The Jaywalker’s Tango
photo and essay by Tyrone Herzog

Picture, with me, an urban roadway. The one I have in my mind is in Chicago. A two-lane street with ample sidewalks. Part of the regimented grid that runs north and south of the city by the lake, and claws its way west into practical infinity. To keep things simple, we’ll call this boulevard, Broadway. Trees line Broadway. Spaced lovingly by a long-dead urban planner, over the years they have reached toward the sun with inspiring grit and beauty. It is winter, and their branches are naked, but they loom with an indispensable silence. The canyon walls, as it were, are apartment buildings of every variety. Some of the brick structures are as old as the street itself. Others are new-fangled, steel and glass erections. The first floors of many of these buildings house retail outposts. Anonymous resale stores with rusty bikes in their picture windows; insurance vendors that speak Spanish; Starbucks.

The clientele of the causeways are as varied as the snowflakes that are beginning to fall. Someone from every cranny of the globe moves along the concrete. Most of them are poor. Many are possessive of that eager weariness that true, blue-blooded Chicagoans wear like a tattered overcoat. Nelson Algren once wrote something to the effect of: those who do the city’s work also keep the city’s heart. Broadway speaks to this. Those who have done the most work, and who are now hunched and unbending, plod behind pushcarts. Their meager possessions, a hallowed reminder of their long arduous journey toward an admirable end. As well as being the city’s very soul, they are the city’s epidermis, for they are left to rot in the acrid air of bureaucracy by the powers that be. These aged workers absorb the suffering and hardship that the weak, puffy upper classes could never bear.

Below this admirable outer-layer, underprivileged youth bucks with energy to spare. It is they who will mold the true direction of this metropolis, for they are the forbears of tomorrow’s high culture. Their means of creation and flourish is what the bourgeoisie larvae will take as their own, and turn into profit. Be it the newest incantation of soul music or a fresh approach to wearing track pants. And how do these saplings make their way along this cold unfeeling grid?

Like they own the fucking thing.

Whether in boisterous packs or alone, the young sally forth with a lackadaisical gusto, reminiscent of the rabid dog: wounded but crazed. Their individual questing cannot be interrupted by the cars, trucks and buses of Broadway. Whereas the old and timid make pilgrimage to the crosswalks, the unflappable youth cross the street at will. Stepping right into the path of bustling traffic with zero regard for the specter of bodily harm.

They step off the curb, holding their falling beltline through an oversized polo shirt. With conjured limp, they charge across the stream of automobiles. Typically, half of the street is traversed and a postured break is taken on the yellow lines. The youngster keeps steely eyes and a rigid jaw line as the thundering vehicles brush past his face. At the very slightest break, the limp resumes and the rest of the street is taken. The toughest of these lunatics will let the bumper of a car nearly tear off the calf during the final step. Whisking it up and out of harm’s way at the last possible moment.

These are the jaywalkers, and this is their tango with society at large. Jaywalking is a subversive act of catharsis; carried out for the world to witness—and to judge.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word jaywalker back to 1917, cross-referencing to the word jay, which has a number of slangy uses. Sadly, the relevant usage refers to a stupid person. Or, as an adjective: dull, unsophisticated, inferior, poor. As if the educated and well-to-do are somehow unable to barge through free-flowing traffic. Once again, they fancy themselves above reproach because of their pyrite lineage. Well, balls to those opulent fools. Leave them their precious crosswalks. Living their lives under a cloud of self-important delusion, crossing at their paltry crosswalks to sully any chance that their precious existence might be cut short, and the world deprived of their meaningless golf handicaps.

Let the jaywalkers rise up and celebrate their lowly station on the totems of this world. For now, the ruling class can have their delusions to feast on, for in the next universe, they will lick the muddy boots of the proletariat.

Jaywalkers have real living to do, and just as sure as the vast goings on of traffic will not get in the way of this, neither will the petty labels that The Man has designed to keep fearless living in check.

Walk on.