Tag Archives: Subway

Too many people, not enough space on the subway

I was taking the subway the other day, it was a Saturday, the trains weren’t running as frequently as they do during the week, and so even though there were less people using the system, all of the cars were just as crowded. It’s like every single time I take the subway, I always find myself standing awkwardly over someone, just way too close. Tell me whatever you want about subway etiquette, but there’s no right way to go about doing anything.

It’s like, I’m an able-bodied guy, and yes, I’d like to sit down if there are seats available. But chances are, there aren’t any seats available. And if I somehow do manage to sit down, it’ll only be like two or three stops before the whole car is full, I’ll feel guilty just sitting there while that old lady is standing not even three feet away. And what’s the cut off for old if you’re talking about an old lady? Seventy? Sixty? How old is that lady over there? I have no idea. I can’t ask.

And I feel like some people can read my guilt, they inch in a little closer, maybe make a pained expression, like if only I weren’t so old, if only I didn’t have to carry this giant cello, or maybe if I weren’t eight months pregnant, I’d be able to stand here without having this guy feel super guilty about sitting down. Eventually I’ll cave, “Here you go,” I never know quite how to say it, or how to accept the inevitable “Thank you.”

I just want to get from point A to point B without having to navigate through twenty-five random social interactions that I never really know exactly how to handle in real time. It’s not that I’m against giving up my seat for someone else, it’s just that I don’t want to have to go through the whole act of giving up my seat, and so unless the car is like totally empty, I’ll just stand, whatever.

One time I saw some guy go to give up his seat for an old lady, and right as he stood, some young punk wearing a pair of two-hundred dollar looking headphones swooped down and snatched it before the intended recipient of the seat had a chance to take the spot. The guy who gave it up made an angry face like, “Hey!” but the asshole just kind of stared off into the distance, smirking. What was the guy going to do, get physical? The old lady didn’t put up much of a fight either because, well, what are you going to do? It’s not like she lost anything. She just kind of drifted back into the anonymous background of the city, all while everyone standing around kind of wished that there was something to be done about this guy with his headphones blasting music so loud that it was impossible not to ignore the thump-thump of the bass escaping well past his own personal space.

What about the performers, the music acts and dance troupes that make you watch some three minute routine before sticking a hat in your face, looking you directly in the eye and saying, “Thank you, God bless,” when I refuse to acknowledge their existence? I feel like a huge dick, every single time. Maybe I enjoyed the song, probably not, but still, it’s not like I asked to be part of an audience. Why should I feel compelled to be a part of someone else’s theatrics?

On my train ride this weekend, I had to transfer from the N to the 7 at Queensboro Plaza. As we crept into the station, I could tell that a lot of people were going to get off, and another lot of people were right outside to take our places. The standard is that you let the people off before you get on, although it’s never that simple, because fifty percent of subway riders just don’t ascribe to this rule.

So sure enough, the doors opened, and I found myself face to face with another guy who didn’t look like he was in the mood to let anybody get off the train first. I used to get really pissed off about stuff like this, in the past I’d have shouted out something like, “Let the people off first!” or something aggressive like that. But yelling at a crowd of strangers, it’s like telling one pedestrian to get out of the bike lane on the bridge. You’re not changing anybody’s minds. Nobody’s listening to you. And so why should I get myself all bent out of shape? It’s just something totally beyond my control as a subway rider.

This guy wanted on, but I also wanted off, so I dodged a little to the right to hopefully make the simultaneous transition as smooth as possible. But it wasn’t a perfect motion, and my shoulder made contact with his for a second. Not a bid deal, right? Wrong. This guy leaned back, and then pushed me with his shoulder, hard, before disappearing inside the train that I had just left.

My rational thinking was gone, and everything inside boiled over with a primal rage. How dare that guy shove me? My jaw clenched and I fantasized about following him inside, where I’d punch him in the shoulder and start screaming in his face about letting the people off of the train before shoving your way inside. But the doors closed half a second later, and my senses slowly returned as I realized that I was just standing there, steaming at nobody, at somebody I’d in all likelihood never see again in my life.

