DAY 38

Uh-oh. Trouble. Via Gothamist.

Last night, subway service on the A and C lines was disrupted when a man was killed after touching the third rail at a Brooklyn subway station...around 4:45 p.m., the "man was electrocuted at the Broadway Junction A and C subway station Friday afternoon after landing on the train tracks and touching the third rail, authorities said."

DAY 37

A is for... antique, aging, absolute shit show, affordable, awful
C is for... crappy, cold, crumbling, chaos, circus, choo-choo
E is for... empty, excessive

DAY 36

AM: I waited 23 minutes for the train. PM: I waited 20 minutes for the train. And of course like five E trains went by in the meantime.

DAY 35

On a crowded downtown A, I reached out to grab a pole by the doors. A guy standing next to me was holding on so that his entire body was up against the pole.

This is a pet peeve of mine. It requires other passengers to squeeze their hands between the inconsiderate person's body and the pole. Not cool.

Saying "excuse me" did nothing. Do these jerks want to be touched or something? Why do people do this? This particular jerk was reading a book. The pages got too close to my hand and, yep, SLICE--paper cut.

DAY 34

Creepy guy (apprx 35m, white, runny nose) kept obviously looking down into my two grocery bags from Whole Foods. Eventually he turned and said to me, "So you have a sweet tooth, eh?" Creepy!

DAY 33

As I teetered around on my heels as I balanced in the center of the train car, I looked down and noticed a three-year-old boy deep in thought. He held onto his dad's hand and sometimes let go to play with his goatee. The train stopped at Fulton Street and they both stood up and pushed to the door. I was lost in Duran Duran so I did not notice that dad got off and the boy, who wore in a cute lime green puffer coat, was still on the train! (slight panic during "Girl Panic")

BUT the boy was holding the hand of a beautiful young woman who could not have been older than 20. She was complaining to another woman about the baby-daddy:

And his family just don't care! They say he already has two other kids so mine don't matter. A boy before and a girl after. When I brought my son to his grandmother's house, she looks down at him and says to me, 'aren't you gonna watch him'. They don't care at all! She could just say hi, how are you.

DAY 32

Optimism. As a train arrives at a station I can tell immediately if it is an A or C train just by the car exteriors. Sometimes the train letter displays don't work or are empty so this ability is actually useful.

DAY 31

Is the A train unsafe? It is definitely old and rickety. But it sort of holds up; kind of like that wooden roller coaster at Coney Island. The train today did not even have an A sign at the front if the first car. The doors of the train car did not stay open. Instead, they kept closing partially and opening again. Once closed, there was a strange buzz sound from the door area. So. So. So old.

DAY 30

Quote of the week: (by the train conductor)

"Step in or step out. This is not a private car."

DAY 29

A train spawn. Like every New Yorker, I had always fantasized about what the new second avenue subway line (in progress since the 1970s) would be called. I thought it could be a light blue H, I line. Oh well. There goes that idea.

DAY 28

Heard a strangely calming sound while on the brooklyn-bound A this afternoon. The Michael Jackson song "Billie Jean" played on a xylophone at the canal Street station.

DAY 27

I did not witness this personally, however I understand why a woman would go batshit about break dancers flipping around all over the car and blasting music. But sometimes kids have to earn a living somehow and why not by expressing themselves through dance. They really need to lower the music volume, though.

DAY 26

Yes, that really is what you don't want to think it is. I'm surprised people choose to engage in that sort of thing with the terrible lighting and hard, plastic seating.

DAY 25

Homeless guy: Hello ladies and gentlemen. I'm homeless Ed. Please donate whatever you can. Food, water, double cheeseburger, lotion... I'm pretty ashy. I can't believe they let me vote today I'm so ashy.

DAY 24

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath. The A train is not running beyond 168th street and does not connect Brooklyn to Manhattan (a good thing) so it is useless to me.

DAY 23

And....

The A train is on hiatus. Hurricane Sandy floods the nyc subway system.

DAY 22

Q: Why do the crappy old trains always run on the A, C and B, D lines while the 2,3 and 4,5 always have shiny new trains?

A: The A, C, B, D tunnels are from the old, pre-MTA IND system and are wider than the other train tunnels in the city. In other words, the old trains are too wide to fit in other tunnels.

