Many New Yorkers suffered a myriad of head, shin and toe injuries on Friday morning as a result of the imprudent acts of one of the city’s most dangerous midtown menaces.

The rollerboard gangs of Manhattan have become an ever-increasing problem to city residents, as well as the daily bridge-and-tunnel crowd that depend on the safety of New York City streets to get to work in the morning. 7th Avenue has proven a focal point of the crisis.

“I’ve seen those confangled rolling bags around the city for a long time, but never to this extreme. You get a couple of those next to each other on the sidewalk, along with a street seller’s table and the awkwardly spaced poles of the ever-present building scaffolding, and you can hardly get through without having to slow down and act patiently, let alone without your Starbuck’s getting knocked and splashed all over yourself.”

Among the most common attacks by the roller gangs is running over the toes of unsuspecting commuters with the small, driving rollerblade-like wheels of their unnecessarily large bags and suitcases.

Also common in reported injuries are cuts, gashes and bruises of the shins, the result of a rollerhead crossing in front of a fast moving line of people, narrowly making it through themselves only to then violently drag their lagging rollerboard abruptly across the shins of anyone not staring directly at the ground in front of them. This action is also generally responsible for the head injuries that result when commuters are walking fast enough that the bag completely trips them, pitching them headfirst into the metal-edged curbs that line much of intersections on 7th avenue.

“I want to shove their hand between the top of the bag and the extended pull handle and cram the handle down until it clicks,” said one employee of a nearby design firm, as she rubbed out the wheel mark in the toe of her tan Ugg boot.

Needless to say, emotions are high.

While not everyone pulling a rollerboard seems to have the audacious intentions of many of the obstinate rabble-rousers, a growing group of residents are asking the city to step in to regulate the use of rollerboards.

“I just want to be able to get to work without talking to anyone, and that includes mumbled obscenities at these rollertwits when they stop suddenly in front of me, bag handle extended, to figure out what direction they’re going,” said an employee of an accounting firm nearby, once we were able to get him to remove his iPod earbuds.

But regulation seems a far distant dream to the majority of commuters. Most are just keeping their gaze focused straight ahead, leaving the ruckus of the rollerboards to their peripheral vision to be dealt with only if actually struck.

“I’ve got more important things to worry about,” said one New Yorker as he unchained his bicycle with a set of large metal cutters and shot through the red light on 40^th.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 9:25 pm and is filed under distracted interactions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.