This poster stayed with me after I saw it in Sunset Park earlier this week. Today, I went back to 45th St and Fourth Av to snap this picture. (And grab some barbacoa de chivo while I was at it.)

“Don’t make eye contact” is standard advice these days. Passing someone on the street? Don’t make eye contact. Pressed tight against a stranger on the subway? Don’t make eye contact. And for heaven’s sake, if someone seems distressed or asks you for money . . . don’t make eye contact.

Needless to say, the more different the other person is from you, the more important it is to avoid looking them in the eye.

Call me Midwestern – I’ve been called worse things – but this “don’t make eye contact” thing rankles. I can think of few things more isolating than moving through the city while avoiding eye contact with other people, and few things more dehumanizing than having other people avoid eye contact with you.

To be sure, different contexts call for different norms of behavior. Some of my Midwestern friendliness – like smiling and saying “hey!” to every passing runner – would be weird here, not to mention exhausting.

But I sometimes think of a remark by a friend and former co-worker, who lived in Detroit in the 1980s, when it was he nation’s “murder capital.” His rule then was to make eye contact with everyone. Other Detroiters seemed happy, even relieved, to reciprocate. It was, he explained, a statement and an unspoken pact : “I see you, you see me, and I won’t murder you if you won’t murder me.”

He said it laughingly, but it stayed with me. Just like this poster.

So I will continue to make dangerously promiscuous eye contact with other people, and I’m very glad to see that at least one other Brooklynite thinks that’s ok.