Walking down Wall Street can be filled with astonishment, hope, excitement, despair, and frustration all at the same time. If a stroll-type walk is what someone is looking for; this isn’t the place for them. The average pace at which people walk seems as though it is roughly ten to eleven times faster then the speed of any other street. People are always in a rush, whether they’re trying to get in their last trade, get to a meeting, or trying to catch the next 2 train. The only people who appear not to fit this description, are the tourists who photograph what would seam like the most meaningless (i.e. the street signs) or forgotten items (i.e. the statue of George Washington). Because of this, your walk becomes strategy based, needing to plan two or three steps ahead, trying to figure out where and when you can “cut people off” or “switch lanes”. One might compare walking on Wall Street to driving on the Autobahn (a Germany based highway with no speed limit or restrictions).

Walking down Wall Street can be filled with astonishment, hope, excitement, despair, and frustration all at the same time. If a stroll-type walk is what someone is looking for; this isn’t the place for them. The average pace at which people walk seems as though it is roughly ten to eleven times faster then the speed of any other street. People are always in a rush, whether they’re trying to get in their last trade, get to a meeting, or trying to catch the next 2 train. The only people who appear not to fit this description, are the tourists who photograph what would seam like the most meaningless (i.e. the street signs) or forgotten items (i.e. the statue of George Washington). Because of this, your walk becomes strategy based, needing to plan two or three steps ahead, trying to figure out where and when you can “cut people off” or “switch lanes”. One might compare walking on Wall Street to driving on the Autobahn (a Germany based highway with no speed limit or restrictions).

Traveling speed and maneuver ability don’t however shield you from the structures that surround you. One can’t help but feel astonished after seeing some of the most famous buildings in the world. These buildings include (but are not limited to); Federal Hall, Trinity Church, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and The Trump Building (A.K.A the “Crown Jewel of Wall Street).  All of these places and what they symbolize can amaze and bring hope to the most depressed of people.  Federal Hall, home of the first meeting of Congress, the inauguration of our first president, and where “The Stamp Act congress” met to protest “taxation without representation”[1], re-affirms our belief in democracy, even in the hardest of times such as these. Similarly, the Trump building (located at 40 Wall Street) symbolizes America’s strength and stability. It does so by standing strong even after being struck by a Coast Guard Aircraft in 1946[2].

In comparison to the structures on Wall Street, a person can be filled with excitement, sparked from the most basic understanding of being amidst the financial district of the world. In fact, Wall Street has become so intertwined with today’s economic basis and the concept of  banking/ trading pieces of large corporations; all of the world refers to their financial woes as Wall Street’s problem (whether the firms they refer to are physically based on Wall Street or not). Additionally, a more shallow form excitement is fashioned as you see the CEOs from all of the corporations you see on the news, or seeing someone like Kramer from “Mad Money” simply walking down the street. A paparazzi buffet with “financial hot-shots” as the primary course is served to the public.  

Adversely, it can be very nerve-wrecking or spur a feeling of despair seeing those who represent America’s largest corporations filing for chapter eleven, or the average stock brokers walking out of the NYSE building (those who still trade on the “floor”) highly depressed. These symbolic figures, who once stood so tall and proud wearing this week’s newest Armani suite jackets, now look as though they had just walked out of New Orleans’s hurricane Katrina without any sense of pride, fearing they are being judged by all of their fellow peers. Besides the visual cause of despair, chanting of people known to be in the most desperate of times are nearly impossible to ignore.  Whether they’re screaming “Bail out the PEOPLE not the banks!” or “Lower taxes for those who deserve them” [not CEOs or others making more then they are], people almost always stop to look.

Seeing these Wall Street icons as representation of despair, brings frustration to those who know the true greatness of Wall Street and the endless possibilities it creates. Knowing what was accomplished in the past by these figure types makes one contemplate how these people allowed themselves and the economy they are associated with walk the path it has. Because its greatness is so widely known, and the evidence of its icons not meeting their potential is so conclusive, the only logical emotion that can be derived is pure frustration.

Although several emotions which appear to contradict each other may be generated while walking down Wall Street, a single individual may feel them all simultaneously, even though that person may seem to traveling at too fast a past to absorb his or her surroundings. This can be attributed to the fact that everything on Wall Street represents something individually, and something completely different, collectively. A simple walk to work down Wall Street has the ability to be more emotionally straining then the work you are walking towards.