This is Street Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.
Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan is many things.
It is the first street to greet many travelers as they arrive at Pennsylvania Station or the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It is the temporary address for thousands of hotel dwellers. It is the backdrop to any night spent at a Broadway show or Madison Square Garden, or just out on the town.
Eighth Avenue can also be unsettling.
At the best of times, it is the Champs-Élysées of hot dog carts: a grand thoroughfare of vendors, tourists and commuters whose bustle brings the city to life.
Motorists share it with bicycles, pedicabs and the occasional horse-drawn carriage. Pedestrians crowd the sidewalk and overflow into an ad hoc expansion of it, created in 2016 when the city began to cordon off a lane of traffic and paint it gray.
But at the worst of times, Eighth Avenue is a Dickensian parade of humanity.
It is strewn with garbage and pockmarked by potholes and pools of unidentifiable fluid. People suffering from addiction and mental illness roam the street. Bicyclists race down the expanded sidewalks, endangering pedestrians. Tourists plod slowly through the sea of walkers, sometimes abruptly dropping anchor in the middle of the sidewalk.