It’s hard to battle Pinsirs and Rattatas while at the same time avoiding falling into a manhole
By RALPH GARDNER JR.
July 17, 2016 10:15 p.m. ET
Pokémon Go Adds Another Wacky Layer to New York City LifeJust when you think New York City’s streets can’t get any more chaotic—amid the clueless tourists, walking-dead texters and people who feel the most advantageous time to check their email is on crowded subway stairs—now comes Pokémon Go.
I took the app out for a spin last week and I’m back to report that Pokémon Go is a menace to society. An amusing, even occasionally captivating menace, but a menace nonetheless.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
The average citizen, and I include myself in that demographic, finds it challenging enough to hold one idea simultaneously.
The warning that springs up on Pokémon Go’s opening window asks you to be alert to your surroundings at all times. The sentiment is well taken. Except that it’s hard to battle Pinsirs, a mashup of a stag beetle and a samurai warrior, and Rattatas, basically a really obnoxious rodent (as if Metropolis doesn’t already host enough of them) while at the same time avoiding falling into a manhole.
Anticipating the challenge to my motor skills I tested the app for the first time not in some congested thoroughfare such as Times Square, which has more than enough oddballs without piling on augmented reality game characters, but in Central Park.
However, I wasn’t more than a few feet into the park when confronted with my first distracting challenge: Pokémon Go asked me to pick a name for myself.
My first 10 choices unavailable, I drew inspiration from the LED traffic message board in front of me and knighted myself “Yield to pedestrians.”
Too long.
So now and forever after, fellow Pokémoners, I’m just “Yieldto,” which actually has a nice ring to it.
I’ve read that hordes of Pokémon Go-playing fanatics are risking arrest trespassing onto people’s property, or bodily harm in stampedes in pursuit of elusive characters, such as a Vaporeon spotted in Central Park.
I encountered only one fellow player on my journey across the park on a sunny afternoon last week. Then again, I wasn’t seeking companionship.
Indeed, the game’s saving grace is that so many New Yorkers are staring at their cellphone screens at any given moment that Pokémon Go players blend right in. I was able to avoid any mortification beyond what I’d experienced downloading the app in the first place.
The name of my fellow Pokémoner, if that’s the correct moniker, was Kaisha Diaz. She’s 25 years old and from Yonkers. I recognized her as a fellow gamer because I eventually realized she was moving at the same lethargic pace that I was, and was too engaged running up her score to become concerned that a middle-aged man was marching in her footsteps.
“All my friends are doing it,” she explained when she’d ground to a halt in response to some screen challenge. “It’s competitive.”
I’ll say. It took me, on average, five tosses of my Pokéball to vanquish the typical leaping Pinsir. Then again, I also have trouble accessing my phone’s flashlight.
The app also has intriguing, swirling Oz-like structures called Poké gyms. I encountered one in the approximate vicinity of the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West, another leaving Grand Central Station.
“Come back when you’ve reached level 5!” my Pokémon trainer, or whatever that dude calling the shots is named, told me.
Shouldn’t I be the one to decide whether I’m ready to bench press a Ponyta, an equine with a mane of fire, or whatever goes on at a Pokémon gym? Risking a hernia is my own business.
While I suspect I won’t be playing Pokémon Go long enough to make it to level five, the app does have its charms. Among them spinning markers signifying points of interest, or Pokéstops. Those I encountered included Bethesda Fountain, the much-larger-than-life Daniel Webster statue on the West Drive at 72nd Street, and the Strawberry Fields area.
I suspect it will cause those who never took the time to appreciate the charms of New York City’s landmarks to start doing so. If only because Pokéstops apparently harbor awards for players, such as additional Pokéballs.
“Our monuments are getting swarmed,” reported Jonathan Kuhn, the New York City Parks Department director of art and antiquities.
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Write to Ralph Gardner Jr. at ralph.gardner@wsj.com