New York City: Tribulations Of The Center Of The Universe
By Eanet Fischer

IN PICTURES : New York's New MOMA

Midnight was fast approaching and I stood in the Spring Street subway station waiting for the 6 Train to take us to our midtown hotel. The station was deserted and eerily quiet providing a rare moment of reflection from a day of relentless movement and sensory intake. Standing on the platform, there amongst the columns, mosaic signage, and filthy tile and concrete that very well may have never been cleaned in the station’s 102-year history, time slowed down.

It was a Tuesday night and as the dampened chaos of lower Manhattan waned topside, I stood silent in a post-apocalyptic subterranean tube. There wasn’t a train in earshot. For now, I was happy just waiting.

I was back in New York City, and after three-year exodus, playing tourist in my hometown. I had lived in the place for more than twenty years, but my navigational skills were rusty. I could vaguely get almost anywhere, often overshooting destinations by a block or two. In my head, MOMA was on 57th Street, and my favorite trattoria was somewhere on Eight or Ninth Avenue in the low Fifties.

Of course, I would be hard pressed to tell anyone this.

“Apparently, we can only go downtown.” My traveling companion and actual tourist Katrin blurted expressionlessly. This presented a problem as we were headed in the opposite direction.

“So we cross over there,” I responded automatically, with a tinge of a condescending tone. I pointed to the other side of the tracks. Katrin paused for a moment to study the situation.

“How?” she said.

With a stoic confidence, I deliberately glanced around the station looking for a stairway leading to the overpass that would take us to the uptown platform. There wasn’t any. There was, however, the real possibility Katrin had been shortchanged of the expert tour guide she had been promised.

“We have to go up to the street,” I explained self-assuredly, trying not let on I had misguided.

“Do we have to pay again?”

“Yeah.”

She paused, smirked at me, and began staring longingly at the far platform.

“That’s unfair, it’s right there—Let’s just run across.”

And she was right, all that was separating us from saving two dollars was a five foot drop, two tracks, a wall of columns, 600 volts of electricity and some mice.
I flirted with the idea of indulging her and explaining all the different levels that it was a bad idea, but all I could muster up was the energy required for a defeated sigh.

“Come on, let’s go.”

And I walked through the full body heavy gauge steel turnstile with my tail between my legs.

“I’m going to ask for a transfer,” Katrin explained to me as we passed the station agent’s booth.

“They don’t do that here.”

“I’m going to try.”

Katrin is a leggy German blonde with high cheekbones who is used to getting what she wants. She has refined the art of smiling and batting her eyelashes to a point where it could be considered weaponry. She had, however, never met an opponent as formidable as the Metro Transit Authority.

“Hi, we got on the wrong side of the platform, and I was wondering: how do we get to the other side?” she started in a voice so cute it was nauseating.

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