Where do you get that walk oh so lean?

The average New Yorker walks more than a mile, and often 2-4 miles, per day. All this pedestrian movement provides ample opportunity for observing and, yes, judging, the way that people in this city walk. There are fast walkers, weaving in and out of people on the sidewalk, visibly and sometimes vocally frustrated when stuck behind a gaggle of slow walkers who take up the entire 12-foot sidewalks. The aforementioned slow walkers more often than not travel in packs and spread out, making passing impossible or requiring a perilous jaunt into traffic to get around them; tourists are their own sub-category of slow walkers, stopping every ten feet to look up or consult a map. There are lopers, who have a large stride and move their arms in long, exaggerated arcs. Shufflers barely pick up their feet, and a rhythmic scratching of shoe on pavement follows them wherever they go. Heavyset people often lumber down the sidewalk, seeming to shift their entire weight from one leg to the other with each step. Women in high heels click their way up the block while flip-floppers smack their way down avenues. Young people take subway stairs two or three at a time, while the elderly cling to the rail and drag themselves up one step at a time.

It’s rather like the freeway without vehicles.