justsubwaythoughts

[justsubwaythoughts]

Riding Alone: American Exceptionalism on NJ Transit

The train blows through another level crossing. I am riding on Train 1085, on the New Jersey Transit MoBo; MoBo being the agency's rather adorable Twitter nickname for the Montclair-Boonton Line. It's a name for a train that one can imagine being given to a friend of Thomas the Tank Engine. Of course, it would be the tweaker friend who is dependable only in his flakiness for everything and who you think stole your TV to buy another hit with.

Once again I notice I am the only passenger in the car. The train pulls into one empty station after another, the train's number of cars having been truncated so much our train's length spans just slightly over half the length of the platforms (themselves built in a more optimistic, and perhaps delusional, time). The diesel locomotive and its engineer chug along their exercise in Sisyphean futility: doomed five days a week to drag its load of four almost empty train cars from Hoboken to the Hackettstown station (ridership: 166 a day) knowing that, soon, they will have to haul their heavy burden of empty steel cars (capacity: 130 per car; and there is more than one car on each of the 9 daily MoBo trains) right back to Hoboken. A passing thought enters: perhaps it is not really greener for me, and (as far as my car is concerned) me alone, to be hauled to Morris County on a diesel train belching noxious fumes traversing 50km of railroad, plus intermediate stations, hacked right through forest land. Sometimes, it seems that it is not the train horn I am hearing, but the anguished howls of Al Gore. Aldo Leopold spins so hard in his grave that throw in a dynamo and you've got enough environmentally-friendly electricity to power a small village.

One can chalk up a lot of my lonely ride to just how inconvenient and unsustainable transit has become. There's no Midtown Direct service: NJ Transit has either not bothered or cannot afford to electrify a large part of the MoBo. The diesel engines emit suffocating fumes. Penn Station, where platforms are entirely underground, hence does not allow regular diesel service into the station to avoid Dutch oven-ing the passengers. The line is not just literally running on fumes either - a train costs mostly the same to run, regardless of if it is carrying 3 or 300 passengers. NJ Transit Rail has been deeply in the hole for years. Chris Christie's fiscal plan for the agency mainly consists of larceny.

Riding the outbound 7:38pm MoBo train from Newark Broad Street, once the train chugs through the stations north of Bay Street, the terrible frequency of service, the absence of direct NYC service, the lack of track investment and the huge financial losses share a common theme: very, very few people actually ride this line. Urban planning around the stations is atrocious. Expensive trains run through expensive stations surrounded by either a) low-density, single-family, detached housing, b) parking lots, c) woodland, or d) highways. There is really no way to get to the stations without a car for too many people.

The most egregious example is the Wayne/Route 23 Transit Center station, which essentially serves a massive parking lot, a fancy bus stop which most NJ Transit bus services skip en route to Willowbrook, and a huge stretch of Route 23 that is impossible to cross on foot for miles without playing chicken with freeway traffic. There are no residences or businesses within walkable distance from the station. Elsewhere, stations swimming in urban sprawl (or worst of all, uninhabited forest) all but guarantee anemic ridership.

This is not uncommon among the parts of America I have been to - California is the worst offender. Do the residents not feel alone: living in separate, single-household homes that, as time and affluence increased, grew in both floor area and isolation. People commuting to work either alone or, at most, with their own family in small cars, quarantined from the ho-polli. Or have they just embraced individualism as a way of life? In general, with the rise of gated communities and private condo developments, it is possible to avoid forming any connection (beyond in passing) at all with others in the neighborhood. Family and friends can exist hours away, sometimes not even in the same state or country.

As the White House decided to tell the entire world to go to hell and burn (or at least, slowly bake) by becoming one of only 3 countries to not partake in the Paris accords, as the DHS further extends an already extremely isolationist immigration policy, as the public provision of public services is eschewed in favor of privatization (who are you? some kind of socialist?), perhaps the retreat of America from the world is merely the symptom of the American individualism ethos that has been festering for years. Imagine being so scared of foreigners that about half the country clamor for a literal Great Wall of America.

