Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the New York City subway system. I do. It gets me where I need to go, it’s reliable most of the time, and it is bar none the best people-watching/delivery system of overheard hilarity in the world, so it pains me to hate on it, even a little, even now and then, even when it’s justified.

But the New York City subway system does have myriad annoyances (or, as I like to call them, “other people”), and a ninth-circle-of-armpit summer like the one we’ve had this year multiplies the irritations of the subway to Avogadro’s-number proportions — starting with the internship program the MTA has evidently started for brakemen, because I’ve never experienced hitchy, abrupt braking as bad as I have this summer. Usually, a smooth entrance into the station and deceleration at the platform is the norm, but lately, it’s the exception; it’s like every brakeman in the system is new, and doesn’t get that we don’t want to do the stutter-step or imitate fields of wheat rippling in the prairie breeze. Quit it, y’all, because my whole seat row is now reclining in my lap like we live in that pointillist painting of the picnickers, and it’s awkward, like, hi, total stranger who got on at DeKalb Avenue – may I feed you a seedless grape while reading Rimbaud aloud to you?

And I love the convenience of Atlantic/Pacific station most of the time, because it’s so handy – almost every line in the city runs through it, plus the LIRR. The problem is that, in order to bring all of said lines under one roof, the MTA went with a chaotic station design reminiscent of the Winchester House: passageways that lead nowhere, or dump you in the Sbarro employees’ bathroom at the Atlantic Mall; staircases that require crossing eighteen lanes of foot traffic to access or disembark from; and lackadaisical signage that gives the impression that the 2/3 is both ahead and to the right, behind you, or up a level. The layout is the changing-trains equivalent of Frogger, or trying to find a “shortcut” across a slot-machine pit in Vegas, and everyone in the station is so disoriented, it’s just complete chaos. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, this happened to a friend of mine, fishcakes, that you want to change from the R to the 4/5 at Atlantic/Pacific. You get off the R, fishtail around a pole, and head for the stairs, and if you’ve never had to deal with this station before, you’ll just assume, well, everyone stays to the right with faster stair-climbers to the center. …Hee! And, oh hell no. That staircase is like Brownian motion, but with sweaty New Yorkers; everybody just climbs up and down the stairs at whatever pace, dodging and weaving and whacking little kids in the head with their messenger bags (…sorry, shorty, but tell your moms to get over to the right next time), and then it’s time to dismount and plunge over to the left. And then you go down this weird corridor that bends around to the right, but you need to get over to the left because of all the strollers cutting hard lefts in front of you to get to the elevator, which, put it on the other side for crap’s sake, and then you have to go down another staircase, which has four handrails, which means four times the Brownian-motion weaving, plus people can hear the 2/3 and the 4/5 coming in from there, so they’ll just randomly start running and knock a guy with a cane down the stairs, and then you’ve got to try to get up the stairs to the 4/5 on the left while people are streaming down the same stairs, across the hall from the Q/B, and over from the 2/3. Get Busby Berkeley smashed on absinthe and Quaaludes, this is what he’d come up with. Sperm could rough out a better floor plan than that shit.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to stay on the R the whole way into the city, even though that line has so many stops that the train hasn’t even entirely physically left the last station before the first car enters the next one – “shut up, Cortlandt Street” is what I guess I mean to say here, although when I stop to think about it, I don’t know if there’s a single stop on the R line I don’t want to shut up. Canal Street can shut up for smelling like a gigantic rotting octopus packed with burnt hair and boiled in Soylent Green; Prince Street can shut up for having absolutely zero effective air exchange, so it’ll feel just as hot down there at Thanksgiving as it does today, and although I have not actually visited the platform today, August 29th, 2005, I can say without reservation that it is a George Foreman Grill with tiles down there right now; Court Street can shut up for Mariana Trenching the R platform so deep in the station that the last time I used the up escalator I got the bends, and for having overly familiar rats, like, yes, I “mind” if you “have a look at the crossword,” you toothy little mofo – now get off my toe; Union Square can shut up for hosting those horrible overamplified bands at the N/R/Q/W junction, and for not having a single can of WD-40 in the joint, because when it’s 96 degrees and the heat index is 107 and you have a barometric-pressure migraine, that ungodly screeching coming from the 6 platform is enough to send you all Santeria on the next bint from Jersey who walks in front of you and stops dead in her tracks; and shut up, 49th Street, with your VIOLENT ANGRY SHOUTY TRIPPY MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER BAAAAAAAD ORANGE TILE!

Wait, I thought of one: 8th Street. 8th Street doesn’t have to shut up. You’d think I’d want 8th Street to shut up, because 8th Street is the NYU stop, not to mention the central Village shopping area, but I mean to tell you, every time the R stops at 8th Street, the doors open and at least a dozen precocious coming-of-age novels in progress get on, and it’s an inspiring spectacle, especially at this time of year when the kids have all come back for the fall semester. And I don’t mean to bag on NYU freshmen unnecessarily; I’ve known a number of them, most of them mean well, and it’s not like I look back on my own freshman year and think how together I had it, because wow, no. But the chick-pecking-its-way-out-of-the-egg process that all frosh go through is magnified at NYU, and when a gaggle of them gets on the train at 8th Street, the dance-step-chart poses they strike on the seat or by the door, the way each one keeps touching one part of her outfit – one of the bracelets, the belt, the lapel of the frayed cord jacket – that lets you know she just bought it and its newness is keeping her safe, letting her exist? It’s like watching God play Colorforms. By Halloween, it dies down, because by Halloween, they have the grid down and they know the trains and the pizza and where to put their eyes, but right now, we see a lot of pairs of new/vintage plaid pants when the train stops at 8th Street.

Lots of plaid pants, lots of drunk girls from Quebec, lots of knots of 15-year-old boys from South Orange drinking Pepsi and clutching Puma boxes, and lots of empty seats. It’s the last week of August; everyone with anywhere to go has gone there. I like the empty city, the skeleton crew, and I feel it the most on the train. Every summer, the day comes when I really feel like I just can’t go down those steps and stand there on the platform, holding up the atmosphere with my shoulders and back, I just can’t do it, I can’t stand up all the way to Brooklyn Bridge, and that day when I can’t take it anymore is always the day when I notice I’ve got the fifth car to myself. I hope it means the real brakemen come back soon, because a Herbie Hancock video starring robot pants is no way to commute.

August 29, 2005

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