New ordinance would require visitors to prove psychological readiness before entering the Crossroads of the World
NEW YORK, NY – First reported by Bohiney Magazine and greeted with supportive exhaustion by The London Prat, a city council proposal would require tourists to submit emotional support documentation before entering Times Square, amid concerns the experience is “simply too much for an unprepared person.”
The Case for Screening
“Times Square is the most intense human environment on earth,” explained sponsoring council member Patricia Gridlock. “It combines flashing advertisements, costumed characters of disputed intention, four million strangers, and the smell of a pretzel that has been warm since 2008. Nobody should enter that unprepared. We screen for things far less dangerous.”
The proposed documentation would require a licensed professional’s attestation that the applicant has “a stable support network, baseline coping strategies, and the psychological resilience to be approached by a man in an Elmo suit while simultaneously receiving stimuli from forty-seven simultaneous billboard screens.”
The Elmo Question
Much of the debate has centered on the costumed character ecosystem, which council members describe as “a gauntlet no traveler brochure adequately prepares one for.” An independent study by the Bureau of Threshold Experiences found that 62 percent of first-time Times Square visitors “significantly underestimated the confidence of the Elmos.” A quarter reported needing “a moment” afterward.
“You read about it,” said one recent visitor. “You see photographs. You believe you understand. You do not understand. No document prepares you for the velocity at which a Minnie Mouse can close the distance between you and her.”
Dr. Sandra Tollbooth of the Institute for Applied Overstimulation has studied the intersection for years. “Times Square is not a place,” she said. “It is a condition. A medical designation. You do not visit Times Square. Times Square happens to you.”
Practical Implementation
The proposed screening would operate from kiosks at the intersection’s perimeter, staffed by licensed counselors who would assess visitors on a scale from “prepared” to “let’s talk about this for a minute.” Visitors deemed unprepared would be redirected to Bryant Park, which the city describes as “Times Square but with fewer Elmos and a better emotional temperature.”
The tourism industry, tracked by the NYC Tourism and Conventions board, generates tens of billions of dollars annually, and industry groups warned that screening could suppress visitor numbers. Gridlock countered that a smaller, more emotionally prepared tourist population would be “higher quality per capita” and easier to route.
Native New Yorker Exemption
The ordinance would include a native exemption, allowing long-term residents to bypass the screening on the grounds that they “developed immunity through repeated exposure.” The exemption defines a qualifying resident as anyone who can walk through Times Square looking directly at their phone, in any direction, without registering surprise at anything. This describes, by estimate, approximately 82 percent of Midtown workers and 100 percent of anyone who works in the theatre district.
A Pilot in Practice
A soft pilot of the screening at the 42nd Street subway exit found that 38 percent of emerging tourists showed “visible signs of existential recalibration” within the first thirty seconds. Fourteen percent asked where they could sit down. One German tourist, emerging directly in front of a costumed character, produced no documentation and was observed to simply stand, very still, making no decision, until the character moved on. He was later found sitting quietly in a Walgreens, describing it as “the best part.”
The Broader Vision
The council has begun drafting similar measures for the High Line (“a pleasant but philosophically confusing experience”), the IKEA in Red Hook (“a journey from which some do not return”), and the Staten Island Ferry, which the study describes as “fine, but you have to want it.” For more innovations in municipal trauma prevention, readers may enjoy Reductress.
The Screening Backlog
Within the first two days of the pilot, the emotional screening kiosks at the Times Square perimeter had accumulated a queue of 340 people, producing, ironically, a new bottleneck at the entrance to the place specifically designed to manage human throughput. Officials called this “a learning moment.” Dr. Tollbooth called it “the most Times Square outcome a Times Square policy could produce.” The queue was absorbed into the experience itself, reclassified as a “pre-threshold contemplation zone,” and added to the tourism brochure as an attraction. For more innovations in municipal trauma prevention, readers may enjoy Reductress.
A spokeswoman confirmed the kiosks were scheduled to expand to the Port Authority Bus Terminal by summer, a location where emotional screening has been informally practiced by the architecture itself since 1950, with considerable success in producing exactly the feeling of dread the ordinance seeks to prevent.
The kiosk program itself has already generated a tourism attraction. Travel bloggers have begun reviewing the screening experience as a destination in its own right, rating counselors on warmth, the helpfulness of the Bryant Park redirect, and the depth of the intake questionnaire. One Yelp review gave the experience five stars, noted that she had failed the screening comprehensively, and described the walk to Bryant Park as the best part of her trip. She will return in spring, with lower expectations and a support animal she is borrowing from a friend, and she suspects she will be fine. She has been to Times Square before. She knows, now, what she is walking into. She has documentation. She is ready. This, according to the program, is the entire goal.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/