But it’s just a shitty system, the New York subway. Everybody gets all defensive when you talk shit about the subway, they go on about how it’s the biggest transit system in the world, one of the only twenty-four hour means of mass transportation anywhere on Earth. And yeah, I guess if the city had a lot less people, maybe it could be something I’d consider using more often. But every time I need to take the train, I’m always standing, jammed inside, barely any space to breath. Every time there’s a stop, it’s the same struggle as people fight to get off and on. This system was developed like a hundred years ago, and it’s obvious that there are more people than spaces on the train. Why don’t they make it like four or five times bigger? Don’t you think the city would run a lot smoother if there were like a lot more trains? Why does it have to be such a fight just to get anywhere around here?

Riding the subway is the absolute worst

If you live in New York, this is probably like the most cliché topic of conversation: the subway is very crowded. During certain points during the day, it’s totally inadequate at transporting the number of people trying to get from point A to point B. Everything about riding mass transit here is a challenge. From the moment you even decide to go somewhere, it’s nothing but obstacles every step of the way.

Walking to the subway stop, you’ll be like a block, a block-and-a-half away, and you’ll hear the rumble of the train as it approaches the station. You think, shit, I can make this. As long as I run, as long as there’s an unobstructed path all the way to the platform, I’ll be OK, I’ve got this. But you’ve never got this, because there are always a million people in the way.

Because there are always like a million people taking the train, and all of them are thinking that same thing, I got this. But, you know, different people have different ideas of how long it’s going to take to get to the platform, different people have various opinions on what constitutes a brisk enough pace to make it there on time. That guy over there is walking really fast, but I’m walking even faster, and so is he going to make way for me to pass? Of course he’s not. Nobody’s making way for him to pass.

You make it to the turnstile right as the doors on the train open, there are like three people ahead of you trying to swipe, a bunch of people making their way out of the station via the same turnstiles. You have a few standoffs, the people exiting clearly have the advantage. All they have to do is push, whereas you have to swipe your card.

It says, “Please swipe again,” so you swipe, “Please swipe again at this turnstile.” It’s not hitting, even though you know it’s all about timing, you can’t go too fast, or too slow, you haven’t gotten stuck like this in a while. The guy behind you lets you know how frustrated he’s getting with an audible groan, a whispered, “Ugh … come on …” and you want to turn around and give that guy a look, a stink-eye, something, but you’re trying, one more swipe and, “Insufficient fare.”

The doors to the train close, not that you would have made it anyway, not with the insufficient fare. And there’s another line for the Metrocard machine. You’re waiting, you’re tapping your feet anxiously, checking behind you every ten seconds or so, making sure that you’re not going to miss another train. The lady in front, come on, the instructions are so clear, you want to just take her credit card out of her hand and do it for her, there you go lady, tap, tap, zip code, tap, thanks.

And then when you finally find a spot on the platform, you’re waiting, everyone’s waiting, “The next downtown N train will arrive in. Eight. Minutes.” People keep spilling into the station, crowding the platform. By the time the downtown N finally does pull up to the station, you’re already thinking, no way, no way is this overpacked train going to be able to hold everyone.

The people get off, everyone on the platform is jockeying for position, ready to grab one of the precious square feet or so of space. You make it inside, you slide to the middle of the car. It’s so tight that your body is pressed up against the bodies of three other people. Despite the lack of personal space whatsoever, the guy next to you is determined not to let the less than comfortable conditions deter him from reading his book. Even if it means him angling his elbow outward into your space, holding his paperback like an inch away from your face. Is he even comfortable craning his neck like that? What, does he have a book report due six stops from now? Doesn’t he notice that every time the train bumps or jostles that the spine of the book is tapping you on the side of the head? Tap, tap, tap.

