Spacing has a feature in the magazine called the Manners Duck. Our resident etiquette expert dishes out what acts are acceptable (or not) while you’re out in public. We are always looking for questions for the Manners Duck so please email them to us.
New York magazine has gone a few steps further by publishing the Urban Etiquette Handbook on their website. It provides situations and gives you the answers.
If blogs, reality television, tell-all memoirs, talk shows, lo-risers, and overly loud cell-phone conversations (“Really? A goiter? Where?â€) all mean our once-held notions of privacy and personal space have evolved—or devolved—to the point where they’re barely recognizable, does that mean discretion is obsolete? That civility is extinct? That manners just don’t matter anymore? Some would say, Of course not! Some, Absolument pas. Still others, Up yours! To which we ask, Can’t we all just get along?
For those of who want to play a manners game, here is the caption that accompanied the above photo:
Rules of the road: (1) No raking women with your eyes; glance quickly and respectfully. (2) Offer to share a taxi rather than fight over it. (3) Babies in strollers get right-of-way—until they abuse it. (4) Still no ogling girls—c’mon! (5) And skateboarding, are you kidding me? (6) Not everybody loves your dog as much as you do. (7) No bicycling on the sidewalk unless under the age of 6. (8) Pedestrians can die of secondhand smoke, too. (Photomontage by Peter Rad)
2 comments
The etiquette handbook seems helpful, but I lament that most of the transgressors I run into would probably be too unenlightened to bother consulting it. It’s a shame one can’t always gently remind people to be considerate without risking getting snapped at or worse.
But … girls are so pretty!