NYC4: Underground, Out Loud, and on the Table

And…we’re back with more of my favorite bits of New York life. One of those is without a doubt the subway. I’ve always loved the New York subway–and public transit in general–since I’ve been a kid. For much of high school and college I wore a necklace with a NY subway token on it, and my college thesis was about the importance of public transit for social justice reasons.

We dove right into that love of all things underground with a visit to the New York Transit Museum. There were great displays about changes in the subway system over the years and what happens to old subway cars (at one point several were dumped in the ocean to make an artificial reef). Most significantly, we learned all sorts of things about the ridiculously dangerous work of building the subway system a hundred years ago. This included a nice display that gave a sense of how workers’ wages and costs of living compared…

There were also a whole room of ads from various transit systems around the world asking people to behave better. Here are a few of my favorites:

And a great collection of ways that people skirted having to pay the subway fare…

But, probably the thing that draws people to the museum the most is the collection of old subway cars. See, the museum is built in an abandoned subway station, so the tracks on the lower level all filled with old subway cars from a range of different eras. Here’s a few…

And these old subway cars were filled with ads from the various eras. They were hilarious. But, frankly the funniest (in a depressing, head shaking, “I can’t believe that’s real” sort of way) were the “Miss Subways” ads. Evidently the MTA ran something like its own beauty contest where riders could “vote” by postcard on which woman they wanted featured. These were seen in cars up to the 1970s at least. While they diversified the “contestant pool” over time, it was truly depressing to see a public agency so clearly involved in promoting the idea that women are objects…

Anyhow, let’s get back to talking about today’s subways…

Clearly, for me, getting to use the subway as my everyday form of transit was a bit of a treat. We lived just a few blocks away from two useful stations. A few blocks to the southeast was the 145th Street stop for the A/C and B/D trains. We took the A and B a bunch because they were express lines that skipped half a dozen stops. Or, to the southwest we could catch the 1 train at 145th and Broadway. This one was useful for accessing a bunch of Upper West Side shops and restaurants.

One of my favorite things about the 1 line was the brief part of it that runs on an elevated track around 125th street. It’s fun to see the city like that. I also love the various places where elevated trains run in Queens, Brooklyn, and elsewhere as well. The mix of above and below life just appeals to me.

Of course, the trains varied. Often we could find a seat, but definitely not always. A few times we had a car all to ourselves, and on rare occasions (usually Friday or Saturday evening) it was packed shoulder to shoulder. Of course, with COVID about, this was a bit worrisome. Luckily, most people were very good about wearing masks on the trains, and we would usually move to the other end if someone wasn’t. The police we encountered were useless at enforcement — a few of them didn’t even wear masks properly. Occasionally, I’d give people a gentle reminder to wear their masks (which was usually around their chins), but my favorite was an older woman who yelled at a guy to wear his because “I’m 80 years old and at higher risk and I shouldn’t have to move for you.” He put on his mask. And when that guy left a few stations later and another unmasked man sat down, I encouraged him to wear his mask while she rolled her eyes at the situation.

• 

• 

Besides having a quick, easy, and relatively comfortable way to get around the city, one of the things I found I really enjoyed was the fact that many of the subway stations have interesting or fun art. All of them have lovely mosaic signs announcing the name of the stop, but many also include mosaics (or occasionally other art forms), sometimes with art relating to the area around the stop, or other times just whimsical images. And, I love mosaics. I really think they’re one of the coolest forms of art. Anyhow, without belaboring this point, here are a couple dozen of my favorites that I happened to photograph (I missed some other great ones)…

On a side note, I also appreciated the MTA’s attempt to add art inside the subway as well. The two rather fantastical versions of subways as art here were particularly amusing, and the addition of poetry to the trains was a nice touch.

Another form of art on the subway was dance and music. While there were definitely people who just came on various subway cars and asked for money, and a number of kids selling candy and such, there were also, of course, folks who performed: playing guitar, singing, break dancing, etc. Some of them were quite good. Others…not so much. And music wasn’t just on the subway, it was performed in the stations, on the streets, in parks.

Overall, the musical experience was a major part of living in New York. It wasn’t just all the performers, but businesses, people walking down the street, bikers, cars, etc. all contributed their favorite songs to the soundtrack of the city. Music was a major clue to what kind of neighborhood you were in, whether you’d hear reggaeton, funk, pop, or just annoying Christmas music. 90% of the time, I really enjoyed all the sonic activity; the other 10% I was trying to listen to something on my own headphones…oh well.

