A cousin of the unsecured subway grate in the taxonomy of New York City nightmares — see also: crumbling scaffolding, falling air conditioners, getting pushed onto the train tracks — the threat of the open sidewalk cellar has been legitimized on tape. This poor man, though, obviously suffering from a chronic case of the Mondays and with something else on his mind, just walked directly, almost deliberately, into the abyss yesterday in East Harlem. He was not even on his cell phone.
“He didn’t see what was going down. He just went right down, head first,” a witness told CBS New York. “People saw him walking toward the gate, and they tried to stop him, but it was already too late. He stumbled down the gate.” And ended up in the hospital.
The man sitting right there watching said “he could not jump up to help because of health reasons,” but it looks like very much like he just decided to observe. It’s a jungle out there, and no one has your back.
