Well, yes and no. You could say New Yorkers are ruder than people elsewhere, and maybe it's true, but we are also tolerant. We roll our eyes and move on. I don't see things escalate here often. There's a lot of noise, but that is all there is sometimes. I rarely open my mouth. Once someone came the wrong way down a bike lane, and the bike lane was unusually closed and narrow because of a temporary construction barrier. The lane wasn't narrow enough for two cyclists abreast, going in the same or opposite directions. As he came close, I stopped dead and yelled, "Not cool dude!" He apologized. Things rarely play out that way.