subwayrider

Pleasant Valley Sunday

2004-08-09T00:24:00.000-04:00

Today involved no public transportation at all. Visited the two nephews (4 and 1, respectively) out on Long Island. Packed them both into their car seats in the back of the old family truckster and ferried them out to the same community park playground that I frequented back in the 1970s and '80s.

My old stomping grounds on Long Island remain of interest in the news. To date, my old high school has produced the following eclectic trio of noteworthy individuals: a George W. Bush Cabinet member married to a Senator from Kentucky; a disaffected Tony award winner who has nothing complimentary to say about our common alma mater; and a popular young actress who's gleefully bucked Nassau County's old-school Republican trend and endorsed John Kerry on the United States' political program of record (David Letterman).

Visiting the playground itself, where I haven't been in years, triggers the usual display over-dramatic nostalgia. The entire playground of my youth has been dismantled, and replaced with a few of those big metal jungle gyms (which itself replaced the old wood-and-rubber-tires jungle gym that went into and out of vogue in the '90s). Even the swing set was moved to a different part of the park. Also, the walk to the snack bar got a lot shorter. The ice skating rink that, in summer, used to hold miniature golf, is fallow this August.

Driving back from the park was another exercise in nostalgia. Just about every business I remember from that particular stretch of Jericho Turnpike has turned over at least twice since I graduated high school.

Tomorrow night I will return to Brooklyn, which will be another exercise in despair. I already miss the W train, with its express ride from Bensonhurst to Union Square. I have come to dread the D, which evidently stands for "Duh...whenever", at least when it comes to getting home during rush hour. And this is not nostalgia for the '80s, either. This is nostalgia for six months ago, when we still had the W.

The Manchurian Candidate

2004-08-08T01:26:00.000-04:00

One of these things is not like the other:

Roger Corman
Sidney Lumet
Jon Voight
Fab Five Freddy

All of the above appeared in the Jonathan Demme remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Two played politicos and two played political commentators. In a by-the-numbers world, three of the above names would be automatic choices to appear in political thrillers (and the fourth name would usually be James Woods). However, you've gotta like a movie that'll go beyond the obligatory, and put Fab Five Freddy in the Larry King or Bernard Shaw role.

Some good on-location shooting in New York, also. Yes, the tragicially generic Pennsylvania Station is practically unrecognizable in the interior shots, but that's not the movie's fault. But we also get Liev Schrieber's campaign office digitally inserted into Times Square, where the WWF The World restaurant used to be. And the Jacob Javits Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza (the tall building wedged in between the Foley Square courthouses and the Duane Street Duane Reade) serves as the exterior for one of Denzel Washington's interrogation scenes.

No subway scenes. It's hard to do a political thriller set partially in NYC without doing a subway chase. We do get a shot of Denzel looking pensive riding a bus from DC to New York, and another shot of Denzel looking pensive riding Amtrak back down to DC. But, again, this is a different kind of political thriller, so there were no recycled shots of menacing Secret Servcies agents dodging and weaving between the pillars on the platform of the Bleecker Street 6 subway station. Instead, we got Fab Five Freddy.

No More Happy Recap

2004-08-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

I don't think he ever rode the 7 to Shea Stadium, but Bob Murphy was a big part of the Subway Rider's formative years. It was hard to do homework in front of the TV in my house, due to a lack of flat surfaces in the TV room, but you could always have the radio on in the kitchen, and there was Bob Murphy, late into the evening, informing me that "The Mets win the damned thing by the score of 10 to 9!".

Bob Murphy died yesterday. Typically for my luck with the Mets of late, I didn't even find out until this morning. I missed the whole radio broadcast of last night's game, featuring numerous eulogies by the current radio team, Howie Rose and the only man who could ever begin to fill Murph's place, Gary Cohen.

Murph started broadcasting baseball when my parents were kids, and he was nearly a senior citizen by the time I learned that baseball sounded better on the radio than on TV. For years, I associated Murph's voice with the sound of frustration -- from 1987 through '91, the first phase of my Murph addiction, the Mets came close night after night, but never sealed the deal by winning a playoff series.

It wasn't until I moved back to New York in 1999, just in time for spring training (burned out from years of Tom Hamilton blurting through Cleveland Indians games on radio), that I began collecting Murph broadcasts on audiotape. Got some good games, too. When you take a native Oklahoman and plunk him into Queens 81 nights a year, you get some expressions to savor for a lifetime.

Masato Yoshii is facing nine miles of bad road.

There's nothing about this situation that looks good for Armando Benitez.

Andy Benes is a big man. He's big enough to go bear-hunting with a buggy whip.

Tonight's Lenox game-time temperature, a remarkable 74 degrees.

There's not a cloud in the sky, plenty of blue sky to be seen.

In later years, Murph seemed a little in awe of Gary Cohen. Last season he started praising Michael Lewis's Moneyball, until Cohen began a mini-rant about how he didn't want to read it. Murph retreated gracefully: "You're right, Gary". Even his misquotes, however, were charming: he invariably confused player names of the present with the names from a generation ago. Hence, Tony Perez and Cesar Cedeno roamed the outfield for the Mets the last two seasons. Opposing pitcher Woody Williams became Woody Woodward. Murph called one game in spring training earlier this year, from his native Florida, but somehow managed to avoid referring to the new shortstop as Hideki Matsui. He refused to call Pro Player Stadium anything other than Joe Robbie, bless him. And, out of respect, WFAN never updated the naming rights of Jack Murphy Stadium (named for Bob's brother) to the corporate disaster that used to be Qualcomm. The Padres made the point moot this year by moving to Petco Field.

Murph could be sarcastic ("That was a real baserunning rock by Rey Ordonez", he announced every few weeks), but never mean. When Kenny Rogers walked in the losing run in the 1999 NLCS at the end of a marathon 10-9 defeat, Murph had to select a Nikon Camera player of the game. He picked "the whole darned team".

In years past, you could ride the 7 to Shea at Willet's Point, and hear a much younger-sounding Murph recording broadcast across the concourse outside the stadium, advising you to be safe and drink alcohol responsibly. Last year that message was taken down. The Mets should put it back up, and let it run for the duration of the franchise. The Murph may be gone, but his voice still remains the glue that holds the team together.

