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Where exactly is Times Square?


Adam Alkindi stood behind a snack bar near the 48th and 9th Avenue intersection on Tuesday when faced with an unexpected question: Does he consider his workplace part of Times Square? are not?

Alkindi, 21, who had just been raised a block away, was steadfast. “This is not Times Square,” he said. “No way. It’s very peaceful here.”

However, according to New York City, Mr. Alkindi was wrong.

This week, the city will begin familiarizing residents with its new definition of one of the Western Hemisphere’s most popular tourist destinations, mandated by new state law banning guns in sensitive locations. sensations, including Times Square.

However, New Yorkers felt about the strict limits on weapons, the map of the city drawn was so extensive that many could dispute the new boundary, at least in private. This area covers the space from 9th Avenue to 6th Avenue and from 53rd to 40th Street and covers about three dozen blocks.

At the start of the year, few predicted that Times Square would require a formal definition. With its bright lights and advertising, world-class Olive Garden location, and colorful mascots, it’s probably the most recognizable spot in the city for the old-fashioned. Many New Yorkers have an innate aversion to this area, their inner compass guiding them neatly around it.

And anyway, you’ll know it when you see it. As Mr. Alkindi said: “The place is crowded, where there are a lot of big shops and lights. It’s Times Square.”

But in June, the US Supreme Court Repealing centuries-old gun laws in New York has placed strict limits on carrying guns in public. In response, the state passed a new law that regulates places where people can’t carry guns. These include government buildings, places of worship, healthcare providers, libraries, playgrounds, public parks, subways – and Times Square.

Most parts of the law went into effect this week, and the mayor’s office, New York Police Department and City Council rushed to promote the new map.

The City Council bill that will formally designate the Times Square area is expected to be passed by the end of September. But last week, the police department passed an emergency rule to cover the period before the law goes into effect.

In many cities, a square is a simple idea: It resembles a square, with streets or avenues running parallel to define the space. In New York, the squares – including the Times, Herald and Greeley – are often patches of open space between towers, with street grids divided by crisscrossing interlocks and cultural boundaries defying geometry .

In a statement, the police department said that Times Square is “more than just a few streets with bright lights and video screens. It’s a unique, dense, complex space, and the area specified in our rules and proposed bill reflects that reality.”

At a City Council hearing Tuesday, Robert Barrows, the police department’s executive director of legal operations and projects, said the area will be marked with pedestrian warning signs. Ministry that the area is a “gun-free zone”.

Police will allow licensed residents to carry guns to do so, if they are traveling from their home to an area outside the boundary, or vice versa. They will also allow people who are allowed to carry handguns on the premises – such as security guards – to do so. And permit holders will be allowed to carry firearms when traveling through Times Square in traffic, as long as they don’t stop and the weapons are unloaded and loaded in locked containers.

Authorities are trying to designate some of the city’s most trafficked tourist attractions limited to people with guns. Along with including the Port Authority station, the new map of Times Square stretches near Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center. The Museum of Modern Art (which, like the others, has also been identified as a sensitive site) is just a block from the eastern border of New Times Square.

Carmen De La Rosa, a member of the City Council’s public safety committee who represents neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, said: “These are areas that are generally considered package deals. for those who are coming to the city for the first time or visiting Times Square. . “If you’re going to Times Square, you might want to go to MoMA.”

But for many New Yorkers, the new definition challenges both common sense and lived experience. Robert Govan, 62, who has lived in the city since 1993, was generous in an interview Tuesday. He allowed that the boundary could possibly be reached as far north as 52nd Street.

But he knows where his personal line is drawn: For Mr. Govan, the Port Authority Bus Station will never be part of Times Square.

“No. Impossible,” he said. “Will not happen.”

Until 1904, Times Square was known as Long Acre Square, named for a street in London. But after Adolph S. Ochs, owner of The New York Times, decided to move the newspaper to the area, Mayor George McClellan signed a resolution naming the area new.

In an unsigned article, the newspaper humbly argued that the name “spontaneously suggests,” arguing that the local subway station passes through the first story of the newly built skyscraper. its. At that time, the newspaper identified Times Square is “the open space formed by the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and extending from Forty Seconds to Seventh Street.” For many people, that definition, or something similar, remains the same.

But for some New Yorkers, boundaries can be flexible. Felecia Majette, 62, whose office is at the intersection of 49th Street and Sixth Avenue, says she sees part of Midtown Manhattan as an extension of Times Square.

“There is movement from here to there,” she said. “It’s all combined.”

Majette said she approved the new boundaries. The last thing she wanted, she said, was “a bunch of people around with guns, even if they were allowed to have one.”

New York’s new gun measure was challenged in federal court by Schenectady County resident Ivan Antonyuk, along with Gun Owners of America. Their lawsuit sought to have major parts of the law declared unconstitutional, including the identification of sensitive positions.

A spokesman for Gun Owners of America New York declined to comment on the New Times Square boundary, citing litigation.

Joseph Blocher, a Second Amendment expert at Duke University Law School in North Carolina, said that New York’s measure was in danger of being challenged as soon as it was passed and the new definition of Times Square age probably won’t be a determining factor.

“I expect that the challenge will be the cumulative geographic size of the ban,” he said. “You’ve lumped together Times Square and other designated sensitive areas, what percentage of the city is out of bounds?”

When asked how he personally defined Times Square, Mr. Blocher said it had been at least 15 years since he was last here.

“When I got to New York, it wasn’t on the list,” he admitted. “It really isn’t.”



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