And then when you’re half a stop away from your destination, this lady sitting in front of you, she abruptly stands up, or tries to stand up anyway, there’s no room for another standing body, so she starts yelling out, “Excuse me. Excuse me!” trying to get up, pushing to the crowd, pushing a little harder, “Excuse me! I need to get off! This is my stop!”

And you want to be like, you know what lady? This is my stop too. You just had a nice comfortable sitting down train ride, right? You got to catch up on some cell phone games, I saw you eating a sandwich, and don’t think every single person around you wasn’t grossed out when you started clipping your nails. And now you want us all to somehow contort our bodies so that you can be first one off the train?

“Excuse me!” she somehow made her way to the door, she always does, the train pulls up to the next station, even more crowded than the one before. The doors slide open and the people at this stop aren’t as patient, they start piling in, the sitting down lady is shoving back, “Ex! Cuse! Me!” some other guy behind starts yelling, “Let the people off! Come on! Let the people off!” It’s a shoving match, everybody pushing each way, the conductor gets on the loudspeaker trying to instill some order, “Let the passengers off the train first! I’m serious! Don’t make me come out there!”

There’s got to be a better way, man, they’ve got to figure something else out. Is this is a problem in other cities? I mean, I’ve seen horrifying videos of rush hour commuter traffic in China, and so yeah, it’s definitely worse over there. But what about Toronto? Or Boston? Is it that much of a nightmare getting anywhere in DC? Are people maybe a little better behaved? Can some of you come over here and help us out, maybe throw a few suggestions our way? Because this sucks over here, man, riding the subway here is the absolute worst.

Stuck underground without any money for a ride

A while back I got caught in a thunderstorm, I ran down into the nearest subway station and figured I’d just call it a day, head home. But it was bad luck, poor placement and worse timing, I was something like twenty-three cents short for a single ride, and the only two Metrocard machines in the station had the same big handwritten signs taped to the front, “cash only.”

I didn’t have any cash and, since I was relatively dry, I couldn’t imagine taking my chances outside, running the five or six blocks for the next station. The downpour had driven in a steady stream of likeminded people, and so I figured, I don’t have a choice, I’m going to have to ask somebody for a swipe.

I mean, I’m not one to beg for change, but it’s not like I didn’t have the money, I had it, it was just somewhere else, not in my pocket. And besides, I’ve seen people ask for swipes before, I’ve even given them out. Wasn’t it about time that I cashed in on some very minor subterranean cosmic karma?

“Excuse me,” I stood by the turnstile and started addressing the line, not anybody in particular, but just kind of directly ahead, “I’m stuck, the machine’s not working, can anybody give me a swipe?”

And whatever, I wasn’t expecting everyone in the city to just stop what they were doing to give me their attention, but I was kind of hoping that maybe one person might, maybe one or two, and like right away, like come on, I’m stuck here, you can’t help somebody else get on the train?

But nobody, I asked one time, and nobody even so much as looked. So I got all self-conscious, like do I ask again? Do I say the same exact thing? Or should I let the line advance a little more so I’m not repeating the same questions to the same people? I fell into a pattern, it was like every twenty-five seconds or so, I’d ask another five to ten people, and my requests got shorter, “Excuse me? Do you have an extra swipe?”

The best that I got was some lady who at least acknowledged my problem, she looked at me, not really sympathetically, and she said, “It’s unlimited,” referring to her Metrocard, “They’re all unlimited.” And yeah, I hadn’t thought about that, those unlimited cards make it impossible to swipe more than once in something like a fifteen-minute period. But come on, somebody had to have a regular card, I always kept a regular card, someone had to have a swipe.

But just as I was getting ready to ask the fifth or sixth group of people, I heard a man’s voice right behind me, “You!” he said. I turned around, it was a cop, he was pointing at me. “I’m sorry, do you have me confused with someone else?” and he continued, “Oh no, no, no, it’s you all right, you think I wouldn’t forget? That you’d get away with it?”

