Once it reaches 42nd St, your morning E train becomes an exercise in diplomacy and impinged personal space. The unlucky commuters on the platform give up and step back to wait for the next service, but a few always try to force their way into the sliding-door space. From your position in the middle of the jammed bodies, you watch the nearest doors clunk shut and wait to be on your way. Tense moments pass.
The doors grind open again; one of the other carriages can’t close its doors. The driver is urging something indistinct and frustrated on the tannoy. The doors clunk shut.
And open. The collective tension is palpable; there is no-one at whom anger can be directed. Clunk. Open. Clunk. Open, again.
From the driver, something that sounds like, “get your freakin’ body parts inside the train.” Then – clunk – the train finally pulls away and expressions ease.
You step into Billy’s Bakery to pick up some pineapple cake. As usual the hipster bakers outnumber the customers by five to one. As you take in the scene a woman barges past you in a thief’s dash for the door and disappears. A moment passes. You reconstruct her image in your mind: gaunt, weathered, one hand immediately to her mouth urgently cramming in chocolate cake, crumbs scattering. On the counter, the ‘free samples’ plate is now empty. The staff take little notice. One way to get a meal.
From the 38th floor of your skyscraper, only police sirens are audible, weaving their lament around the skyscrapers. A choir of cat-demons and banshees, fighting and wailing. The cops are bored of the standard scream and blip-bloop the siren switch to create their own mixes; amateur DJs. A creative outlet.
After the storms, you emerge from work into the muggy evening air on Lexington. The streets are awash with dead umbrellas; enormous segmented jellyfish. Stepping over and between their beached, dropleted, crumpled forms, through wraiths of subway steam.
On the crowded subway home the older woman on the other side of the steel pole is looking at the floor, blinking rapidly. You hold on, hand at shoulder level against the jolting of the train. Minutes pass. Jostling and rocking, you notice her hand clasping the pole below yours. After 53rd and 7th she leans, closer. Her eyes are now a forced nonchalance, directed unblinking at the window, as she slowly closes the gap and gently rests her cheek against the back of your hand.
07-Mar-08 at 2:14 pm | Permalink
New Yoik sounds good, filmic and adventurey. It sounds like the sort of place I’d love to go if I wasn’t a defective human with social anxiety problemzz.
The subway sounds terrifying. Had any hassle from Predator 2-esque gangs, yet?
07-Mar-08 at 4:05 pm | Permalink
> terrifying
Here’s the funny thing – I feel *much*safer in New York than I did in London.
The police here are really tough on what they call ‘quality of life’ offenses. Drinking beer on the subway, or even taking up multiple seats can get you arrested.
Apparently this approach – of eliminating the apparently trivial crimes – was how they brought NYC back from the crime hell that it was around 1980-1996. See ‘broken windows theory‘.
The alarming bit is when you get a crazy on the subway, because there is nowhere to go.
07-Mar-08 at 5:46 pm | Permalink
When David Fincher got caught in a spot of rain in New York and became drookit, it inspired him to write Se7en. That was in the “crime hell” gap though. Broken Windows theory – I should have listened to what my mother told me. Well I did listen – she said “What if everyone did that?” when I dropped a lolly stick. How cool would it be if everyone did that?
09-Mar-08 at 8:04 pm | Permalink
> inspired him to write Se7en
It was actually written by Andrew Kevin Walker, sorry for being a geek. But I suppose the New York rain must have inspired Fincher filmically.
> New York
I used to work with a chap who lived there for a number of years who swear the place just isn’t what it used to be; he blames it entirely on Giuliani. I suppose James Murphy said the same thing on his last album.
10-Mar-08 at 4:57 pm | Permalink
Boo hoo I am so stoopid. Here, have you heard of this band called Nine inch Nail, the singer is called Marilyn Manson.
13-Mar-08 at 11:29 pm | Permalink
Drinking beer on the subway is the joy of living in London. In fact, you can even mix yourself a vodka and coke and no one bats an eyelid.
25-Mar-08 at 8:01 pm | Permalink
Er, pedantic this may be but I wasn’t aware we had a ‘subway’ in the UK? Unless you are referring to a pedestrian underpass, but then that would be ‘drinking beer IN the subway’, not, ‘ON the subway’.
I’m going back to bed now…
25-Mar-08 at 10:26 pm | Permalink
I think CJ lives in a hammock on the roof of Subway, the popular sandwich shop in East Dulwich.
26-Mar-08 at 2:02 pm | Permalink
Have you noticed how some comments on this page are really bitchy? And have you noticed how Britishly bitchy they are? > It was actually written by Andrew Kevin Walker, sorry for being a geek, and > Er, pedantic this may be but I wasn’t aware we had a ’subway’ in the UK?
It used to annoy me, really annoy me, the way the British like to take on a pained expression when they have to point out to you that you are mistaken about some minor detail or that you are standing on their foot. “If it’s not too much trouble, and unless it puts you in an awkward position, I would be ever so grateful if you could please not step on my foot with your stiletto heel which has now dug a hole in my big toe – only if it’s not any trouble”. This is what they say out loud to try to shame other people, the sub text is really “fuck off”. You have no idea how much it would get on my nerves and how hard it would be not to smack them. Now I must have got used to it, because when Parisians plainly tell you “Get off my foot” and give you a look that clearly says “fuck off” to go with it, I’m just shocked at how rude they are.
So I was going to say, can you just be honest in your criticism of someone and say “Rosy you ignoramus it was Andrew Kevin Walker” and “CJ you destroyer of the English language it’s called the tube” – but actually no, please don’t, hypocrisy is so pleasant.
26-Mar-08 at 3:27 pm | Permalink
Uuuh.
YEAH.
26-Mar-08 at 8:05 pm | Permalink
I don’t seriously call it the subway. I don’t call it the tube either.
>Er, pedantic this may be but I wasn’t aware we had a ’subway’ in the UK?
Without meaning to trouble you, I would like to point out the Subway of my home town Glasgow. Although I actually disapproved when they took down the giant Us, and still call it The Undergound myself: but that is hardly the point!!
26-Mar-08 at 8:27 pm | Permalink
Seriously interesting:
Originally known as the Glasgow District Subway, the system was renamed the Glasgow Underground in 1936. Despite this rebranding, many Glaswegians resolutely continued to refer to the network as “the Subway”. In 2003 the name Subway was officially readopted by its operator, the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).
And it gets even better. The Glasgow Subway actually predates the New York Subway:
We mentioned that the New York City system was the world’s sixth underground railway, with London and Boston two of its predecessors. The other three? Well, the Glasgow subway was the second to be completed, opening in 1891.
Sorry for being a geek!
27-Mar-08 at 6:54 pm | Permalink
> have you noticed how Britishly bitchy they are?
Oh, piss off Frenchie…
28-Mar-08 at 11:13 am | Permalink
prout is all i have to say