Central Park Horse Carriages, 1858 – 2028

The New York City Council announced on Oct. 22 that they will be banning horse-and-carriage rides in Central Park as of June 2028, spurred on by the death of a tourist last year when a carriage overturned. I have mixed feelings about this: I’ve never taken one of the carriage rides, though I’ve seen them in countless films and TV shows, and have walked by the stand on Central Park South a million times. I will miss the traditional elegance of them (if you ignore the smell), and worry about the future of the drivers and the horses (are they—horses, I mean—still sent to the glue factory?). I wonder how the animal-rights protesters would react to 19^th-century New York, when the city was knee-deep in horse poop and the streets littered with horse corpses. Of course, I am one of those people who, when they see someone’s car broken down, yells, “get a horse!”