The Second Coming

2004-07-31T23:51:00.000-04:00

I live just four subway stops away from Coney Island, so I should only be a five-minute train ride away from the beach. However, the backlog of trains arriving at the Stillwell Avenue station, where the D train shares space with the Q and the unheralded F, usually slows that ride into a 20-minute slog.

Stepping out of the Stillwell Avenue station, and crossing Surf Avenue, is akin to time warping back to 1930. The iconic Nathan's marquis is utterly non-digital. Most of the billboards look like something you'd expect to find unchanged from a book of 1940s and '50s photographs. Even Shoot the Freak, a Surf Avenue attraction, is low-tech. I'd assume that I'd have to shoot the freak with a Marine rifle rather than a high-tech intelligent Tom Clancy weapon.

So after four or five hours on the boardwalk and on the beach, it's back to the Stillwell Avenue station, recently redecorated but still looking mostly like a Santa Monica warehouse. Then you ride the train back into Bensonhurst, and then it hits you:

The MTA's annoying Poetry in Motion series is quoting William Butler Yeats. On July 31st, 2004, coming back from a locale best known for unsafe amusement park rides and Shoot the Freak, there you sit reading The Second Coming. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the subway rider's world, indeed.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

Well, that's relevant, it explains why a New York Times' critique of John Kerry's acceptance speech has been quoted on George W. Bush's campaign web site.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

That would be the Freak, of course. The Freak must be:

A shape with lion body, and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

This is the trouble with Poetry in Motion. There is no correlation between riding the 7 train through Long Island City, and reading the words of Sherman Alexie. And William Butler Yeats, I'm sorry to say, has no place in Coney Island.

ValuJet

2004-07-27T23:35:00.000-04:00

Back on the road again for Subway Rider. Today was one of the days you only get when your firm's travel department gets stingy with the plastic.

To get from Queens, New York to Bluefield, West Virginia, some men might drive. Yes, it's 540 miles, but it's not like you're paying the mileage or rental car out of pocket. Still, that's 10 hours of road time.

Other people would fly into the nearest airport.

Still other people would board a plane to Atlanta. On the air carrier formerly known as ValuJet. You know, the Everglades people. Based out of Atlanta, oldest fleet in the air. I think they have exactly one mechanic. And what's their logo? It's a cursive lowercase "A". Yes. You remember that logo from your 1979 Topps baseball cards. It's the same logo that the Atlanta Braves used to wear when Ted Turner was managing, Phil Niekro was pitching, and Bob Horner still weighed less than 300 pounds So we're not coming from a good place here.

So Atlanta's still another 450 miles or so from West Virginia. After a 2-hour layover, board a plane to Greensboro, NC. That plane takes an extra 30 minutes on the runway. I've been flying ValuJet for a couple of years now and I can't remember a trip that didn't have a delay of at least 30 minutes on at least one leg. This is why they're not the official carrier of The Amazing Race.

Out of Greensboro, it was rent a car and drive 145 miles. 20 miles of that was in the pouring, driving rain up in the Blue Ridge mountains. So high up you could look down in the valley and see clouds floating along like lazy pterodactyls.

When I arrived at my hotel, I was greeted by the sounds of an '80s cover band playing a high school 20-year reunion.

What is it about airport concessions people and inability to learn simple customer service? I'm tired of ordering something off the menu and being told, curtly, "We don't have that." Whatever happened to prefacing that with "I'm sorry?"

And, hey, ValuJet. Get over the pretzels. If you wanna be a discount carrier in this day and age, you gotta take a page out of JetBlue's book. TV and a choice of crummy snacks. Blue potato chips? Who wouldn't want to eat those? Even weirder, the foil wrapping on my pretzel bag was all creased. As if some business traveler on the previous flight had it clutched in his sweaty fist as he napped for 90 minutes, and then the flight attendant just recycled the unopened bag for the next set of passengers.

Conductor Rules

2004-07-25T00:19:00.000-04:00

This harks back to my earlier thoughts on New Jersey Transit. The only phrase I can use to describe today's occurrence is... rinky-dink.

On the Long Island Railroad, when you buy a round-trip ticket, you get one ticket. The conductor punches one half during the first trip, and takes your ticket during the return.

On New Jersey Transit, however, you get not a single ticket, but rather two one-way tickets, both marked with the code RTX, which is ticket-shorthand-ese for round trip excursion. So today, for $7, the clunky old ticket vending machine in Penn Station (which presumably operates on a 2400 baud modem) gave me two squares of cardboard. One marked NYP NYP RTX S ORNGE, and the other marked S ORNGE RTX NYP NYP.

(If you understand what that means, you probably ride New Jersey Transit daily. My condolences.)

Now, the following didn't happen to me. This happened to some bearded guy riding across the aisle from me. He attempted to use his remaining RTX, having already used the first ticket on a prior trip into Manhattan. Unforunately, he used his RTX tickets in the wrong order. Today, he offered the conductor a ticket marked ??? RTX NYP NYP, even though he was actually traveling from NYP NYP to ???.

The conductor then yelled at him. Chewed him out for offering up the wrong ticket. Twice! Even threatened to charge him NJT's ridiculously exorbitant $5 step-up fare, all for using his RTXs in the wrong order. Not only did she yell after collecting his ticket, but she paused and turned around after collecting two more rows' worth of tickets, to tell him the same thing all over again.

What kind of world is this, where the regulations are applied in such a manner as to cause a train conductor to yell at a commuter? It wasn't like the man tried to get a free ride. It's not even as if he tried to use his RTX during rush-hour, when RTX fares are inapplicable. He simply used his tickets in reverse order. Net damage to NJT: none.

Because the subway doesn't have conductors, Kafka-esque situations like this rarely happen in NYC. The analagous situation is when a commuter jumps a turnstile after the MetroCard got eaten, and then gets ticketed by transit police. This has actually happened, although not to me.

Unfortunately, I slept through most of the 35-minute ride to S ORNGE, and when I awoke, the victimized commuter. was gone. In one of life's most enduring mysteries, I will never know what ??? was.

The Staten Island Ferry

2004-07-22T23:55:00.000-04:00

I don't know when they're going to finish the Whitehall Staten Island Ferry Terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan. The inside of the terminal now resembles a cavernous Hollywood movie set -- concrete, concrete everywhere. Without lights, props, actors, or burly crewmembers in production T-shirts. All that's there is about five benches, and a guy riding a sort of Zamboni designed to clean concrete floors. Even the concession stand is gone.

