I miss people watching with my sister. While my mother shopped at Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn, we would sit together outside the store. This was before smart phones and we weren't into handheld games like GameBoy. We were two old souls in children bodies, splitting a cinnamon roll and people watching. We weren't mean. We wondered about their lives and stories. We loved the various fashion and wondered what is taking our mother so long in Alexander's or one of her other favorite stores.
I really miss people watching with my sister.
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I really miss Bill Cunningham.
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How can you invade the privacy of people who are out in public? It's true that many Americans act as if they are in private when they are actually in public, their eyes glued to their phones or their ears stopped up with earbuds. But what good are cities if we can't use them to observe our fellow humans? When you want to be in private, stay home
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One of the loveliest of life’s activities is to sit in a cafe anywhere and watch people go by. It makes you very aware of the elegance inherent in everyday life and the immense diversity in humankind. It’s not at all an invasion of privacy unless it involves rude staring.
It’s a tragedy that people no longer take each other in but rather bury their heads in their phones or laptops.
I remember a disabled man once telling me that one of the saddest parts of his being in a wheelchair was that passers by, in making an effort not to stare, made him feel ignored and invisible.
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Impolite?! Even a cat may look at a king.
i love the feelings evoked that i am there, thank you
lovely! t
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The notion that people watching is an invasion of privacy is wrong-headed. Indeed it is valuable both to the watcher and the watchee. This is part of learning about the world.
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You can play the un-PC "Music to Watch Girls By" instrumental while you are watching everyone.
These kinds of NYT articles are always written as if such things only exist in NYC. Tiresome.
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@Max Brockmeier
To most New Yorkers it really doesn't exist anywhere else outside of NYC so it doesn't matter.
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As a Street Photographer, I found your opinions here helpful. I photograph both the built and natural environment and the juxtaposition and contradictions between the two. I also like to photograph the single person, isolated in these environments. I normally stay at a distance, unknown but observing behavior.
The cell phone has enabled Street Photography but it has also killed it. The problem is not about access to Street Photography but in the subjects themselves. People no longer show emotion, no longer interact with each other or their environment. The focus and passion are played out digitally, with the Mobile devices. They are less interesting as potential subjects. They pose for selfies and pose for others but true behavior has been directed to their digital world.
This piece gives me interesting advice. Thank you for it. i will try to experiment (as I tap this response into my Samsung Mobile Device)...
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