NEW YORK -- It was already getting weird in early May when I turned the corner onto Broadway and people were sitting in tables and chairs where one lane of traffic should have been.

Now it's complete: Last Sunday, Times Square became a pedestrian mall, with cars forbidden on Broadway between 42nd and 47th streets. The plazas that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has promised are incomplete, and the scene on Memorial Day weekend looked more like a block party than a mall, with people bringing their own lawn chairs to sit amid the few metal chairs and tables and orange safety barrels.

Seventh Avenue, which intersects Broadway at 45th Street, remains open to traffic, now the main access for taxis and cars in the heart of the theater district.

A few weeks ago, the new Times Square already had seeped into a lane along one street, in front of the ESPN Zone at 1472 Broadway. In the center dividing isle was stationed a fully outfitted Tin Man, posing for pictures with families and providing smiles.

There was no sign of the Naked Cowboy, a Times Square institution in his red-white-and-blue cowboy hat and briefs, but bleachers have been set up at the north end of the street, near the TKTS booth, for more seating and a great picture-taking view of the sights, sounds and neon signs of the area.

When then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleared out the XXX theaters in Times Square in the 1990s and made it safe for tourists and those who preferred glitz to grit, many feared the "Disney-ization" of an area that was romaticized for its seediness. Much editorial space has been devoted to whether tuning down the danger would also tarnish the luster of the Great White Way, and this new pedestrian-only era has brought the debate front and center again.

And it's not just Times Square: At another Manhattan crossroads, Herald Square has been closed to cars on Broadway between 33rd and 35th streets.

This brave new world has necessitated more than just jockeying for a chair in the street. The Manhattan Transit Authority, which transports hundreds of thousands of commuters a day, was forced to change the M5, M7, M10, M20, M27, M30 and M104 bus routes, affecting traffic from 23rd to 59th streets.

The New York Times notes that the transformation of cities such as Copenhagen, which has labored to become more pedestrian-friendly, has taken decades and involved constant tinkering, including reopening some streets and finding the best sites for parking.

As the pedestrian plazas await more dramatic makeovers and taxi drivers jockey for position with fewer options, we may not have heard the final word on cars in Times Square.