The outside of the terminal -- a gigantic glass and steel monstrosity, like Chicago's renovated Soldier Field -- is slowly taking shape. At the moment it's a lot of scaffolding, with bad pavement and lots of temporary walls, but it has the potential to a be well-respected postmodern eyesore when it's all done.

I've come to enjoy riding the Ferry, which I never had the opportunity to do once during the first 17 New York-bound years of my life. Even after moving back to NYC I managed to not even so much as see the Whitehall terminal for five years. This year I've had to ride the ferry for work, occasionally. It's a great, short, free ride. I always sit on the starboard side on the trip to the St. George terminal on Staten Island, so I can see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. You'd never know I was a native, from the way I say that, but it is an inspiring view. Even better is the view as the return ferry pulls out of St. George -- your range of vision stretches all the way from Hoboken to Coney Island. How cool is that?

The St. George terminal is also unfinished, although it's starting to take shape as well. It even has turnstiles, but since the Ferry is free, the turnstiles do nothing except make it harder to wheel a suitcase in/out of the waiting area.

The Staten Island Yankees play right next to the St. George terminal. Again, great place for a ballpark. There's a big advertising banner in the Whitehall terminal. Of course, since a Class A baseball team by definition can have no big stars for more than a season -- even the managers turn over yearly -- there's not a whole lot to advertise on a banner. There are more mascots shown than players.

A pretzel and a hot dog get pride of place on the banner. This says something about the expectations of management as to what kind of people are going to show up to Staten Island Yankees games at the [insert corporate sponsor's name] Ballpark at St. George, but I'm not sure what. The next time I see a pretzel and a hot dog riding the ferry I will know where to send them for fun.

The Amazing Race, or, SubwayRider in Syracuse

2004-07-21T01:26:00.000-04:00

According to Yahoo! Maps, my hotel in Syracuse was just a mile off I-690. In theory, I should have been off the interstate, and inside my hotel room, within ten minutes of finding the exit.

In theory. In reality, I missed the I-690 exit on the Thruway and had to circle around Central NY just to get back to I-690. Then, after finding the exit, I drove around and across and through downtown Syracuse for about 25 minutes, with my already waterlogged set getting progressively wrinkled. The tie, an old frayed one inherited from my dad, is already a loss. Considering that I was staying in a distinctive hotel that's visible from anywhere on the Syracuse skyline, it shouldn't have taken so long for me to find.

On The Amazing Race, the magic of editing makes the act of locating a street address seem simple and painless, unless you're Team Bicker-Bicker-Bicker. In tonight's episode, most of the remaining nine teams of contestants made it a thousand miles from Buenos Aires to Patagonia using just one act break. In that same time, I still hadn't driven the theoretical mile from I-690 to my hotel. I also had to deal with a second day of torrential rains on the Thruway, and I actually saw a bolt of lightning end the life of some poor tree that had probably been standing for decades.

I love The Amazing Race. This was the third week of the new season, but I'd missed the first two weeks. Picking a team to root for was a simple act -- as soon as the opening credits showed me the two fat white guys tossing pizza dough, I was on board as Marshall and Lance fans. The jolly fat guys are always the way to go on The Amazing Race, like the New York City clowns last year, or Ken & Gerard in Season 3. My new boys came in second to last tonight after getting lost on the streets of Patagonia. I sympathize, I truly do.

Tonight's task on The Amazing Race involved a chocolate factory with 20,000 pieces of chocolate. One member from each of the teams bit to work their way through those 20,000 pieces of chocolate until they found the piece with the white filling (the odds were 1 in 550). Even chocolate becomes disgusting after you've bit into, say, your 50th piece -- especially when every eighth piece has a coconut center.

I had a similar situation tonight, trying to eat Roy Rogers chicken at a Thruway rest stop, while sitting near a TV monitor set to Fox News Channel, showing that PETA footage of what happens to chickens on route to your local KFC. Eww.

My day in Syracuse tomorrow is much simpler. I simply have to catch an afternoon flight back to JFK. I don't have to wait on line, I don't have to purchase tickets, I don't have to figure out how to get to Frankfurt via Lisbon, Paris or Madrid. I don't have to fight my way past eight other "Amazing Race" teams all trying to book the same flight. And yet, somehow, I think they're going to have a much easier time getting from Buenos Aires to Patagonia than I will getting back to New York...

JetBlue, or, SubwayRider in the Air

2004-07-19T22:43:00.000-04:00

Flying JetBlue, the best of the so-called value airlines, is a soul transforming experience. If flying SouthWest, with its lack of assigned seating, is like riding the clumsy M train, then flying JetBlue is a ride on the gleaming high-tech 6.

Yes, there is a connection between riding the New York City subway, and flying JetBlue from JFK to Rochester. Take the lines at the magnetometers, for instance (please!). JetBlue has three lines of magnetometers. Choosing which metal detector to walk through is akin to choosing which MetroCard vending machine line to wait on, or which turnstile to walk through. The rule of thumb is always to stand behind someone who looks as if they know what they're doing. The key to getting past security and up to your gate on time, is to get on line behind the businessman who already has his belt and dress shoes off, and his laptop out of the bag. Never get on line behind the family of five, the high school band trip, or people with passports.

Even the concessions at JetBlue are fun. The silk tie rack in the Hudson News has a kicking selection of eye-catching prints. I bought a really neat blue dinosaur tie two months ago, listing all my favorite species, before that tie promptly vanish after a single wearing. Today I had the option of replacing that tie with:

A beige tie blocked off with the faces of all the 19th century U.S. Presidents;
A blue tie with a north Atlantic coastal map showing the locations of all the lighthouses, from Passamoquoddy on down;
A midnight blue sky map tie showing all the constellations

Of course, I knew better than to buy 3 ties for $42 at JFK, when the same selection can be browed for $10 apiece at Rochester airport, 55 minutes away.

The food concessions at the JFK JetBlue terminal have also gone upscale in the last two months. The food court area has matured from one long sloppy line into five or six different mini-franchise vendors. This morning I was able to take my pick from such exciting vendors as Sammy's BBQ, and Mex and the City. Never mind that at 8:15 AM the Wok and the BBQ and the Mex were all serving the same eggs, bacon, and fruit salads. And, if I'm not mistaken, Krispy Kreme has been replaced by Dunkin Donuts.

