Yes, I quite liked this about New York city, too. "Wow, look at that thing, it's about to fall". Anyone can start talking to you. I was on a business trip and having a coffee near Times Square when an American tourist just commented about a crane on a tall building nearby and then proceeded to tell me all about his life experiences, about the heat in Arizona, his war experiences, etc; It was very refreshing and "humane", for lack of a better word. It happens all the time in India, too, where I was born, but somehow, I did not expect folks in the US to be chatty. I guess I presumed they are more worried about privacy and stranger danger!

Here's an analogy: imagine a neural network having to train it's neurons but without them having any connections to each other! Is such a thing even possible? Interconnections are what help us tune to (maybe even perceive) reality!