And I seriously had no idea what he was talking about, but he started getting closer, “Two summers ago, you hopped the turnstile, you thought you got away,” and I totally remembered. This was impossible. Two summers ago, yes, I was out for a long run, when out of nowhere the sky turned pitch black and started pouring. Look, I’m fine with running in a little rain, even a downpour, it’s like, what am I going to do? I’m already soaked from sweat, there’s no sense in stopping now.

But this storm, there was loud thunder, I saw a building two blocks in front of me take a direct hit from a bolt of lightning. That crack, that deafening thoom that I felt vibrate throughout my entire body, yeah, I guess I got a little spooked. I sprinted toward the nearest subway station.

When I got inside, I had no money, I didn’t have anything on me except for my keys, but I was all hopped up on adrenaline, there was a massive throng of bodies all trying to escape mother nature, and so, I wasn’t even thinking, I just acted, I kept running and I jumped right over the turnstile. It was much easier than I expected, but no sooner had I made it to the other side, I heard, “You!” it was a cop. They’re pretty strict about fare enforcement, I think the fine is something like over a hundred bucks, and so I saw this guy and I made a run for it.

Again, I wasn’t thinking. The platform has a finite amount of room, and this guy was on my tail. But, it was unbelievable, my luck, there was a train idling in the station with its doors open. I ran down a few cars, and right before the bell went off to signal their imminent closing, I slipped inside, I made it. Then I got cocky, the train started pulling away, and I gave a little shit-eating grin, a slight wave to the cop still on the other side of those doors.

And now here I was face to face with that same officer, I couldn’t believe he remembered me. Was he that consumed by my getting away? He remembered my face after all this time? I tried to fake my way out, “Hey officer, I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” but he wasn’t buying it. I abruptly changed course, “Listen, I’m not doing anything wrong here, what’s the problem?”

“Oh yeah? What are you a lawyer?” he was even closer, “No panhandling on the subway.” Was he going to take me in? Was this going to be something on my record, like I’d have to explain it every time I filled out a job application or applied for a loan? No, I thought, , it worked before, I can only hope that it works again.

And so I jumped the turnstile. But this time I didn’t make it across. The tip of my foot got caught on the pole and I face-planted right to the cement floor. My nose was bleeding, I chipped one of my front teeth. And nobody even really stopped, they just kept walking around me, that ceaseless line of bodies escaping the rain and heading for the train.

But it was bad, there was a significant amount of blood, even the cop started to feel sorry for me. “Just … just get the hell out of here. Just cut the shit, all right?” and that was it, he let me go. So yeah, another free subway ride, but now I had to find a dentist, I had to clean up. I’d have much rather just been wet, not this, bruised, caked in blood, humiliated.

Fro-yo with Andre after work

I got off the subway and I ran into Andre, he must have been in the same car as me, but I didn’t see him, which is fine, I mean, if I saw him, like if I looked in his direction, I would have been like, should I wave? Should I go over and talk? But this was better, just, here were, bumped right into each other. “Hey Andre, what’s up?” and he was like, “Oh hey man, just coming home from work.”

Did he see me on the subway? Like if we hadn’t run right into each other, would he have said hi? No, that’s a crazy thing to think about, and besides, we were on good terms now, mostly good terms. I mean, the last time we saw each other, we didn’t have like a direct confrontation or anything. Maybe enough time has passed where a random encounter like this didn’t have to be awkward or forced. Maybe we really could be friends again.

“So what are you up to?” I asked, “Do you want to go grab a drink or something?” He told me, “I’m actually on my way to that new frozen yogurt place a few blocks down. Do you …” and normally I would have said something like, frozen yogurt, gross, something way too aggressive, like I would have been joking around, kind of, but that’s not really a funny joke, it’s just me opening my mouth and putting people off. So what if I think frozen yogurt is gross?

“Sure, let’s do it, I love fro-yo.” And even though I paused to consider my words before speaking, fro-yo still slipped out. Why did I say fro-yo? Who says fro-yo? “Ha, fro-yo,” he said it, he said ha, but he wasn’t laughing. Was he making fun of me? I have no idea where fro-yo came from.