Once you board a JetBlue plane, you watch television. Every seat has its own TV. Not at all unlike riding the 7 train, where every passenger comes equpiped with his or her own El Diario or Chinese-language daily. Today I sat next to two 30-something businessmen with standard issue Wall Street haircuts. The guy next to me watched Fox News. I merrily flipped my way between SportsCenter, Scooby-Doo, VH-1 Classic, and Food Network (where Ted from Queer Eye showed Sara Moulton how to make Southern-style desserts). All this before 10:30 AM. My only complaint is that not every plane has TV Land (Mister Ed), and not every plane has ESPN Classic (Game 5 of the 1977 American League Championship Series). If your flight has one, it won't have the other. Why can't we just have both?

Then, alas, it was time to get off. Time to trudge to the Alamo car rental counter, and drive along the New York Thruway in torrential summer rains. My MetroCard remains sadly tucked away into my wallet, not to be swiped again for another two days.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

2004-07-18T23:01:00.000-04:00

I've loved dinosaurs ever since the first grade, when I discovered Land of the Lost in afternoon reruns on Channel 5 in New York. And what was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel but Land of the Lost with a higher body count? I mean, there was even a sequence where a guy and two kids plunged over a waterfall on a raft, for crying out loud! And then was what Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park but a pleasant film adaption of Crichton's techno-thriller?

However, Crichton's The Lost World had the awkward task of being a sequel that was going to be instantly forgotten as soon as the movie came out a year or two later. I read the book (again) this week while subway riding -- trying to give my cervical radiculopathy a rest by not lugging around those same thousand pages of Bill Clinton. Then I watched the movie (again) on DVD.

I'd forgotten most of the book in the 7 years since I last read it. Small wonder why -- there are only two kinds of characters: those who deliver science lectures and don't get eaten by dinosaurs, and those who deliver science lectures and do get eaten by dinosaurs. There is no cheerful Marshall, Will and Holly subversion going on here.

Of the movie I remembered everything except for one scene: Jeff Goldblum's riding the then B/D/F/Q line in New York City. I'm quite certain it wasn't filmed here, although the car shown did have a subway map (in the wrong place) and an early ad for Metrocard.

Never mind the rest of the movie, then, even though, as silly as it was, you are just never going to go wrong with Julianne Moore and Pete Postlethwaite in the same cast. The subway scene was great! This is bona fide New York. Jeff Goldblum's iconoclastic scientist (made a lot more cuddly by screenwriter David Koepp than by Crichton) is just trying to ride the subway, to get to Richard Attenborough's suburban mansion. Nothing more strenuous than that. However, in the world of the movie, Goldblum is something of a media target. And he's soon approached by a smarmy grad student type who starts mocking him with dinosaur growls and T-rex waggly forearm gestures.

Isn't this exactly the thing that you, as an intrepid subway rider, would do if, say, some media target like Britney Spears or Tom Daschle dared to ride the F train? Make dinosaur growls? Waggle your forearms?

In true subway fashion, Goldblum looks away from the smarmy dude, and rests his eyes on two innocuous older ladies further down the car (you can tell the scene wasn't filmed in New York, because the ladies aren't carrying those pink plastic Conway's bags).

And, in true subway fashion, the two ladies glare right back at him.

So, then, never mind the dinosaurs. Let's do a sequel. Not Jurassic Park III; I'm talking about a sequel to the Lost World subway scene, we'll call it Lost World II -- where it's just Pete Postlethwaite riding the subways for 130 minutes and snarling at fellow passengers.

I'd pay a lot to see that.

Found My Soul in a Deep Dark Hole

2004-07-16T23:43:00.000-04:00

Fun things to do when the E train gets stuck on the wrong side of Jackson Heights for 30 minutes due to signal malfunction:

Read pages 521 through 545 of Bill Clinton's My Life
Try to take a nap while seated upright, but keep twitching and jerking so that your head falls onto your too-close neighbor's shoulder
Walk through the car with a duffel bag full of sandwiches and oranges and raise money for the homeless, while the conductor is blocking the door to the next car and staring really hard at you.
Sit really really still and try not to make eye contact with anybody
Ask the conductor when he plans to start moving again
Count the number of V trains that go soaring by on the unaffected local track
Sit really really still and try not to make eye contact with Anna Nicole Smith on the Trimspa poster
Read the back page of the Village Voice and count off the competing number of ads taken out for St. Jude versus the number of ads taken out for St. Anthony of Padua

Jude wins. Every time.

Keeping Track

2004-07-15T22:43:00.000-04:00

Riders on the Long Island Railroad are treated monthly to Keeping Track,
a foldout pamphlet keep riders up to date on what's new at various LIRR stations. We're exhorted monthly to keep voices down on cell phones and to keep our feet off the seats.

This month, they printed a mind-numbingly specific accounting of what's new at the Jamaica station. The east staircases are being closed, and the Portal Mezzanine is being opened, and the AirTrain terminal has a "spacious lobby".

Of even bigger interest are the on-time monthly performance statistics.
This month, riders on the Montauk branch were late 11% of the time. Afternoon peak trains were late more than 20% of the time. It just doesn't pay to live on the Montauk branch.

Now, why don't they have a similar pamphlet for subway riders? On-time monthly performance statistics are difficult to come by. You usually have to wait for the Straphangers Campaign to come out with an annual report, which usually gets reprinted by the Post along a cute ironic headline and a picture of the L train.

I think a monthly newsletter on the G train would be a great idea. I would love to know exactly what is going on with the renovation of the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street subway station. Why does that station not have a single escalator? Why did it take longer to repair the down elevator at the E/V station on 53rd & Lexington, than it did to build the Empire State Building?

Other general questions deserve to be answered in a system-wide pamphlet. What is the weekly performance schedule of the Doo-Wop Guys on the N/R trains? Where can I mail order the $1 batteries that are routinely sold by people who unadvisedly walk between subway cars while the train is in motion?

These are the things riders really need to know. And, best of all, for the time being, subway riders don't have to reminded to be quiet on the cell phone.

