New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority can make life miserable for passengers.
It offers a dubious weekend service, detouring and canceling trains, making inefficiency feel like persecution. 
Sometimes all you can do is hang on. 
Tag Archives: MTA
June Dialogue on the E Train
“And he was like, you’re such a dummy.” 
“Dummy? He said that?” 
“Yeah, you’re such a dummy. Get it?” 
“I can’t believe he said that.” 
“He was like, ‘Dummy’!” 
“Dummy?” 
“Exactly. Dummy.” “Dummy? You’re serious?” 
“Yeah, dummy! Get it?” “I would have kneed him in the balls.” 
“Dummy!” “It isn’t funny.” 
“Yes, it is.”
MTA’s Seven Years
You may have noticed, in riding the subways of New York, that the MTA has posted a clear warning in every car. 
Why so many reminders? Is it because of the incessant delays? The changing of an express to a local, a C to the F Track, without an announcement? Or is it perhaps the conductors’ proclivity toward closing the doors just as the other train arrives on the other side of the platform?
Whatever it is, seven years is a long time to wait.
Uptown
I love the express train. You never have to stop.
You’re in the noise, lights flashing past.
Subway Redux: Crystal on the “4”
Crystal reflects on the New York subways (Click on the images below for the video experience): You know when you’re on the subway, and there’s another one there, another train in the tunnel right beside you, another one full of people, the light of the car and all the people and the pillars in between, everyone watching. 
You know, at 33rd on the 4 or 5, and the 6 right there, everyone in that bright car, everyone going with you, going the same way, standing there in the light just like you are for them. Someone looks back. 
And you look the same way to her, and it’s like it will stay forever, those pillars, just standing there, staring back. That’s what New York can be. That’s what it’s supposed to be. (Excerpted from my bad side.)
New York’s Miss Subways (and Oscar predictions)
We visited the Transit Museum in Brooklyn today which included a series from an antiquated pageant, Miss Subway (1941-76)….
As well as advertisements with dated pitches… 
Does that come with a paper bag and straw?
Oscar Predictions
Will Win Should Win
Picture Argo Amour
Director Steven Spielberg Michael Haneke
Actor Daniel Day Lewis Joaquin Phoenix
Actress Jessica Chastain Emmanuelle Riva
S. Actor Tommy Lee Jones Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Sup. Actress Sally Field None of those nominated
Cinema Claudio Miranda (Pi) Mihai Mailimari (Master)
Script Django Unchained Moonrise Kingdom
Most ridiculous nomination: Argo for editing. This film had no less than six cliff-hangers at the end, all of which were blundering and predictable. For this film to be nominated in this category, the final 20 minutes would have to be removed.
Subway Chronicle I: Disappointment
Disappointment is a simple word. It is a big word too. It is the signpost marking so many turns.
Mostly I am disappointed in me, but I find it too much in others as well, those I know, pass in the streets, in the news and everywhere else. Today, I was on the 6 train northbound, and a young woman sat down, crazily smiling. I thought she had just remembered something funny, seen somebody, something like that, but her smile went on and on. She kept smiling crazily as she put on her chapstick.
A homeless man got on the train at Bleecker Street and made his appeal. “Anything you can spare, even a penny, whatever you can give helps us provide those in need with a sandwich or a bowl of soup.” He held up a laminated badge. Most everyone ignored him except the crazily smiling woman, who gave him a dollar. He bowed to her for that. “God bless you. I hope you get safely to your destination.” He made the rounds. No one else contributed. He bowed to the crazily smiling woman again. “God bless you. I hope you get safely to your destination.” I was disappointed in him making such a point of her dollar, weirdly damning the rest of us for not coughing up the money. (I doubted the soup story.) And I was disappointed in her for encouraging him to do it again – and take his “god-bless-your-trip” smiling still. 
But in the end, when they both had gone and it was just me and all the other silent, staring people, I was disappointed in myself. I had done nothing and, worse, had stood stupidly in judgment of a smiling woman giving a dollar to a homeless guy. Ugh.
Ode to the New York Subway
This isn’t in praise of the system, certainly not the cleanliness nor service, but rather a sentimental rumination on the aesthetics of industry and decay. 
The water stains and hanging wires, the rats chasing garbage, scurrying over carcasses of each other. It’s like art, something true. 
There’s the silence, the distant footsteps and then vibrations and the approaching train, coming and suddenly there, not yours but the express, flashing past the steel pillars, thick and black. 
It’s strangely idyllic, a place of calm and respite, the traffic and weather above, the air from the tunnel rising up, the train coming at last out of the dark air and dirt. 
The conductors wear protective glasses – for the grit and abuse – and might hold the train for the switch from local to express, but then seem to prefer the opposite. It’s just a game. 
I took the E train on a late-night trip from World Trade Center to Jamaica Center and back again. It was full at times – leaving Manhattan and into Queens – and empty too – coming back from Jamaica at 1:30am. I woke, the train idle in the station, half of the shiny blue slippery benches filled with people not going anywhere. 
I’ve been kicked – hard and with intent – and stood idle after a brute of a man jumped onto the train, having punched another – hard and with intent – and all of us stood there, quiet, eyes averted, complicit. 
It’s something deep, the furnace of this city, the noise and quiet, the dark and roar, the rush and the emptiness again.