Henry Alford, who has written for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, has just released his book on etiquette, titled, Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners... and the New Yorker has some tips for his fellow urban dwellers. Over at Thirteen, he got in to one of the most despicable actions one often witnesses on the streets of New York: upstreaming. You know, when you are trying to hail a cab and another person, or group of people, walk just ahead of you to hail one first (teenagers probably do this a lot).
Turns out, Alford thinks this is just fine, at least in certain cases. He writes:
It is my belief that if indeed you are in great need of a cab—you’re late for an appointment, or it is raining, or it is two in the morning and you are standing on a dicey part of Flatbush—then it is permissible to walk upstream of another party that is also hailing a cab, as long as you walk far enough upstream that that party cannot see you. Well, at least not glare at you.
But... the person you are stealing a cab from is also standing in the rain on a dicey party of Flatbush!