Clarinet Carnival

2004-07-12T22:35:00.000-04:00

I've heard many bizarre subway performs in New York City. Before today, the standard of oddity was set by the guitar player on the downtown 6 platform at 51st Street who played a jaunty, get-up-and-dance-a-jig version of "The Sounds of Silence", which used to be a haunting dirge about the concrete canyons and subway tunnels of Manhattan.

Until today. Now, I've seen everything.

College-aged looking white kid, in a black polo shirt, blue jeans, and a Rolex-looking watch, gets onto the E train somewhere before Roosevelt Avenue. Now, the E cuts through Queens pretty quickly, with only a few stops, so it's a long time between stations. This kid pulls out a clarinet -- not the usual instrument of choice for subway performs -- and starts playing Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt.

Peer Gynt.

I haven't figured out how to use AudioBlogger yet, but you do know this one. It's the tune they always play on TV to accompany happy pastoral or nature scenes. It's just not something you expect to hear on a subway train in Queens, the borough of Peter Parker and Louis Armstrong. On a clarinet.

After that was over, he played The Entertainer. That reminded me of Milton Berle's spoken-word performance of The Entertainer on The Muppet Show. Random train of consciousness that you can only get while reading a dreary Michael Crichton paperback. In Queens.

Oh, funny, I should think of The Muppet Show. Because that's the next thing he played. The theme from The Muppet Show.

At this point, the train had already stopped on Roosevelt Avenue, but our clarinet wunderkind didn't do the polite thing and switch cars. He stayed on for one more station, and played the theme from The Pink Panther.

I had no money, otherwise I'd have donated something, out of sheer bafflement.

Later on, I heard a violinist in Penn Station doing an accompanient to a karaoke machine playing the love theme from The Godfather. That felt right, somehow, but lacking in sense of humor. I won't be able to watch The Muppet Show anymore without thinking of Peer Gynt.

Free Paper(s)

2004-07-10T00:05:00.000-04:00

If it weren't for the subways, I don't think AM New York would stand a chance. A free morning paper? It sounds like a great idea. It works in other cities, too. But you can already buy five other not-free daily newspapers in New York City (if you count Newsday and The Sun) for 50 cents or less. Even a free paper, made up mostly of wire blurbs and recycled-from-Page-Six gossip items, is going to have a hard time cracking that market.

The solution? Station your distributors on the subway steps. That assures your captive audience. Wave a free paper in some commuter's face and you'll get a much more pleasant response than if you're selling strips of comedy club tickets.

Honestly, three months ago, the idea of surrendering my daily lunch date with the New York Post would've been unthinkable. There's no better way to burn off calories than to do a slow burn while reading the latest Dale McFeatters or Michelle Malkin Op-Ed piece. Three months ago, I didn't even mix my train riding with my daily journalism fix. News was for lunch, and lunch was for the Post.

Since AM New York sold me on the idea that I can't pass a subway station without craving free news, however, the whole equation has changed. Now I save my 25 cents, skip the Post, and work through lunch. I get my news while riding between stations. I grab my AM New York from the nice lady on the southwest corner of 86th and Lex, or from the newsstand guy at my local LIRR station. I ride the 6 down to Union Square. I'm through the national news by 68th street, I've made it past the letters & op ed page long before Grand Central, and I finish up the sports section long before it's time to get off at 14th. I learn something new about a different NYC neighborhood every day. I like to keep track of their regular letter writers (right-leaning Gennadi Putin has recently surged ahead of liberal reader Brian Hochberg in the who-can-write-more-often? sweepstakes). It doesn't even bother me that they almost never report the score from last night's Mets game, which ended too late for this edition.

Of course, the free paper experiment has taken a dark twist with the intrusion of Metro, a rival free paper, into the morning picture. There's quite a war going on between the AM New York crowd, in their eye-catching red aprons, and the Metro warriors, in their creamed-spinach-green polo shirts. The Metro woman at 17th Street and Union Square West gets positively offended if you grab the other free paper and not her own.

Left unchecked, such aggression could take all the joy out of getting my free morning intelligence briefing. Then I might have to go back to saving my quarters for the Post, and start following the wacky world of Mallard Filmore once again...

Stumping

2004-07-08T23:11:00.000-04:00

I have bad luck with politicians campaigning at train stations. When Hillary Clinton's Republican opponent in the '00 New York Senate elections decided to block the bottom of the lone down escalator at the Hicksville LIRR station, my getting home was delayed five minutes. As a result, I nearly missed the beginning of the episode of "Survivor: Borneo" where Joel met his island doom and got voted off by a block of disgruntled Pagong women.

Honestly, it was an annoying moment. Rick Lazio was a man of short stature and squeaky voice, and wasn't going to generate crowds by himself, even in a county like Nassau where Democrats were a forbidden species for so many decades. So he hired some carnival barker type dude with broad shoulders to block the escalator for him, and accost people with the repeated exhortation to "Shake hands with Congressman Lazio!" His campaign also found a couple of cherubic blonde kids who looked like they came from Republican lineage, and dressed them in those election-year-only straw boater hats with the red, white & blue ribbon around the brim.

I was fortunate enough then to be riding the escalator behind some guy who had actually gone to school with Lazio, and who engaged him in conversation. Thus, without Carnival Barker Dude exhorting me personally to shake hands, etc., I was able to duck between his broad shoulders and get out of there.

This morning, a Congressional hopeful descended upon the 20th Avenue station on the D and M line, smack in the middle of morning rush-hour. This is good planning. There's a Dunkin Donuts at the bottom of the stairs, so better than average chance your commuter target will have some early-morning caffeine oxygenating his or her blood, and thus will be awake to listen to you.

However, when I see old men in tightly-buttoned suits and straw hats passing out pamphlets, I immediately think "religious freak!". This is a throwback to my Long Island childhood, when doddering old men with German accents and brightly colored suits (and blonde cherubic children in straw boaters) would try to give me religious literature once my parents made the mistake of answering the door.

Today, one of the older men was blocking the door to the Manhattan-bound platform. Again, good electioneering. Nobody rides the Coney Island-bound platform at 7:45 A.M. The only door-blockers with pamphlets that I have time for during my subway commute are the good folks who give out AM New York.

However, I'd already made a wide circuit around the guy before I realized he was actually running for Congress, instead of running for Jesus. Even so, I was getting serious Rick Lazio vibes from the guy (in spite of the lack of kids with straw boaters), so I tucked my head under my elbow, so to speak, and dashed upstairs.

