New York City: Tribulations Of The Center Of The Universe (cont.)

I took a few steps back as to give the appearance I had no affiliation with her. A heavyset black gentlemen with a burly mustache and thick-rimmed glassed worn precariously near the tip of his nose stared back blankly through the thick bulletproof glass encasement. He paused for several counts, looked down as if nothing had ever happened and began to rummage through a stack of papers. About half a minute later without looking up he flipped a switch and spoke in a jolting amplified mumble.

“I can’t hear anything you’re saying. Talk into the microphone”

Katrin repeated her plea, and was again met with an expressionless stare that you might give someone you were about to slap.

“It’s broken. I can’t hear—You gotta yell.”

“We got on the wrong side, if we cross over do we really have to pay again?” Katrin yelled.

“If you leave the station you gotta pay again.” The station agent yelled back.

“Really?” Katrin produced a helpless expression totally incongruous with the volume of her voice, “You can’t give us a transfer or our money back, can you?”

“If you go back in, you can take the train two stops to Brooklyn Bridge Station. You can cross over there.”

I smiled with vague satisfaction watching the tools that had on many occasions helped me realize my desire to do things that I had been adamantly against, being rendered powerless.

The station agent buzzed us back in through the turnstile, where we stood on the platform deliberating the merits of waiting for a train that would take us to the end of the line in the wrong direction versus admitting defeat and paying for the same subway ride twice.

“This is stupid,” Katrin observed. So we opted for the latter.

Even when I had lived in New York and had often found myself confounded by the subway. When New York’s modern subway was born in 1904 it was administrated by two private companies: the BMT (at the time known as the BRT) and the IRT. The lines operated by these companies utilized a different type of train car that operated on a unique and incompatible track gauge. In 1932, the City of New York formed a third and public subway body known as the IND. As a result one of the world’s most complex and heavily trafficked urban transit systems is fragmented. While in many cities transferring lines merely involves hoping on an escalator, in New York it can involve descending a multiple flights of stairs and traversing a quarter mile of soot lined tunnels.

The signage also leaves a lot to be desired.

Or at least that was my excuse for ending up on the wrong platform.

So we briskly pushed back through the turnstiles, accented a short flight of stairs and made our way on to the street in search of the entrance to the uptown side of the station. Lafayette St. was quiet and the night had a palatably heaviness to it. Standing on the sideway bathed in the orange hued streetlight I watched Katrin eagerly attempt to lead us across the street, where she immediately stepped ankle deep into a murky curbside puddle.

During the ensuing tumult I finally understood the romance of New York City. It’s a fantastic monster, the scope of which is incomprehensible. A place where everyone is lost and you can do whatever you want because no one really cares about you. But this anonymity can lull you to the disillusion of thinking that the city belongs to you.

“Give me your socks,” Katrin shrieked.

“No thanks,” I shrugged with a giggle.

“If you were a Gentlemen, you would offer me your socks,” Katrin annunciated in percussive syllables through thick pouty lips.

“I’m sure we can find a Duane Reade open around here somewhere.”

And I hailed a cab.

Page 2 of 2   Previous Page

All contents copyright ©2005 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.