DAY 21

I had a quarter of an hour added to my commute this morning due to the A dying at 14th street. The conductor never really explained why the train sat in the station for more than 15 minutes, but just announced that there was a service issue. One woman on the train made a comment that someone probably got hit by a train. Well, someone actually did get hit by a train this morning, but it was a 1 at 137th street. Still have no idea why the A decided to crap out.

DAY 20

Scene: Uptown A train. Early morning. 20-year-old attractive hipster guy dressed in a suit and sweater sits on the inside L seat next to me with his skateboard.

Him: What are you listening to?
Me: (takes headphones off) Remix of "A Whole Lotta Love."
Him: It just stood out...the picture on your ipod. It's very striking.
Me: Okay. (puts headphones on and closes eyes)

Him: I noticed the word "lipid" (points to a typed paper an attractive brunette sitting nearby is reading)
Her: (ignores)
Him: What are you reading?
Her: A paper I wrote that I need to present this morning. (resumes reading)
Him: Cool. I used to work at this health and wellness clinic in Ohio..... blah blah blah...CBD...marijuana....studies have shown...it's not just the THC it's CBD... blah blah blah
Her: bleh bleh bleh (Gets off at 168th Street)
Him: (turns back to me) So what do you do?

Not cool at 7am. Super nice guy and all, but wrong place wrong time.

DAY 19

No one wants to advertise on the A train anymore. This ain't no 4.

DAY 18

Special Guests: D train, 1 train, 2 train

There was a track fire by the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station this afternoon. It took me a couple stations--and verbal confirmations with fellow irate passengers--to actually hear and understand the muffled, static announcement. This resulted in my downtown express A turning into a local at 168th street. Just to put things into perspective, that is 15 miles away from Hoyt-Schermerhorn. So as to avoid an excruciating two-hour trip home, I jumped onto the D train at 145th street. The D has a useless route so I ended up transferring to the 1 and finally to the 2 train to get home.

Blue to Orange to Red

The A and 2 trains are like night and day. The 2 train is quieter and more spacious and it has comfortable seats, healthier lighting, cleaner air circulation, lighted station maps, and the absence of ruckus. It was like upgrading from a Super 8 to a W hotel.

(Side note: WTF is up with that long fenced/gated "tunnel" along the tracks at the Columbus Circle station? It just begs for koi fish and topiary.)

DAY 17

Well, what do you know. Someone finally decided to buy ad space on the A train. The colors of the ad actually match the train interior. But the whole geographical relevance thing is so tired: "The good part of NY mornings" and "NYOJ". Being all "wink, wink, nod, nod" about knowing where your ad is and who you're targeting is not clever or creative or interesting. And I am really going to restrain myself here about the art direction. I spent 60 minutes mentally Photoshop-ing that ad.

(And yes, the lighting actually is that bad.)

DAY 16

59th-125th street: The Land of Nod. 60% of my train car was snoozing during this long stretch of track this morning.

DAY 15

DAY 14

This morning I was sitting on an outer seat of those three-seat sections of the orange/yellow late 1960s model train. A man sat down on the other outer seat and deliberately spilled a drink in the center seat. It was a moderately crowded train and this man found a way to not have anyone sit in that uncomfortable middle seat.

DAY 13

Too bad I didn't go into work this morning.

A woman was arrested for allegedly stabbing a sleeping man in the neck on an A train in Manhattan this morning. According to police, 41-year-old Stephanie Bradley attacked a 46-year-old Bronx man with a knife on a northbound A train as it pulled into the Columbus Circle station.

DAY 12

Wait a minute...aren't those bullet holes?

DAY 11

The A train is so old that....

No one wants to advertise inside the train.

DAY 10

Panhandling is an art. Sometimes your reaction is: look down/ignore; pretend to be sleeping; fish a quarter or banana from my pocket; or... hey, nice job.

A 30-something guy dressed in a dark gray suit and red tie made his way through the train car trying to sell $15 copies of an inspirational book he wrote about getting out of prison and getting his life together. His strategy was pretty smart: hand out a dozen or so 200-something page, soft-cover books to people who look slightly interested and pitch to them as they look over the book. The man told everyone to buy the book now before he gets on Oprah or some morning show as he shared interesting snippets from the book. On his way back through the train, he collected the books back from people who were not interested and accepted $15 from those who purchased the book. He made $45.