We get to the frozen yogurt place and it’s got this Greek name. “Hey Andre,” I ask, “Is this one of those sour yogurt places?” and he said, “Well, all yogurt is a little tart, just add some honey or fruit, it’s really good.” The cups were all the same size, and so I incorrectly assumed that it was like at Seven-Eleven, when you fill up a Slurpee, you fill it up all the way to the top.

I held down the crank on the yogurt machine and made myself a ridiculously oversized serving, way too much that I’d actually eat, and I was just complaining about Greek yogurt in my head, I don’t know why I automatically went for as much as the cup could handle. And then I got to the register, the clerk made me put it on a scale. “You have to pay by weight?” I probably said it a little too loudly, Andre looked over from the next register, he had like a golf ball sized portion in that oversized cup, “Thanks a lot!” he tried to avoid my gaze as he paid the cashier and left her a dollar in the tip jar positioned in front of the register. “Thank you sir!”

A tip jar? “Twelve seventy-nine,” the cashier interrupted my train of thought. I’m serving myself yogurt, spooning on my own toppings, putting the cup on the scale … what would I be tipping for? Here’s a tip, thanks for letting me buy yogurt from this yogurt place. I dropped the twenty cents or so in the tip jar, but the cashier didn’t say anything.

Andre and I walked toward the back and I tried to be like, “A tip jar? Can you believe they …” but he cut me off, he started waving toward a group of people in the back. They were all like, “Hey Andre! What’s up man?” and I didn’t know anybody. I think I maybe recognized a face or two from Andre’s grandmother’s funeral a while back, but I couldn’t think of any names or anything.

I waited to be introduced, but nothing. Andre took the last chair at the table so I had to go to a different table, this one lady was on her laptop and so I kind of had to interrupt her, “Hey, excuse me miss, can I use this chair?” and she said, “No, I have my backpack on that chair, sorry,” and even though that’s totally not how you do it, like, take your bag off the chair, you don’t get two chairs, I kept my cool and asked someone else at a different table.

Finally I’m back with Andre, with his group of friends, he was talking and I couldn’t really squeeze in between where he was sitting and where his two friends were sitting on either side. I found a sort of empty spot at the other end and I tried to do a really quick round of introductions, but it was all just, “Hey,” “Hello,” stuff like that, nobody was really talking to me.

After ten minutes or so of unsuccessfully trying to interject myself into the conversation, I made a move to get up. Nobody said anything. I walked over to Andre, “All right man, I’ve got to get going,” and he was just like, “All right dude, see you later,” like that was it, no objection, no effort to make plans for some other time. Like why invite me out to yogurt? I didn’t want yogurt. I fucking hate Greek yogurt. I tried not to show how pissed off I was, but I didn’t feel like interrupting everyone to say goodbye so I just made a beeline to the door, dropping my yogurt in the trash on the way out. It must have been too hard of a drop, because some of the yogurt wound up flying up out of the trashcan onto the wall, the cashier was like, “Hey! Wait!” but what was I going to do, ask for a mop and a bucket? No, I took off, I didn’t look back. How about buying a bigger trashcan for your stupid oversized yogurt cups? Fucking fro-yo, fucking Andre, never again man, never again.

I hate the PATH train

I want to start out here by saying that this isn’t anything against New Jersey. I’m not going to waste my breath belittling the denizens of Jersey City or Hoboken. I’m sure they’re all terrific places to live. No, my beef isn’t with the Garden Sate. It’s with the PATH train, the sort-of subway that links Manhattan to various locations across the Hudson. It’s a sorry excuse for public transportation, and I hate it.

I’ve only ever taken the PATH three times, and each occasion has been seared into my memory. No matter how hard I try to shake the experience, I still find myself haunted by the little engine that couldn’t. Each time I’ve taken that trip to and from New York, I’ve found myself breaching the surface afterwards like a prisoner who’s seen the light for the first time in years.

