I Want to Talk About Times Square

This is an old picture, but I thought the giant Cup Noodles was pretty funny, so here we are.

I explained to a friend the other day that I had been to LA but that we’d only really seen Hollywood Boulevard and the Chinese Theater. This is akin to coming to NYC for the first time, spending half a day in Times Square, and then leaving. We did not get a true feel for LA, nor did we leave the city super excited by what we’d seen. But we sure got a strong taste. New York works the same way: Times Square does not paint a complete picture of our great city, but it does a great job of imparting an aspect of its essence (one that may never leave your clothing).

This week, I found myself once again in this mecca of American culture, because I was going to see a Broadway show (Grey House, 3.5 stars, novel but confusing). As a New Yorker, my blood pressure automatically rises when I catch the artificial aurora of the Times Square billboards peeking through and above the surrounding buildings. When I know I am getting close, I mentally prepare for battle. I steel myself for shoving and don a look of annoyance that says, “Hey, I’m walkin’ heah!”

New Yorkers avoid Times Square like they avoid Dominos, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Sometimes, you have to try Olive Garden for the first time (that’s a different story) or take a curious out-of-towner to the M&M’s store. Sometimes, four days a week, you have to work in an office building right across from the M&M’s store (sorry da).

Times Square is the melting pot at its boiling point, sitting right atop the blue flames of the burner. Stuffy businessmen blend in alongside TikTokers interviewing high school hooky players and tourists from every corner of the world. It’s an anthropological museum. To enter there is to enter a space where we are all equal in the eyes of the pigeons.

En route to the show, as I weaved my way through headless Elmos and Batmen coming in under 5ft tall, I reminded myself that this was a necessary evil of living in one of the most popular cities for tourism in the world. It was the only way to where I needed to be, so I could deal with 300 people standing in the 100 square feet beneath the Hard Rock marquee. But my body language was saying, “No, you clearly cannot deal.” It’s almost a one-person competition: how many people can I scowl at for walking too slowly, or how many people can I elbow check for standing and gawking where I need to be crossing the street?

Before I arrived at our pre-show dinner, my friend texted in the group chat, “Times Square during rush hour is the epitome of hell omg.” She has a point. It’s infernal. But for lots and lots of people, the inferno is exactly what they come to The Big Apple to experience.

Times Square has always been the hub for some of NYC’s most taboo culture. In the 80s, it was peep show after peep show after peep show. But the truth is, despite the stain Times Square has irrevocably left on New York, Times Square is important.

America is famous for its kitsch and cringe and hyper-consumerism, and nowhere on Earth illustrates this better than Times Square. Piccadilly Circus will never understand. You enter Times Square and are overcome by American-ness, flashing in your face and infiltrating your nostrils and assaulting your sanity. It’s still a peep show, really.

But without the uglier sides of our culture, we wouldn’t be NYC. We need Times Square as much as we need dirty dogs and Mariachi bands on the subway and near-death Citi Bike experiences. Times Square revels in the debauchery we often deny ourselves on a day-to-day basis. It’s an escape via becoming one with the crowd.

As someone who has been there, done that, I am never going to love Times Square, but it doesn’t exist for people like me. It exists for those clueless tourists waving pretzels at their family members swallowed by the crowd.

After we left the show the other night, we squeezed between an overflowing trash can and hundreds of people gathered in a circle to watch street performers—the kind who promise an insane stunt but really just breakdance for 45 minutes while taking your money and hinting at more to come. I yelled out above the din, “It’s a scam,” knowing full well nobody could hear me.

Maybe it is a scam. But maybe it’s also exactly what they came for.