Boxed Out

I'm driving home on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway at midnight when traffic comes to dead halt. For ten minutes I sit there, jerking around with my Ipod, grateful that I don't have to pee. Police lights appear in the rear view mirror, ordering car after car to schooch over and make way for two lone cop cars to...get to the scene of an accident? Chase down some bank robbers? No, they just want to cut the line.

If your driving east bound on the BQE at twelve o'clock at night on a Saturday chances are it's not your first time doing so. For over a year now there has been on and off construction on the Tillary Street exit, always commencing at around midnight, which causes the normal three lanes of traffic to whittle itself down to one lane. It's a total shit show and we, my fellow travelers, have all been there and all know there is no emergency begging the attention of these two little cop cars.

It's perversely satisfying to watch the ridiculously slow response of cars tucking their noses onto the highway shoulder. No amount of flashing lights and whooping sirens can change it. Maybe next time they'll know to have an ambulance or fire truck in tow to help sell their story to us jaded New Yorkers. Tonight they're just going to have to sit and wait like the rest of us.