Then I felt sorry for the guy, and got kind of curious. The platform was littered with castoff brochures, so I grabbed one, and started reading it. That's when I realized my new election district also encompasses Staten Island. And that the guy I'd avoided, was actually one of the good guys, so to speak.

So I held on to his brochure, and maybe I'll even fill out his campaign volunteer form. It turns out, the guy actually represents a good cause, and now I feel bad for ducking him.

Good thing he wasn't passing out issues of Metro. Then I'd really have ignored him.

In the News

2004-07-06T23:58:00.000-04:00

I spent about 2 hours riding the trains today: On the 6, from 86th to Union Square; round trip on the 6 from Union Square to 51st Street; round trip on the E from 53rd & Lex to Jamaica Center; and then finally on the Q from Union to Herald Squares.

And for all that, I didn't see a thing. However, I did make it to page 375 in the Bill Clinton book. I also had to stand on the Long Island Railroad this evening, in a decidedly un-airconditioned car. The typical constituent LIRR commuter isn't likely to read the Bill Clinton book. This being the LIRR, however, my choice of reading material drew no comments.

Two very interesting subway stories in the NY Times today, so I'm going to post the links to those. You need to be registered at the website in order to read these, of course. I am registered, although I do feel guilty about it.

Faster Than a Speeding Train: Artist Man.

I've never actually seen this guy, although I have been on the R quite a bit on weekdays. I'm not even sure how I'd react if he sat down by me and started sketching. I'd probably get paranoid about what kind of theme day he was running, too.

Even more interesting:

Asian Music, Accompanied by the A Train.

This story blew me away. I read the whole thing out loud.

There's a whole etiquette to tipping subway musicians. I've always been fascinated by them. Back when I was a rookie commuter, I'd tip a dollar if I liked the song. For example, the brave red-haired guitarist in Penn Station who sang "The Wreck of the `Edmund Fitzgerald'". That requires moxie. I gave her a dollar. Less deserving of money was the steel drum guy on the 2/3 platform at Penn Station who played Toto's "Africa" at 7:50 every morning.

I fell out of that habit a while ago. However:

As notes from the prelude of "Carmen" pierced the humid air, Mr. Zhang — whose great-great-grandfathers played for Manchu emperors, whose father performed for Communist army generals and who was himself a member of China's best traditional music orchestra — began another workday, playing for the subway riders of New York.

And:

Although the Chinese scale differs from the Western scale, lacking some half notes, the musicians have adapted pieces as different as Mozart's nocturnes and the soundtrack of "The Godfather."

I'd definitely tip if I heard that. I'm going to have to start paying closer attention to these guys.

Unfaithful

2004-07-05T22:59:00.000-04:00

I will never get used to riding New Jersey Transit rail. I grew up on the Long Island Railroad, and still ride the Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma branches into and out of Manhattan a couple of times a week. NJ Transit trains, to me, are the Bizarro version of the LIRR.

The LIRR -- that dazzling train! -- is the epitome of commuter travel. It's an education in Americana, like "City of New Orleans" without the catchy tune. Any first-year law student can tell you all about the disastrous consequences that riding the LIRR had for Mrs. Palsgraf. Riding New Jersey Transit feels wrong in comparison.

LIRR cars come equipped with plush bucket seats. The trains run often -- you can get from Penn Station to the inaptly-named Hicksville every five to ten minutes during rush-hour. On the other hand, try getting from Manhattan to the Oranges, and you're short of luck. The cars come with bizarre blue-patterned seats. They're hard, and badly angled, so that you're usually leaning forward in your seat instead of leaning back. The tickets have no internal logic. If your ticket says "NYP NYP to SORNGE", but you're actually boarding at SORNGE en route to NYP NYP, the conductor's liable to give you a dirty look.

I do like the new 7th Avenue NJ Transit concourse at Penn Station. It's all marble, with wide-open spaces and high ticket windows. There are only four ticket machines (less than half the number of ticket machines you can find in the LIRR concourse), but the murals along the walls have song lyrics (like to "Under the Boardwalk"), and there are funky mechanized displays in between the gates.

But the new concourse is a recent addition, and still a case of too-little-too-late. The old NJ Transit concourse takes up a dirty corner of the woebegone Amtrak station on the 8th Avenue side, and the line for the ticket machines, especially during rush-hour, is even longer than the line at the ticket windows. The problem is those infernal codes you have to know to get to your station. What does punching in "5-2-4" have to do with buying a ticket? Was that Christy Todd Whitman's idea of a joke that you have to enter three zeros to get to Manhattan?

One day, maybe, the NJ Transit machines will have those cute color-coded touch-screen displays that the new LIRR machines have. But until that day, I'd much rather buy that ticket to Hicksville.

Spider-Man 2

2004-07-05T00:47:00.000-04:00

It's not easy being a New Yorker in Peter Parker's universe. A car upends on the average of every 25 minutes. There are enough shattered windshields in this movie to justify the existence of all those auto body shops coexisting shoulder to shoulder along Archer Avenue in Jamaica.

Then you have all the masonry falling off the buildings, and all those skyscraper fights between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus. This is just a movie where things get wrecked.

And the screenplay really inhabits New York, in a way that lends the extra dimension Metropolis and Gotham City, being fictional, can't have. It's great that Peter Parker's aunt still lives in Queens, and that Peter gets fired from a pizza delivery job on Bleecker Street.

Of course, "Spider-Man" exists in a sort of uber-New York that doesn't work the way our real city works. The Daily Bugle marquis covers up all the intricate carvings on the facade of the Flatiron Building. It's never explained why a pizza place on Bleecker (oddly not named Ray's) takes orders from a building in Midtown.

And, of course, the subway. Late in the movie, Spidey doffs his mask and saves a car full of intrepid MTA riders on the West Side el. That's right. An elevated West Side express -- en route to Bay Ridge! -- that inexplicably juts out into the Hudson River. The presumably CGI's train we see is branded with the real-life MTA logo, but isn't assigned a route letter (or number) or color. I want to ride this train.

The little gags and sight-gags make "Spider-Man" memorable, even above and beyond all the action, and the interplay between Spidey and M-J and Harry. Aunt May gives away Peter's comic books. Of course! That would happen to Spider-Man too; not just to those of us who read him. The colors run when Spidey washes his costume (in the most deserted laundromat in city history), turning his socks and boxers all red and pink. Peter's evil Russian landlord is even seen playing poker with one of the FBI agents from "The Sopranos".

