Yet Another Cell Phone Rant

The cell phone has done irreparable damage to the street and bar scenes of New York City.

Everywhere I go, people are suffering from what my mom called the “hand to face disease.” They’re all talking to plastic, failing to pay attention to the world around them, connecting only with people they already know, shutting themselves off from the unexpected interaction with a stranger, and annoying the hell out of their fellow citizens on the bus.

This one was the perfect cliché: some broad yakking over the roar of the transit engines, going on about her divorce and how the ex-husband wasn’t going to pay for an entire year of her apartment. Fer fuck’s sake, girl, no wonder he cut you loose; your fellow passengers were about to throw you out the door, too, if you wouldn’t shut up.

And then there’s the guy with his iPod buds in his ears, phone plastered to his cheek, creaming me with his fat backpack on the sidewalk, totally oblivious to everything around him.

Later, I’m in a bar, watching the Dutch team stick it to Romania; back in the day, I’d have struck up a chat with the guy next to me, also rooting Holland on. Instead, he’s narrating the action to his buddy somewhere, interspersed with real estate business; so whereas before the advent of wireless communications, I might have overlooked his occupation and cut him some slack, now I can’t help but notice he’s a slumlord fuckwad.

Thankfully, at the last place I hit this afternoon, my bar mate was an elderly merchant marine sailor, a guy as drunken and Irish as his name—John Ryan—for whom a cell phone would have been as incongruous as a glass of white wine. Instead, he drank Beam and Coke, talked to me about “shipping out,” shook my hand profusely, and stuck my hat on his head as he staggered out the door, not a cell phone in sight.