I Loved Watching Traffic Cams

Now I’m a fiend with international webcams

This piece was recently updated as I’ve ditched cable TV and discovered many sites with international webcams. A favorite is of Times Square and it pans and zooms instead of remaining static. Last night we took the bus down and hung out in not-quite deserted Times Square and took in the massive electronic glut of advertising, listened to a mounted cop’s horse neigh from time to time, and waved at the webcam’s cam.(update published in April 2020)

I used to like watching traffic cams. No. Wait. I loved watching traffic cams. In fact in order to keep Channel 72, the Department of Transportation’s cable channel, I paid over $60 a month for the basic package. Then I lost my job and ditched television. Now I’m mesmerized by webcams in the Dorsoduro in Venice or seeing people inexplicably riding horses on sidewalks in St. Petersburg, Russia.

I got hooked on watching the local DOT’s traffic cams, as well as Russia Today which incidentally almost never does stories on Russia but complains endlessly about what the U.S. is doing in the world (highly entertaining), in 2003 when I was slowly recovering from a bout of Still’s Disease which knocked me flat. After two weeks in Bellevue (no health insurance in NYC, that’s where you go) I was pretty much housebound for another two weeks. Even after pushing myself back to work, about all I could manage after I got home was to stretch out on the futon with my black cat, Alice, and watch television.

Let’s be clear: I am not a television person.

I used to watch all the Law & Orders because their formula is so comforting. The murderer nabbed in the first twenty minutes is the wrong guy. When the cello music swells, get ready for a Big Revelation. PBS nature shows are pretty entertaining until you realize all you’re watching is who is eating who tonight.

I’ve logged my share of Masterpiece Theatre, NOVA, and American Masters.

And even though there was essentially nothing about Russia being talked about on Russia Today, there was an entertainment guy who reported from the hottest clubs in Moscow. Otherwise, all the stories were about US misadventures. As this was during our illegal invasion of Iraq it very much suited my mood.

But for soothing, calming, mindless, passive watching there was nothing that beat the rotating cameras on Channel 72. The freeway shots were kind of dull except during heavy weather. Curiously, in the fifteen years I watched those traffic cams I never saw an actual accident occur. I often saw the aftermath with flashing lights and backed up traffic, but not the deed itself.

Discuss.

I used to get up around 6 am most mornings to write before work and it gave me an evil little thrill to watch the bumper to bumper mess out there before I suited up to catch a bus down 5th Ave. The shots of Times Square were also fun because who wants to actually BE in Times Square ever? But watching all those poor shlubs shoving their way to the next chain store gave me a quiet sense of superiority (Like I said: don’t judge me. You do this in some aspect of your life, too, and you know it).

There were new cameras added to the rotation every couple of weeks. They never did get rid of the views from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge and those were absolutely captivating.

The view towards Brooklyn was fascinating with all those lanes going in so many directions and everyone seeming to know exactly which lane was theirs. And at night the view towards Manhattan was magical. The lighting on the bridge was purple while the headlights of the Brooklyn-bound cars showed up golden. Sometimes a ferry would cruise under the bridge. And it was astonishing that there was almost always someone walking (or running) that bridge at any hour of the day or night and in any kind of weather.

Bravo, friend!

I could write this off to schadenfreude and there’s certainly an element of that. There’s also an element of voyeurism. Doesn’t paint a flattering picture of me, does it? I own both of those and know there’s something else at play.

My writing desk sits between the TV on the left and the window to the right. Outside my window are walls of windows. There’s the Riker’s pre-release joint directly behind me; a brownstone that occasionally serenades our gentrifying neighborhood with loud, defiant slams of hip hop. There’s another brownstone that someone has decided to renovate and add two stories to the top of as well as what looks like an outdoor fireplace on a large terrace overlooking Central Park. I still have some sky.

In the summer mourning doves hang out on the fire escape.

I will glance out there, taking short breaks from the work for some sky and maybe watch somebody’s laundry out on a fire escape across the way (once there was a raccoon grooming itself and napping before waddling down story by story and then dropping like a round acrobat from the bottom rung).

But then I’d glance over to my left and there was the entire city spread out, ever-changing, and always moving. I would think about how every one of those cars lined up on the BQE represented one set of hands on a steering wheel and one foot hovering between the gas and the brake. I would wonder where they were going. What were they thinking about? Did they have an ok morning before leaving for work? How was their day in the city if it’s the end of the day?

Then I would come back to the page in front of me.

Those were the days when I had a regular rent job and an office I went to Monday through Friday. I had to push myself to get something written and ready to publish before leaving for the day. Having my reliable traffic cams to the left and some sky, fire escape and cooing doves to my right, allowed for the necessary micro-breaks I need to get the work done.

But everything changes.

Now I’m unemployed and could not justify spending money we don’t have for something we don’t need. So we no longer have television but we do have internet. And who needs local traffic cams when there are webcams in hundreds of cities, countrysides, and even one on the moon!

I still watch what’s happening in other people’s lives. Only now I’m not just watching cars on local freeways.

And it’s still a wonderful boon to my writing!

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