NO-GO WITH THE FLOW: A businessman tries to crash through a wall of Occupy Wall Street protesters yesterday morning near the New York Stock Exchange. (AFP/Getty Images)
It wasn’t life or death — but it sure felt that way for the thousands of impatient New Yorkers whose daily routines were thrown into chaos.
“I’m just trying to get [home] to take the dog out!” screamed Downtown Brooklyn resident Sara Halstead, who balked at walking across the Brooklyn Bridge while it was clogged with protesters.
“I don’t want to get locked up if I try to cross!” she yelled.
“This is so freaking annoying!” she fumed. “So many people are in the way and so many fences up.”
She and 99 percent of other commuters struggled to navigate street-clogging protests, at least nine rerouted buses, several closed subway entrances and whole blocks barricaded by the Police Department.
If the protesters’ plan was to agitate everyone other than the deep-pocketed denizens of Wall Street, they succeeded.
“These guys should be arrested!” yelled Jeff Davis, as he tried to elbow his way through the crowd at East Fifth Street and Broadway on his way home from work to Staten Island.
“This is unbelievable!” he said when he realized his M5 bus — which connects him to the ferry — wouldn’t arrive any time soon.
Working stiffs at quitting time were confronted with walls of people that rivaled Times Square on New Year’s Eve — disrupting commuters on foot, headed for commuter rail and riding in cars.
Lower Manhattan took the brunt of the protest pain, with massive demonstrations in the morning and evening making even a simple trip across the street completely hellish.
One of the worst streets was Broadway, a protest route that stretched from the bottom of Manhattan all the way north to Union Square.
“I’m trying to get to class!” fumed Gillian Enteman as she headed uptown to school.
She felt it necessary to add: “Class that I pay for!”
Meanwhile, the sheer number of protesters forced a heavy police response that shut down streets around the protest route.
Broadway was so crowded that the police ended up taking two lanes of traffic, with cops on foot marching up the street and police cruisers using the middle lane.
That left just one lane for traffic on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
Drivers honked their horns in frustration, but it did little good.
The crowd around the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway station was so large around 5 p.m. — when most New Yorkers are leaving work — that jittery cops closed off the entrances to the subway station.
“They created chaos!” fumed one man after unsuccessfully trying several doors to get into the subway.
The MTA said the NYPD closed several entrances to the station because of crowding, but service wasn’t stopped.
“How long is this going to last? I can’t get home!” fumed Tiffany Davis, from Manhattan.
Nearby, a stroller-pushing mother couldn’t get down Park Row — which was shut down mid-afternoon to prep for the Brooklyn Bridge protest at 6 p.m. — to get to her home.
“I can’t get through with all these barricades,” she said.
Her 18-month-old son’s jacket zipper broke — leaving him freezing in the cold weather — and she pleaded with cops to let her through.
“Sorry, you just have to go that way,” the cop said, pointing toward Broadway.
“Down there they just told me to go this way!” she said, pointing toward the barricaded streets before walking off.
A few blocks away, one elderly woman spent more than an hour trying to push through the crowds at Chambers and Centre streets with a shopping cart full of recyclables.
She was so fed up with protesters that she started knocking cameras out of their hands, screaming in Chinese.
It was a particularly annoying day for hard-working New Yorkers who had to get through the demonstrations.
A trio of deliverymen on Broadway had one of the most difficult jobs in the Big Apple yesterday — carrying several bulky containers at the height of the protest.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” they barked over and over to get on the sidewalk.
Even those who wanted to move simply could not — the street was so crowded, there was nowhere to go.
And those New Yorkers trying to enjoy a rare day off were also inconvenienced.
Cabby Liju Raj was trying to head over the Brooklyn Bridge when the throng of protesters began streaming the other way.
“I was just trying to have a peaceful and beautiful walk across the bridge with my wife, and now we see this!” he snarled.
There were also smaller protests at 16 transit hubs in all five boroughs.
They resulted in no service disruptions, according to the MTA, but straphangers said they were annoyed by the pushy hordes of demonstrators.
At the Staten Island Ferry terminal in St. George, several dozen protesters gathered by the aquarium and told hard-luck stories to anyone who’d listen.
Worse yet were disruptions to city buses, many of whom were rerouted during morning and evening commutes.
Four Brooklyn-bounded MTA buses — the BM1, BM2, BM3 and BM4 — were delayed or detoured because of the protests.
And five Manhattan buses — the M1, M2, M3, M5 and the M103 — also suffered service disruptions, as did some Staten Island Express buses with stops in lower Manhattan.
Additional reporting by Candace Amos, Antonio Antenucci