PEOPLE-WATCHING

Read the first part of the article and do the activity.

People-watching is to New York City what La Marcha is to Madrid. If you haven't done it then you haven't really been there. But you don't just watch people here, you watch their poodles and their pit bulls, too. You listen to their conversations and even follow their footsteps for a while. People in New York know that people are watching what they do or listening to what they say. It is just a fact of life and they accept it.

So what might you see? You might see a group of five garishly dressed young women on a night out in Greenwich Village. They start swearing at a cab driver for enforcing the four-passenger rule and stomp off angrily, still swearing. Of course, this is entertaining enough, but for true ‘people watchers’ the story isn’t over. Follow them around the block and watch their reaction as another cab driver rejects them for the same reason, and then look at their sullen faces as they are forced to use two cabs instead of one.

Alternatively, you might see a man on a cell phone in Union Square nervously talking to his blind date. You watch him cross the square whilst he describes what he is wearing. You follow him a bit further and wait a while. Oh no! She doesn’t show. Did she see him across the square and change her mind? The man fidgets restlessly, slightly crestfallen. Then you leave him to think about what might have been. New York really is just one giant sitcom which plays out in front of your eyes.

Which tense is used in paragraph two? Why? Study Grammar log.