(Note:  The same sort of thing happened to me once at Starbucks. A homeless man got around the whole don't-panhandle-in-starbucks rule. He placed pens down on the table of each person as he walked down to the end of the store. The pens had a paper note attached explaining his need and that if you want to help, just put a dollar out on the table and you could keep the pen. Otherwise he will collect back the pens. Minimal interaction and effort.)

DAY 9

I feel bad for the seated skinny guy who is being crushed up against the wall by two enormous human beings who clearly need 1.5-2 seats each.

DAY 8

Grossness: On a crowded train, a young man sitting next to me started clipping his fingernails. Little bits went all over the place including on the lap of yours truly. I quickly flicked the nail off and gave the man a disgusted look. He apologized. And continued clipping.

Now that got me thinking... If the train is 44 years old, how many nail clippings have accumulated? How many crumbs? Pieces of hair? Germs? Are there 1970s germs on me? Sometimes it is best to just ignore and block-out the gross shit (including the guy clipping his nails onto the floor) or else you will go mad and be unable to take public transportation.

DAY 7

Teenagers are often associated with shananagans for a reason. At 59th street a crew of purple shirt kids came on the downtown A. They were, predictably, boisterous. But their dance skills were kind of great. Moonwalk x10. One boy, who sported a pair of purple "beats by dre" headphones, began dancing up on a girl and gave her a very inappropriate lap dance. I mean, there was an impressionable infant three feet away. But his eyes were fixed on his dad's iPhone.

DAY 6

A train : wool :: F train : cashmere //
A train : rock concert :: F train : string quartet // A train : scrambled eggs :: F train : poached eggs

DAY 5

The A train is so loud and rickety that I can't hear my iPod. The conductor wears noise-canceling headphones.

DAY 4

Nothing major. In the afternoon a category 4 FOP entered the downtown train at 168th street. He sat down right next to me and I was trapped on the inside of those two front-facing seats. Even breathing through my mouth didn't help. I twisted my head around in vain to find clean air. The bile rose in my throat and I felt like I was suffocating. Until he got off at 42nd street.

DAY 3

You really can count on the A train to wake you up in the morning. At around 7:30am a FOP entered the uptown train at Chambers Street. This particular man had an amusing, yet annoyingly offensive, tic. He picked up on one phrase and yelled it out repeatedly for at least five minutes like a cuckoo clock while varying the syllables he emphasized: "WASHington Heights! WASHington Heights! WASHington Heights! WashingTON Heights! WashingTON Heights! WashingTON Heights!" etc., etc. Other choice words: UNion Square! UNion Square! UNion Square! Union SQUARE! Union SQUARE! Union SQUARE! Pretty Girls! Pretty Girls! Timessss Square! Timessss Square! Timessss Square!

The amusing part was the sound of his voice: rough, jagged hiss. And he interspersed a creepy, slow, guttural chuckle between his repetitive screams. Heeeuh, Heeeuh, Heeeuh.

DAY 2

At around 7:30AM, a 60-something homeless man came aboard the uptown A. He was only about a category one FOP, thankfully. However, for at least 15 minutes this guy went on a tirade as screamed at the top of his lungs, "You fucking bitch! I killed you! I saw your dead body and I laughed. I murdered you! [hideous laugh]. You are dead and I'm happy!" etc., etc., etc.

DAY 1

Riding the A train is a unique experience. The lovable eighth avenue express line operates between 207th Street in Inwood and Far Rockaway, Queens or Lefferts Boulevard, Queens. It travels the longest distance of all the trains: 31 miles. So, in short, a lot of shit can happen. For example, today there was a foul-odored person (FOP) in my train car. On the foul-odor scale it was a category 3. Not too bad, but too pungent to ignore. One of my fellow strap hangers, a man dressed in a suit, opened his large, leather briefcase and pulled out a can of air freshener. He sprayed the air intensely for about five seconds. Thereafter, he sprayed a small puff every five minutes. Yes, like one of those automatic bathroom air fresheners. Rude, yes. But many passengers were pretty happy about it. MTA-Note: Install wall-mounted air fresheners in each car. (Possibly also baking soda. And those silica gel things.)