Coupla points here....

1.) People in general have less and less respect as the days go by; it used to be that you were taught the expectation of walking on the right (correct) side of the street, along one side of the sidewalk. But when some found out that there was no horrible penalty for not doing as they were taught, it all began to trickle away. So we now have bike riders who think it's OK to ride in the street against traffic, switch back & forth between sidewalk & street arbitrarily, etc.; pedestrians who think it's OK to walk in the middle of the street; rollerbladers who think it's OK to leave wheeltracks on other people.

2.) I used to ride with a portable CD player/headphones -- it interfered with my experience of the ride, so I quit.