As far as music goes, one of the highlights of our time in New York was also our most COVID-risky activity. We went to see one of my favorite bands, Stars, perform at a club. I’ve seen them perform multiple times before and this was by far the best show yet. You could tell that the band, particularly the lead singer, Torquil Campbell, was thrilled to be on stage after having not performed for most of the last year and a half. Also, the band, while mostly based in Vancouver, has its roots in New York, and connecting with one of their home towns was also particularly meaningful. At one point they invited a friend who had made an appearance on their first album (20 years ago) to join them on stage (see video #1 below–my recording). But, there were other touches too that made the night electric: there was more back and forth with the crowd than usual (including Torq tossing flowers to people multiple times), and they also selected a number of songs that dealt with loss, change, death, etc. In fact, the opening song, “In Our Bedroom After the War,” was introduced and sung so beautifully that it felt quite powerful (see video #2 below–just the album version of the song, so not quite as good). Clearly one could argue that as news of omicron was just starting to come out, the sentiment that “the war is over” might be a bit misguided, but for a band being able to perform for the first time in ages, I could definitely see what they were feeling…

The night we went to see Stars we had one of the best meals of our time in New York. Great Spanish tapas, capped with amazing dulce de leche-filled churros, at a place called Boqueria. But, of course, that wasn’t the only time we had great food. While I spent our pre-New York days making lists of places to visit and things to see (some of which we did, many we didn’t get to), Jess spent her time curating an amazing list of restaurants to try. We avoided the $300/person places, and we ate at home a good percentage of the time, but when we did go out, there was awesome stuff to try in every direction. A few highlights:

• So much Chinese food. Dim sum, szechuan, western, oodles of noodles, whatever. At Xi’an Famous Foods, Jess and I shared some noodles only to find we were both eating off opposite ends of the same single gigantic noodle.
• Miss Ada for brilliant middle eastern tapas on Jessica’s birthday.
• Dining with friends from our childhoods: Rebecca from mine, Christine and Sarah from Jessica’s.
• So much Korean food too.
• Some awesome cocktails.
• A very generous baker who gave us two cinnamon rolls instead of one, because the second one wasn’t up to their standards (but still tasted great).
• Brighton Beach — my first Georgian restaurant, where I tried taragon soda and khachapuri–bread with bubbly hot cheese and a whisked in egg, and also a stunning array of baklava at a nearby Turkish place.
• I even found my favorite brand of ginger beer was readily available, despite the fact that it has been elusive since we moved back to the west coast.

Most of our time in New York was in the blissful period where we were vaccinated (and then boosted), New York was enforcing a vaccine mandate for indoor dining, and omicron wasn’t yet a word people knew. So, by and large, we felt reasonably comfortable eating indoors. That said, if it was warm enough we ate at outside tables, which nearly every place in New York has by now, but as November marched on, that was less and less common. Anyhow, I was glad we made it through without getting COVID, and I was very glad to be in a city that had a clear, regularly-followed policy about vaccinations.

We even felt safe enough that we managed to get to the theater twice. One time we saw Trouble in Mind a play from the 50s critical of racism on Broadway that never made it to Broadway until now because the author refused to soften the message. And on our anniversary we went to see Hadestown, a modern version of the Orpheus and Eurydice story with a great set of anti-fascist and pro-climate justice political points and even better staging. Other than Orpheus, the performers were brilliant, and the Hades character had the deepest voice I’ve ever heard (I mean this absolutely literally).

Finally, I do need to clarify that we weren’t actually out and about quite as much as all that may make it seem. We did get out of the house every day (because, if nothing else, Jessica’s had to keep up her 10,000+ steps/day streak — 223 days and counting!), but in typical Gabe and Jess fashion, we spent a lot of evenings at home, just chilling and playing games. A few times a week we would rearrange the table in our tiny kitchen to be able to fit both of us in there to play a game together, and just once we rearranged our whole house, taking the table into the office and merging it with Jessica’s desk to make a table big enough for four. I also managed to get out to Hex and Co., a board game cafe, for a few meetups. I met some great folks there, several of whom played my prototype copy of Space Station Phoenix, and a few of them even gave some of my attempts at an expansion a shot (thanks Chaeha and Pelle!). We also had a great weekend of gaming (and talking, walking, eating, goofing around, etc.) with Ira, Ruth, and their kids up in New Haven. But, above all, we played several dozen games of Terraforming Mars, Jessica’s #1 obsession, on the iPad sitting on the couch with some tea or our favorite smoked maple-infused bourbon. (Note that we had a lovely nearly tied game on our anniversary. Jessica eeked out a one point win. Grrr.)

Anyhow, I think that’s enough babble for today. Still more New York to come…