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Local Stops
by Willie Perdomo 03/15/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
It’s brick outside, thermal-brick, coffee cup lids have coughing fits and a blind man with two good legs gets into my pocket by saying that I could be him one day. At the 116th stop Jane runs into Dick, all surprised and shit, she says, Wow, when did you move up here? Dick gives her [...]
A Subway Hope
by Ella Mei Yon Biggadike 01/13/2008Neighborhood: West Village
I am standing on the F train platform, my toes just over the yellow line. I lean toward the darkness of the train tunnel. In the distance I can see the faint, low-lit squares of train windows passing through the darkness. Then there is the hollow rumble of the F train approaching from in between [...]
A Subway Grope
by I. Delaney 01/13/2008Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
Having grown up in the City my entire life, I should have had my guard on and my extra sixth sense alert for the criminally suspicious. But I had just come off an awkward date, and I was still reflecting on its minute details, and otherwise pondering the futility of finding love in this hard-worn [...]
A Christmas Treasure
by Kevin Nolan 12/09/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
My wife is one of an elusive American species: the serious reader. And like many serious readers, she also indulges in crap. For a long stretch she indulged in a guilty pleasure known to many but not known to me, until one Christmas season years ago: the Regency-era paperback romance. These books aren’t the sexed-up [...]
Intervention at 42nd Street
by Michelle Wilson 11/11/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
I hustle into the car, glad to secure a seat. It’s always musical chairs on the cross-town shuttle, full-grown adults making a mad dash to slip into any remaining sliver of real estate. The open desperation on their faces and their coiled, tense bodies once embarrassed me. But I’m used to it now. I’m one [...]
The Meathead on the No. 1 Train
by Lily Shen 11/11/2007Neighborhood: Upper West Side
During a packed, standing room only ride on an uptown No. 1 train, I tried to shut out the crowd, absorbing myself in the free AM New York newspaper I picked up that morning. Two men who were squeezed against each other began to argue. Their voices grew so alarmingly loud that I could no [...]
You’re in the Quiet Car
by Hal Sirowitz 10/09/2007Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
“Whether you know it or not, you’re in the Quiet Car,” the conductor announced. “That means you have made a commitment to silence. The first obligation is to shut off your cell phones. And just because the train stops at a station doesn’t give you the right to turn it back on to listen to [...]
Yawning Prohibition
by Hal Sirowitz 07/28/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
(This story took place on a stalled Amtrak train one hundred feet from Penn Station. Therefore, since the train didn’t get to New Jersey yet, I’m calling this a Manhattan story. Though, that can be argued about by those who say it’s not where you are that’s important – that’s just earth stuff – but [...]
Hip Hop Subway Series
by Dvora Meyers 06/09/2007Neighborhood: Lower East Side
On May 20th, while most of the city was watching the Yankees and Mets slug it out for “Best Team in New York Baseball” bragging rights, just beneath their feet, a different sort of battle was being contested inside the Brooklyn-bound J train. The whole car, even when stationary with its doors open onto a [...]
The Subway Game
by Albert Stern 01/04/2007Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
My subway epiphany came when I moved back to New York after a seven-year absence in the early 1990s. In the time I had been away, the subways had been vastly improved, and were no longer a place of thoroughgoing menace. The interior surfaces of the well-ventilated car I rode in were gleaming and graffiti-free [...]
What I Heard On The W Train
by Mickey Z. 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Midtown
I’m standing on the crowded Lexington Avenue subway platform, waiting for either the N or W Train to take me off the island of Manhattan. A drone-like female voice booms over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and Gentlemen, pan-handling is against the law. Please do not give to law-breakers. Please give instead to charities that support those [...]
What My Daughter Heard On The Balcony
by Yuliya Chernova 10/24/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Outer Boroughs
After my daughter was born, I spent part of each day on the balcony of our third-floor apartment in Sheepshead Bay, rocking her in her stroller. Even when chilly, we’d sit out. Just like her mama and papa when they were little in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sasha has spent much of her first year wrapped [...]