If you’re not from New York, or if you’re lucky, if you are from New York but you’ve never had to take the PATH, you might think I’m being slightly dramatic. I’m not. If anything, I’m sugar-coating the experience. I can’t believe that people actually use this system as a means of a daily commute.

You start out at a regular NYC subway station, one that connects to the PATH. You can’t really find the PATH, and I think that this is a safety mechanism, constructed so that unknowing New Yorkers don’t find themselves accidentally heading toward the PATH. If you really must take the PATH, you have to follow miles of signage, underground tunnels that get narrower and tighter, all making you feel like the subterranean world is about to close in on you at any second, and then right before you really start freaking out, there you are, it’s the PATH entrance.

Standing in that PATH station, it’s like traveling back in time, in some other city, like Cleveland or Washington DC. Everything’s laid out as if by an architect who’s never heard of the subway before, or maybe he’s heard of it, but he’s never actually been to one, he’s only seen footage of stations on TV.

The ticket machines are relics from another century. The unfortunate looking piece of equipment that I tried to purchase my fare from read in stenciled-on wordage that it didn’t accept any bills bigger than five dollars. And then even after I went to buy some candy from the newspaper guy to make change, the machine almost refused to take my money. It was only grudgingly, after smoothing out each dollar bill, having them go in and out, the stupid machine making an obnoxious beep each time it considered, then rejected my less-than-pristine bill.

Finally it spit out a MetroCard. It looked almost identical to its NYC counterpart, but it read “PATH” on the back, “Cannot be refilled.” Whatever, I don’t want to refill you’re stupid wannabe MetroCard, OK PATH train? Getting through the turnstile was a huge pain. The reader ate my card, said OK, but then refused to let me through. Apparently only after taking your card out of the other side does the turnstile unlock. Why the confusion? Why not make the system uniform with the rest of the regular subway? Why does everything in the PATH have to be stubbornly, annoyingly, just slightly out of whack with everything else?

This is my biggest issue with the PATH. There already exists a whole etiquette involved in riding mass transit. The subtle flick of the wrist used to gain access with your MetroCard, the process by which I can navigate a touchscreen blindfolded to buy more fares, the way that the tracks are labeled so that you know in which direction you’re traveling from any station in the system.

The PATH takes all of regular subway convention and throws it out the window. I waited at the end of the platform because on every other train in New York, the cars in the middle are full while the two ends usually have some empty seats. But not on the PATH. In fact it was the exact opposite. I watched several empty cars pass by until the last one stopped in front of me, and it was jammed with commuters. What the hell people? You guys are all choosing to sit on top of one another?

And you get in the car, it’s not the same type of train used on every other line. These are like baby trains, it’s making me feel like I’m riding a shuttle in between parks at Disney World. There were these TV screens positioned along the top that looped the same asinine clips over and over again. Some genius transportation planner must have been like, “We’ll make the PATH train entertaining! We’ll put in TV screens and we’ll scroll through random pictures of celebrities for people to look at! And we’ll do games and stuff, like word scrambles! But we don’t want to make them too challenging, so we’ll cycle through the same three word scrambles every two minutes or so!”

I hated everything about the PATH. It took forever. It smelled bad. They don’t let you know in which direction you’re going to be headed, so you have to stand there like an idiot and ask people, “Excuse me, is this one going to Jersey?” Every public service bulletin uses the ridiculous slogan, “The PATH to success,” like, OK, I get it, you’re using PATH as path, but it’s coming off as really forced.

And what do you have to look forward to after having been subjected to one of the worst transportation systems in the world? New Jersey. Again, I’m not trying to bad mouth New Jersey, but come on, if I have to go to there, if I can’t get out of it, it would be nice if the blow could be cushioned somewhat by getting there without taking the PATH. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should be ashamed of itself for running such a horrible subway. I hate it. I hate the PATH train.