i am completely stymied by the driving culture here in Neue Beige (which is how you say New Bedford in Portuguese). okay. so you know how you and another car are stopped at an intersection, a stop sign or a light? you have to go straight. they are turning left. you technically have the right of way, right? but you’re feeling generous, and you wave them on. they wave back. you get a temporarily nice warm little feeling before continuing on your day.

this is a good thing, that little warm feeling. but here in Neue Beige, this “wave them on” culture is rampant. it happens all the time, to the point of being dangerous. to the point where i’ve decided to take my right of way by going straight and nearly cut off by a car trying to turn left in front of me. at this point i am trying not to get into the habit of waving people on because i know if i try to pull that shit in Philadelphia, i will get killed, flipped off or shot.

then there’s the weirdness of being a pedestrian in New Bedford. the Star Store is on Union Street, which is a major thoroughfare going east-west. two coffee shops, a burrito place and the post office are on the opposite side, so it is a street i cross often to get where i am going. many times i have been waiting for the light, and the cars going both ways have observed me and stopped to let me cross, against the light. this happens all the time. it is fucking strange.

things like these make me wonder. i assume that when a citizen of New Bedford takes his or her driving test, they are hewing to the same rules that i learned when i was 16: that the driver going straight has the right of way, that pedestrians have the right of way, but it’s perfectly acceptable for them to wait until the light turns in their favor, and not expect to stop traffic for me to go get a hot chocolate at Dunkin’ Donuts.

that assumption in place, what makes these little cultural idiosyncrasies happen? why does this happen only in New Bedford, and not in Fairhaven, just across the river? some sort of tacit agreement among the citizenry, that things will be done this way, despite that it really isn’t supposed to be that way. i guess this is the same force in place that makes it okay to slowly coast through stop signs in Philadelphia.

another reason this town should be permanently committed to the scrap heap of the eastern seaboard.