the Bronx, bus drivers are stopping midroute to eject self-absorbed cell phoners, if only for their own protection. Otherwise, who knows what might happen when a fed-up fellow passenger snaps, unwilling to listen to a seatmate’s latest gynecological report as described on the M5 bus. Subways are quieter -- not a word usually associated with this famously screechy system -- but that’s because cell signals don’t penetrate below ground. However, a couple of stations are now wired for peripatetic conversation, and there have already been reports of trouble on those platforms.

Philip Reed, the New York City Council member who proposed the latest cell phone ban over the summer, says everywhere he goes he meets grateful citizens with horror stories. It used to be possible to have perfect privacy in public -- it was one of New York’s charms -- and his constituents want it back, they say.

“In New York, we are used to living cheek to jowl,” Reed says, “so it’s precious to people to be at a live performance and be able to escape. I don’t want to have to hear about someone else’s personal life on the phone.” Reed is confident the mayor’s objections to the pending legislation won’t prevail when it comes up for a vote by the entire City Council this month: “It’s difficult to enforce the pooper-scooper law,” Reed adds, “but what’s the mayor going to do, forget about that?”

Still, when it comes to the voyeurs among us, the opportunity for perpetual eavesdropping can offer a choice form of entertainment. “Last week on the M7, I heard someone breaking up with her boyfriend,” a friend reports. “She even lied to him. Said she was still at the office.”

In fact, New York’s always been a 24/7 amphitheater. Couples make out feverishly waiting for a light to change or have knockdown fights that stop traffic. Tourists pose with mounted cops and bag ladies alike; celebrities help us out of our taxis, politely waiting entry; fans at ballgames are as much fun to watch as the players. We, the so-called normal, bystanders and passersby, handle it all with aplomb: steering clear, numbly acting always as if nothing is happening.

Poignantly, a Los Angeles colleague, who lived in New York in the 1980s, recalls how he used to love the way New Yorkers seemed so open to each other on the streets, ready to strike up a friendly conversation with strangers. Now when he returns, however, all he sees “are walking zombies, making calls that are probably completely unnecessary.” His nostalgia probably has something do with the California sun. We, who dwell in the shade of skyscrapers, know that our fellow New Yorkers are accustomed to that paradoxical public privacy. The animosity toward cell phone abusers represents an unheard-of paradigm shift: Greta Garbo meets Donald Trump every day on every patch of pavement.

That said, it is unwise to lose your sense of humor in the city, which brings me to my husband -- born and bred here, my favorite New Yorker. He was nabbed last December, right after the law went into effect, talking on his red, hand-held phone in our green station wagon as he drove out of Central Park.

For a brief period, if violators could prove they’d bought a headset, they could elude the $100 fine. So I bought him one, and mailed a copy of the receipt along with his ticket to the city’s traffic violations department. But I erroneously checked “not guilty” on the ticket, and he was summoned to traffic court four months later.

“Law & Order” it was not.

The Harlem courtroom looked, he says, like a stadium restroom, tiled and grimy. The judge seemed to take the attitude that fate had kept her off the Supreme Court and condemned to adjudicating traffic disputes. When it was finally my husband’s turn at the bench, after a bit of confusion the judge waived the fine. Unfortunately, he still had to pay a $35 surcharge, New York state’s cut of any activity in the courtroom.

This brush with the law totally reformed the man, an astonishingly lousy driver for someone so law abiding: “I am now on a crusade to stop other offenders, like my wife.” OK, I am the worse offender. Although a superb driver, I tool around New York’s boroughs like a suburbanite, usually steering with my knee, holding the cell phone with one hand and tapping at my Palm Pilot with the other.

After a year of such arrogance, I was pulled over while reading my next week’s column on the cell phone to a friend in Washington, and exiting the FDR Drive at 34th Street. A female officer beckoned to me from the sidewalk with a terse wave of her hand. I did not weep or beg or make up some excuse like I was calling a dying relative. No, I waited stoically for the 15 minutes it took the officer to issue me a ticket. Then I -- the typical Manhattanite who goes into phone rage when I have to listen to someone describe the specials when I am on line at Zabar’s -- drove off. And immediately called back my friend to finish reading her my story.