This is a great point. In fact, a lot of celebrities (like Brady) choose NYC because the locals are experts at pretending to ignore each other. Seriously, it's a key city survival skill: a hundred New Yorkers pack into a subway car, close enough to exchange bodily fluids, but miraculously all hundred position themselves to avoid eye contact with one another! (This is the root of the myth that New Yorkers are unfriendly; they're conditioned to walk around in little invisible privacy cocoons. Once you break through the cocoon, New Yorkers are WAY friendlier than New Englanders.)
Anyway, the wiener dog dude was breaking the social compact. Must be fresh off the boat from Pawtucket.