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Lost In Transit
by Kerri Doherty 03/17/2012Neighborhood: All Over
It was 5PM on a Friday evening and somehow I was the only person on the train. I may have put the “new” in “New Yorker,” but I was no stranger to the stuffy sardine cans that subway trains turn into during rush hour. I craned my neck to get a look into the adjoining […]
Harlem Girls
by BreeanneDaniels 09/21/2011Neighborhood: Harlem, Uncategorized
I love this train station. 125th St. The 1 is sentimental, alluring. It’s Ice T’s shadow in the credits of Law and Order SVU, It’s an isolated and spectacular scene that rises from below at 125th street, and Harlem is unfolded from panoramic elevation. I stood on 125th street, listening the rumble above me as the […]
Don’t Look
by Jessica Pishko 05/01/2011Neighborhood: Herald Square, Uncategorized
When I took a position at a legal research firm, I became a frequent rider of the subway, sometimes spending more time under than above ground. My new job had me traveling from office to office during the day giving presentations and training attorneys. I hate to drive, so I’ve never minded the subway. Usually […]
Don’t Cry for Me
by Fran Giuffre 02/07/2011Neighborhood: Prospect Heights
I was standing at the platform waiting for the Q Train in the deep underbelly of the Atlantic Avenue station. I shouldn’t have been there. It was a Sunday afternoon and if everything had gone according to plan, I should have already reached Prospect Heights off the 3 train, if only the trains were running […]
Sympathies of the Mad and Lonely
by Sophia Efthimiatou 01/30/2011Neighborhood: All Over, West Village
An overweight middle-aged woman got on the F train somewhere in Midtown, and took the seat facing mine. She was wearing dirty clothes and was carrying two battered plastic bags, a combination that—two weeks in New York had already taught me—was not a good one. She immediately took a pack of Twinkies out of one […]
Beat It!
by Peter Wortsman 01/30/2011Neighborhood: Queens
On the middle level of the ever moving station stop at Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, where the subway and the elevated meet in a shaky embrace and humanity flows on a non-stop escalator between heaven and earth, the melting pot boils over with new arrivals as trains disgorge their loads. Here reed-flute players from the […]
Winter Wonderland
by Seth Swaaley 01/08/2011Neighborhood: Midtown, Multiple, Uncategorized
The snow is beautiful and magical as it begins to come down in light flakes in the early morning hours of late February. The roads and sidewalks are still manageable, the seagulls playfully carving the air a few blocks away from the Hudson, children throwing snowballs, people out walking their dogs. As the hours pass […]
It is Easy To Speak Chinese
by Lily Shen 01/08/2011Neighborhood: Upper West Side
At the 96th Street subway station, a Hispanic man with a graying beard hopped on the train. He immediately launched into a barrage of loud, incoherent ranting, which made me wonder if he was freshly sprung from the Bellevue psych ward. After several minutes of rambling in English and Spanish, he finally hit upon a […]
Celebrating the American Revolution
by Debbie Nathan 07/04/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Young white man with large backpack, heavy French accent, and reasonably capable English: Excuse me, is there a local Number 2 train? It comes on this track? Middle-aged white New York woman with long, dangling earrings: No. This is the Number 1 track. Number 2 trains, they’re all express. Over on that track. A Number […]
Get Off the Train Now!
by Danielle Winston 06/08/2008Neighborhood: Union Square
As the glass doors to Trader Joe’s swing away from me I struggle to enter the real word again: the one without cheap organic produce, and shelves of exotic cookie combinations like cashew caramel chip. Water spits down from the darkened sky, frizzing up my hair. All at once I’m balancing three overstuffed shopping bags, […]
You Look Nice Tonight, That’s All
by Shawn Vandor 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
A friend told me recently, at a small dinner party at her and her husband’s brownstone, that she’d once been throttled on the subway. The train car, she said, was packed. For balance, she raised both arms into the air and held onto the metal bar above. A man stood behind her, she said, and […]
At the Prospect Park Zoo, 1965
by Kenneth P. Nolan 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
Billy Hederman and Eddie Babicke started the migration. So I applied and with their tepid references, “He’s OK, Bob,” I was hired. I was now an official busboy in the Prospect Park zoo cafeteria. Others from my working class Catholic parish adjacent to the park signed up as well. Mo Maloney was assigned to the […]