As the kids were dozing off I fled the birthday party and decided to walk to the 72nd street station to catch the express train downtown. It was nice out and I guess the sugar had caught up to me because I decided to just keep walking and then walked all the way to union square and got the train there.

I walked down the new walking path in Times Square and it was after 1am... look at all those people! It was enough to make you believe it was 9pm. Was everyone out late on Saturday night? Was there a full moon? I saw a few shady things happening outside of a strip club and a dude walking down the street with a prostitute, asking her where she was from. Old Times Square still exists between the cracks I guess. I also saw some mobster looking dude and a lady in an evening dress having their photo taken in the walking path before they got into a fancy car.

Google maps is telling me that I walked 3.4 miles in order to do this. I was going to guess between 2 and 3, so I guess I was slightly off. No wonder my feet hurt today.

At the party last night, a little girl told a delightful story about a bum sleeping on the sidewalk naked so you could see his "hot dog," which she then whispered meant "his penis." I laughed and laughed. I didn't see any naked bums on my 3.4 mile walk at 1am. Bonus!

It is an interesting idea to take a lot of cars out of times square and make New Yorkers actually want to go there again... and if this experience is any indication, it's totally working. My grandma loved seeing times square when she came to visit in 05 and mentions it a lot as one of the best places in NYC, which I try to tell her tourists love but when you live here you avoid it. She thinks avoiding it is dumb, and maybe it is. Maybe we're jaded? Maybe this project will work and more people will be drawn there this year without totally hating the experience.

"http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/05/26/the-crossroads-of-the-world-goes-car-free/"