For a full review of the film, of course you'll want to check out Roger Ebert's commentary. However, what it boils down to is this: Another engaging Bruce Campbell cameo, another heroic walk-on for Stan Lee, and a great scenery-chewing, mirror-shattering turn by someone else from the first movie. And, of course, J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. Haven't you always wanted to interrupt a meeting to call your secretary and ask her to bring the violin?

The Eleventh Commandment

2004-07-04T01:31:00.000-04:00

This has all the hallmarks of an urban legend, but my mother really did tell me that her older sister actually told her this story. So, in honor of my aunt, who had major surgery the other day and is now fairly incoherent in a hospital bed across the Hudson River...

"A man walked into my subway car. Carrying a harpoon.

That's when I remembered the 11th commandment:

Thou shalt not ride in a subway car with a man who's carrying a harpoon.

So I got off."

I have never seen anyone carrying a harpoon in my five years as an MTA regular. Nor have I seen inflatable dolls, A-list celebrities, or Mayor Bloomberg. I did see a man riding a broom horse. He actually said "neigh" to us before he galloped away down the car. This came right after I'd seen "Return of the King", which had slightly more realistic looking horses, and no harpoons.

Nathan's No More

2004-07-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

Trains of the Day: The E from Jamaica Center to Lexington Avenue/53rd Street, and the 6 from 51st Street to Union Square.

These are the trains I didn't take back to Manhattan from Jamaica Center this morning, in the middle of a 2 1/2-hour gap in my schedule. That would've been a 50-minute journey each way, leaving me with no time at my desk and too much time on the E, on which air-conditioning is a sporadic afterthought, at best.

So, instead I hopped on the Long Island Railroad from Jamaica to Penn Station, which is a much shorter ride. This is what I have to do to get lunch, given the scarcity of good non-pizza options in Jamaica Center.

Once I got to the LIRR concourse in Penn, I decided that I would go to Nathan's for lunch. Not exactly worth the journey, going all that way for Nathan's, you might say. However, I've been eating Nathan's since I was 3. I even once got excited to find a Nathan's at Dallas Love Airport.

So that's why I was perturbed by today's discovery. Nathan's in the LIRR concourse is no longer Nathan's.

It's become Nedick's.

I was never a big fan of Nedick's. When my mother would drag me into the city on museum-hopping trips in my youth, we'd meet her sister in front of a Nedick's near Macy's, before going on our long shleps through miles of Edward Hopper. Having Nathan's turn into Nedick's is the equivalent of going to Walt Disney World and finding that it's been bought out by, say, Mighty Mouse.

But, as I was already on line today when I made the Nathan's-is-Nedick's discovery, I ended up buying what I would have bought from Nathan's had it still been Nathan's. The problem is that I'm not crazy about the hot dog buns at Nedick's. They're toasted. Or, at least they are in Penn Station now. Toasted and buttered and flavored. Anything that detracts from the taste of the hot dog is just not to be had.

Well, the french fries are good, and they still come with that tiny red plastic fork.

I eventually returned to Jamaica Center, finished my business, and then rode that E/6 combo back to Union Square. Dinner was at a Kosher Deluxe on 46th Street, but that involves a different subway ride and, thus, a different Train of the Day.

Record Explosion

2004-06-30T23:24:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite places to walk in Manhattan is along 34th Street, in between 6th & 7th Avenues. This is how I get from the Herald Square subway station to the Long Island Railroad entrance on the north side of Penn Station. It's also one of my least favorite places to walk. To be cornball, let's say that everything right and wrong with Manhattan is represented on this block.

This is not an easy place to walk. Not for the faint of heart or lead of foot. It makes Canal Street on Saturdays seem deserted in comparison. I'm talking about the south side of 34th Street, across from Macy's. There you have the rubbernecking tourists looking to see whatever gigantic Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon Macy's has parked over its entrance. Then you have the sidewalk vendors selling back issues of Silver Surfer and the Mighty Thor, or cardboard-framed sketches of Tupac and Tony Montana, or the Sabrett's guy selling cold, hard pretzels.

And then there are the stores. Have you ever seen so many shoe stores all on the same block? Foot Locker used to be the store to hang out near, when on Saturday mornings they'd have a woman with a gospel-choir voice (incongruous in the Foot Locker referee-jersey uniform) clutching a megaphone and singing out cheers at pedestrians.

There's even a Tad's Steaks on this block. How quaint. It shares its space with Dunkin' Donuts, of course. I think the donuts are healthier. And the pretzels. The pretzels and donuts together are probably healthier than those grilled slabs of fat.

The place I used to "like" was Record Explosion, a hole in the wall selling old VHS tapes, and lots of DVD porn and kung-fu (or, even better, kung-fu porn) at low low prices. They also had new releases, but that was all the way in the back, and always at list price, or close to it. You didn't go there to buy new releases. You went there to buy "Justine's Exotic Liaisons" and "A Fistful of Yen", and "Bill Cosby's Picture Pages". All at the same time.

Record Explosion is still around, but not for much longer, if you believe their window displays. The windows are plastered with LOST OUR LEASE signs. There's even a huge countdown in one of the windows. 12 DAYS, it said today. That's the second time the countdown has dropped that low. I'm positive the countdown was reset sometime last month. In the city we call that the annual bankruptcy sale.

Stores like this -- these disreputable hole-in-the-wall record stores -- are being paved over to make way for chain shoestores and other soulless franchises. I'll miss them, but not because I shop in them. I'll just miss having them around.

For 12 more days (or more) you can look inside to see 100 customers desperately looking for bargains. Maybe four of whom will end up buying something. For 12 more days you can hear the endless audio loop of some paid actor shouting out: "We love you! We gotta go! We gotta move everything!". You can hear that from the sidewalk, but only as you walk past the entrance. They should have hired the Foot Locker lady if they wanted to be heard down in Herald Square. The voice goes on like that for minutes.

It's great stuff, it's great sidewalk theater. You can still find stores like this anywhere in the US, but only in New York City do they make grand opera out of the annual bankruptcy sale. Please, guys, stay open so we can do this again next summer.

