[nagdu] A Voice of New York's Streets, Saying That It's Safe to Wawk

Sat Jul 7 17:31:48 UTC 2012

Has anyone found a sound clip of this audible crossing?

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Subject: [nagdu] A Voice of New York's Streets, Saying That It's Safe to
Wawk

A Voice of New York's Streets, Saying That It's Safe to Wawk

The Voice of the Crosswalks: Dennis Ferrara, the supervising electrician at
the Department of Transportation, is the voice of New York City's
crosswalks, guiding visually impaired pedestrians.

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Published: July 6, 2012 

The voice wafts above the traffic, its cadences prodding but familiar,
offering directions to a city that does not like to ask for them. 

At 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue, the pressing of a button activates
recordings that guide pedestrians, especially blind ones. 

It is not a computer, listeners notice. It is certainly not an actor. A
Dutch couple visiting for the week was able to narrow its origins to
"American" and, eventually, "not Texas." 

But to the initiated ear, its roots are obvious: This is a New Yorker,
hacking through the din of gridlock like a knife through cream cheese. Or,
perhaps, "buttah." 

In a city increasingly conditioned to the automated droning of public
address systems, GPS guides and disembodied cellphone sages, Dennis Ferrara
stands out, precisely because he seems to fit right in. Mr. Ferrara, 55, the
supervisor electrician for the city's Transportation Department, provides
the audio recording at 15 intersections for the department's so-called
accessible pedestrian signals, designed to help people with limited sight
cross the street safely. 

And for pedestrians at some of New York's busiest crossings - in Downtown
Brooklyn and the Flatiron district of Manhattan, along a main road in
Astoria, Queens, and at an oddly shaped junction on Staten Island - he is
the distinctly localized soundtrack of the streets. 

In Mr. Ferrara's New York, "Avenue" takes on an "h" or three. The "a" in
"Jay Street" is drawn out. And at least one "w" is appended to the first
syllable of "Broadway." 

"I grew up in Brooklyn," Mr. Ferrara said, in a bit of self-diagnosis. "What
can I tell ya?" 

It is an easy script to memorize. Mr. Ferrara announces the name of the
street that pedestrians are standing on. He says which direction has the
light. And this clip is repeated until the signal's orange hand begins to
blink: "Broadway. 'Walk' sign is on to cross Broadway. Broadway. 'Walk' sign
is on ..." 

Mr. Ferrara, who has lived in Gerritsen Beach almost all his life, has had
no professional voice training. Past pursuits have included deli ownership
and, occasionally, scuba diving for jewels off Coney Island. He jokes that
his vocational school did not have English classes. His qualifications, as
it were, include pronouncing "ask" like "ax." 

The job came to him by luck and by trade, because he fits the bill and
because if he did not do it, someone else would have to. When the city first
installed accessible signals in 2004, it used the automated recording
supplied by the device's vendor in California. 

In recent years, though, as more shipments were ordered, the device has come
without the embedded recording. Mr. Ferrara, whose team at the department's
sign and maintenance facility in Maspeth, Queens, is charged with installing
the machines, recognized a niche. Why not fill it with a New Yorker's voice?

He had an employee fetch a microphone from home, to be hooked up to Mr.
Ferrara's computer in what would become an impromptu in-office studio. He
cursed the prospect of slipping into nonregional diction - "I've got too
many other things to do besides trying to change my voice" - and rehearsed
his lines. 

So far, Mr. Ferrara said, "nobody's asking for my autograph yet." 

Still, New Yorkers have become increasingly acquainted with his work,
echoing above the streetscape like an omniscient narrator, or a favorite
uncle. Some press the button to summon the voice, even when they do not
require its instruction. Others do so in an ill-fated attempt to silence it.
Occasionally, in a rare affront to the city's rich history of pedestrian
stoicism, passers-by simply stop to listen. 

"It's regional," Bob Mover, 60, a saxophone player from Gramercy Park, said
of the voice, pressing his ear against the device on 52nd Street and
Lexington Avenue. 

"He did not go to Midwestern broadcasting school." 

The local fare was a welcome respite, Mr. Mover said, after a recent
incident in which a subway announcer pronounced "Houston Street" like the
city in Texas. 

Rose McShane, 56, from Alphabet City, offered a more precise assessment.
"He's from Brooklyn," she surmised correctly, listening to the recording at
East 23rd Street and Broadway. 

How did she know? 

"Because he's from Brooklyn." 

She began a string of classically Brooklynized impressions for a small
audience outside Madison Square Park. Aahhhvenue. New Yawk. Brawwwdway. 

Blind people say Mr. Ferrara's inflections have been a mixed blessing. "I'm
so New York it's pathetic," said Karen Gourgey, 64, who has been blind since
birth and is the chairwoman of the PASS Coalition, an advocacy group for
pedestrians who are blind or have limited vision. But the clarity of an
automated voice is often more "consistent," Ms. Gourgey said. 

Kara Becker, an assistant professor of linguistics at Reed College in
Oregon, who studied the New York City accent as a Ph.D. student at New York
University, said Mr. Ferrara exhibited at least two of three features
commonly associated with the accent, based on her analysis of four
recordings sent to her. 

One marker was what Dr. Becker called the "coffee vowel" - pronounced
"cawfee" and named, informally, for the recurring "Saturday Night Live"
sketch "Coffee Talk" from the 1990s. (Mike Myers played the talk show's
host, a woman named Linda Richman, who idolized Barbra Streisand and often
became "verklempt.") 

The other is a raised pronunciation of the "a" in words like "avenue." A
third signature feature, the dropping of "r" sounds - as in "Hello Muddah,
Hello Fadduh," the Allan Sherman song from a half-century ago - is less
detectable in Mr. Ferrara's recordings, Dr. Becker said. 

Despite popular opinion, there is no consistent evidence for differences in
accents among boroughs, Dr. Becker said. "What we think is going on is
people are using borough as a proxy for some other social stratification of
the accent," she said. "Class, level of education, occupation, things like
that." 

At least one relative of Mr. Ferrara's, previously unaware of his
assignment, has reported being jolted by the booming voice following him
down the block. 

"My son-in-law," Mr. Ferrara recalled, slipping into a fiendish grin. "That
was pretty funny." 

For those less accustomed to his timbre, there is hope that Mr. Ferrara's
voice might become an audible welcome to the city, fit to join the grand
attractions reserved for the other senses. Visitors see the buildings. They
feel the cool of a subway pole. They smell the other riders gripping it. And
now they hear Mr. Ferrara, telling pedestrians when to cross Fifth Avenue,
and how to say it. 

"If you're from out of town," said Mr. Mover, the jazzman, "you like to hear
how the natives speak." 

Mr. Ferrara said he had indulged his ego only occasionally, pressing the
button while passing the intersections at which he stars in Manhattan. It
was odd, he thought, that an electrician sounded more like a prizefighter. 

"It sounds like I've been punched too much," Mr. Ferrara said. "I probably
have." 

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/nyregion/a-new-york-voice-at-new-york-inte
rsections.htm?_r=1&pagewanted=all

A version of this article appeared in print on July 7, 2012, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: A Voice of New York's Streets,
Saying That It's Safe to Wawk.

. 

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