Crowds Thicker, Denser; Fatty Foods To Blame

It wasn’t your imagination — this holiday season, Midtown is more crowded than usual:

Outside Grand Central Terminal, where he has tended his “Nuts 4 Nuts” food cart for 10 years, Eric Cabrera said he has never seen anything like it. “Where are all these people coming from?” he asked Wednesday night as he was swallowed by the rushing crowd.

Four blocks west in Times Square’s business improvement district, which has for years recorded rising levels of pedestrian traffic, head counters discovered something peculiar on Wednesday morning, a 57 percent increase in congestion compared to a day almost exactly a year earlier. (The survey was delayed a week because of the transit strike.)

And by Thursday, despite a cold rain, Margaret Cooper, a visitor from Newcastle, England, found herself engulfed in a throng of umbrella-wielding shoppers in Herald Square. “It’s total chaos,” she said.

Crowds in Midtown during the holiday season are nothing new, but this year’s crowds appear to be thicker and denser. It is a change that has not gone unnoticed by the people and machines that monitor such things.

Then again, the thicker, denser crowds may be attributed to promises of free gastric bypass surgery:

Folks longing for a fat chance at fulfilling their resolutions to lose weight headed yesterday for Times Square — where a doctor was offering a shot at free gastric-bypass surgery.

Dr. Dominick Artuso of Dobbs Ferry Hospital was at the Times Square Brewery, interviewing nearly 100 candidates for the surgery, which normally costs between $10,000 to $25,000. Ten patients will get it free.

“Almost everyone’s resolution is to lose weight, so I’m trying to help some people who really need it and get them healthy in 2006,” said Artuso.

“I’m educated, I’m a good guy and I’m extremely good-looking,” said 350-pound John Rodgers of Queens. “The only thing holding me back is my weight.”

Jason Munnerlyn, 37 and 564 pounds, said, “I’ve got two boys . . . and I want to be there [for them]. I’ve tried everything, but for them, I have to make a major change. Hopefully, this is it.”

“I lose weight, I gain weight — it’s like a yo-yo,” said 450-pound Debora Smerling, 38, of East Brunswick, N.J.. “I need to change my life.”