{"id":330,"date":"2005-08-15T09:30:29","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T17:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/08\/walk_or_risk_getting_fat.html"},"modified":"2005-08-15T09:30:29","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T17:30:29","slug":"walk_or_risk_ge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/08\/walk_or_risk_ge.html","title":{"rendered":"Walk . . . Or Risk Getting Fat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Times notices the new walk\/don’t walk signs that feature an emaciated, hunched over pedestrian<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Could they have been subliminal harbingers of the city’s slenderizing campaign?<\/p>\n

Is it just coincidence that in the summer that New York City went to war against trans fats, a new generation of “Walk\/Don’t Walk” icons began appearing around Columbus Circle with a noticeably skinnier walking man and an almost emaciated red hand?<\/p>\n

Your typical walking man – a familiar silhouette around town in the five years since the first new light-emitting diode pedestrian signal was installed at 35th Street and Queens Boulevard – is a pretty robust, smooth-shouldered, round-headed fellow who steps off confidently into traffic, as bubbly as a Keith Haring figure.<\/p>\n

This new guy, by contrast, seems a bit rickety. There isn’t a curve to his body. His head – is this too cruel to say? – is pentagonal. His arms and legs are mere sticks. Indeed, he looks as though he’s stooped over with a bad back. (Maybe from waiting so long for the light to change.)<\/p>\n

About that upraised hand. The one that New Yorkers have grown accustomed to – not that they pay it any mind – is as smooth and solid as a porcelain glove mold. The new hand is so skeletally thin it might be the crypt keeper’s.<\/p>\n

But they say you can never be too thin. After all, the skinny man is formed of 45 light-emitting diodes, where the older version tips the scales at 60. The new hand has 64 diodes, the old one 120. So maybe this was an energy conservation step.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Times notices the new walk\/don’t walk signs that feature an emaciated, hunched over pedestrian: Could they have been subliminal harbingers of the city’s slenderizing campaign? Is it just coincidence that in the summer that New York City went to war against trans fats, a new generation of “Walk\/Don’t Walk” icons began appearing around Columbus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture_infrastructure","category-citywide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}