School is out in Thorncliffe Park, and the race for the elevators is on.
It’s about 3:30 on a Monday afternoon — the kind of unusually sunny February day that leads some children to linger outside on the swing sets of the local park. But at this hour, many families are making their way route home.
Inside the lobby of 47 Thorncliffe Park Dr., the tail-end of their commute becomes a question of strategy. A crush of 20 or so people are waiting for one of the five elevators to reach the ground level. Many others — predominantly kids and teenagers — are meanwhile skirting the queue, wheeling left of the elevator bay to the stairwell, where they’ll climb to the second floor to intercept the car before it reaches the lobby, ensuring their spot inside.
I have seen this demographic chaos first hand.