The Lexington Avenue Distress

2004-06-29T18:57:00.000-04:00

Train of the day: The Downtown 5 Express, running from 86th Street to Union Square.

Conventional wisdom has it that taking the 4 or the 5 (the Lexington Avenue Express) saves no time over taking the 6 (the local), if you're just going between two points in Manhattan.

I've had that experience before -- I once took the 6 uptown from 51st to 59th Street, and then got off to transfer to the 4/5. When I exited the express at 125th Street, I was amused to see the 6 I'd left behind, pull up alongside. After making 4 additional stops that the 4/5 didn't make.

On other hand, when it's running quickly, I love how the 4/5 cuts through Manhattan like a hot knife through butter. You can run from 125th to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall in about 20 minutes. That's a pretty impressive run.

Weekday mornings this summer, however, the 4/5 downtown local is running at "reduced speeds", due to track work at the Union Square station. Therefore, the 5 went at a glacial pace, and it took about 30 minutes to crawl from 86th to Union. I finished reading my AM New York shortly after we pulled out of Grand Central, and for the rest of the slow crawl had nothing else to read, except Bronx Zoo subway ads.

All this, and I didn't have a seat, either.

Next time, I'm just going to get on the 6 at 86th Street. It'll be a shorter ride, and I'll be able to sit the whole way, too.

So, in other words, this summer, the Lexington Avenue Express is about as "express" as the Long Island Expressway. The world's longest parking lot.

Strangers on a Train

2004-06-28T21:53:00.000-04:00

Trains I rode today: The R (back and forth between Herald and Union Squares) and the B (from Herald Square to 86th Street). Local fever!

It's not even an original thought to say that, in a city of however many million people, you're going to wind up sitting right next to someone you know in a subway car, entirely by accident. This morning, while half asleep on the Brooklyn-bound R, I wasn't even paying attention to the people around me. Except for a very vocal blind woman who was trying to get a seat across the aisle. It took three people getting up to persuade her to have a seat, and then thirty seconds for all three of those people to maneuver her into a seated position.

It wasn't until I stood up to get off at Union Square that I recognized the guy sitting across the door from me, half hidden behind the Daily News and a rumpled tweed sports jacket. He's a worker's compensation lawyer I used to know from my previous job. His name is Woody, and he used to unknowingly enliven the long days I had to spend, drafting pleadings at a desk dumped out in the middle of a hallway. I'd listen to him bicker with clients on the phone and run verbal rings around them, tossing out casual insults it'd take them years to decipher. Even the letters dictated for his legal assistants were a joy to overhear. Not for him the monotone dictation. He'd really get into the spirit of his letters. Just talking into a tape recorder, he'd betray the venom in his voice with each "comma" or "period", or, especially, "question mark". I don't do dictations at my current job, but if I did, he'd be my dictaphone role model.

In the three seconds between the door opening at 14th Street, and my exiting the car, I wanted to turn around and say hi -- haven't seen the guy in the two years since I left that office and moved uptown, and from the C train to the R. In those three seconds, I had a whole conversation mapped out in my head, things I would've said to this guy after two years, all the way from random catch-ups like "How's the Knucklehead doing?", through the obligatory and wistfully insincere "Give me a call later".

Only, there was a large crowd waiting to get off behind me, so I didn't turn around or even nod at the Daily News blocking his face from view.

Anna Nicole Smith

2004-06-27T22:21:00.000-04:00

I'm glad that the good people at TrimSpa have finally changed the look of their Anna Nicole Smith ad campaign.

For several months now, TrimSpa have been branding New York City Transit subway cars by filling one-half of the train with the same red poster of Anna Nicole Smith before-and-after photos, with the duelling slogans, Be Envied, and The Ultimate Comeback.

It wasn't until you stared at the old ad for several seconds that you realize the background of the ad was made up of 8 or 9 red-tinged Anna Nicole Smith faces. All of them staring right at you. It was enough to give a person ideas of reference. You'd walk off the train, down the platform, up to the street, and then: boom! You realized that Anna Nicole Smith was trying to talk to you. And maybe she was trying to sell something less innocuous than mere diet pills.

Sometimes I'd want to do nothing more than ride from Union Square to 86th Street -- a fifteen-minute ride, during rush hour -- and I'd feel Anna Nicole's eyes on me the whole time. Then, for hours afterward, I'd close my eyes, even for the most fleeting blink, and I'd see those white eyes peering out from a red face.

Well, those ads are gone now. The new ads show a far more idyllic beach scene, and Anna Nicole's face is only on the poster twice: we see her smiling at herself, as she frolics along the beach with a faceless male model. No more hidden faces, no more red tinge. These new ads don't inspire the same subliminal Big Brother fear in me. I can safely ignore these ads, the way I'd ignore the ads from the Peanut Council, or Kenneth Cole's Welcome to Miami.

Now the only person left in the subway ads who's freaking me out with that you-will-obey-me stare is Dr. Zizmor...

Brighton Beach

2004-06-27T00:10:00.000-04:00

Like Judaism, the D train to Brighton Beach doesn't like
working on Saturdays. Today, service to Manhattan was
extremely sporadic. In other words, skipping the ten or so
stops between Bay Parkway, down at the end of Bensonhurst,
all the way up through 9th Avenue, which is further up in
the middle of the less-identifiable areas of Brooklyn.

Luckily, I'm within walking distance of Bay Parkway. However,
anyone else further uptown had to take the Coney Island-
bound D all the way down to Bay Parkway. Then get off, race down
the stairs, and race all the way back upstairs on the Manhattan-
bound side.

Usually, this is a sure guarantee that the Manhattan bound train
will pull in as you're racing down the stairs, and close its doors
and pull away as you're racing back up the stairs.

Once I got to Pacific Street, it was a simple matter to get off
the train and wait for the N up to Union Square. Most weekends,
N service into Manhattan is just as unreliable as D service
within Brooklyn. Today, however, no ill effects.

The D train is notable only for the fact that it never seems
to generate any performance artists. The N at least is usually
good for an appearance by the Doo-Wop guys, but today it was
fairly quiet.

During my hour on the train I managed to read about 20 pages of
Bill Clinton's book. Page 100 and he's barely out of Arkansas.

I will probably still be reading this book by the time the Second
Avenue line debuts its subway service on the Upper East Side.