Conservatives see the poverty problem as one that warrants not (or even cuts in!) social welfare programs but individual bootstraps and right "state of mind". Public service providers (e.g. the postal service) are caught in a unique purgatory where they have a for-profit mandate while simultaneously being required to provide unprofitable essential services at below cost - a situation that results in these "private" organizations racking up debt like it is going out of style, or requiring government subsidies year after year. Individualism is even enshrined in constitutional principles: one of the more confusing things of government here is that individual states have considerable autonomy in their own laws and policies - witness the number of New Yorkers who shop for luxury threads in New Jersey because unlike New York, New Jersey exempts all "clothing" from sales tax. Or just, in general, the number of expatriated New Yorkers living in New Jersey or Connecticut to avoid an additional city income tax.

A study has shown that 25% of people here have no friends they can confide in without reservation. Zero. Even at the University, there have been 7 student deaths the past semester alone. The statements from friends and family has taken on a common theme: "I never thought he had a problem." But is this really surprising in a country where 10% of its citizens take anti-depressants? There is a theory that addiction is due not to the chemical nature of the drugs themselves (many surgery patients who take opiates for pain eventually discontinue their pain meds without problem) but the death of connection. The lack of connection is literally, clinically depressing - and now the government, instead of addressing said disconnection, has decided to make America alone again.

Even in the city, it is not much better. How many New Yorkers have felt alone in the biggest city in the US? I know I have.

There is no "u" in "America"; there is only a "me". That is really sad.

[justsubwaythoughts]

As somebody of Chinese heritage, it has become an interesting thought experiment to think about what did my mother and her parents (and grandparents) see, hear, and think as a certain elementary school teacher from Changsha rose through the ranks of Chinese politics to become the 1st Chairman of the People's Republic of China. How did the people sit witness to the events starting from the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921, and leading up to the 1958 Great Leap Forward  - and in those 37 years think, “I am totally OK with this”?

There is a nagging suspicion that I have found myself, by sheer chance, to be studying in the USA just as a similar history is being made. In recalling these headlines, it is disconcerting to consider how even as the federal government’s behavior becomes even more erratic, even with a clear pattern of escalation, the tinpot insanity grows even more normal by the day.

Leave normalization to the statisticians, this is fucked up.

As somebody said to me, as I consider if I should just take my summer vacation in the USA: So, basically, you are the guy who decided to take a day trip to East Germany the day before the wall went up.

[justsubwaythoughts]

To put it mildly, it has been quite a month. On that damn November night, lying on my bed, watching the NY Times “win odds” gauge flush with red as they called the districts.

First we had the wall and then the withdrawal from the TPP. Now we have the muslim ban, clumsily disguised as not a muslim ban to make it technically legal. Like how the many smoke shops that dot the city slap “for tobacco use only” onto their bongs to make it technically legal. After that, the education secretary with no education (at least she supports accountability!) Then.....well to hell with that shit. We all know about it.

The most frightening thing, at least to me, is that there’s no longer a consensus as to what a truth is. All governments spin, but these provable lies (about verifiable facts up to and including the weather) are not just about integrity anymore. It’s the lack of respect for the intelligence of the press corps and everybody else.

It has been great seeing people in the city fight back though. New Yorkers keep their shit extremely real. That’s why the city seems so damn colorful again every time I return to it from across the river.

[justsubwaythoughts]

Of Whines and Men

Pictured: Grand Central Terminal, 3 AM. Not pictured: the tribe of destitute who have set up a primitive civilization in the GCT subway station’s exit-only stairwell at Park/42nd Street. I’m happy to report that they have yet to put a pig head on a stick.

See, Metro-North service is not 24/7 – I guess the finance bros of upstate and Connecticut can afford to drive back home to their spacious houses, manicured lawns, and loveless marriages. The rest of the unwashed masses have to use Penn Station. Google tells me that there was once a 2004 smash-up involving two trains at Penn. Nobody was killed. Death did a double-take because even he does not want to have to pass through that shithole.

Unfortunately, there is a subway station underneath GCT that does offer service at 3am, after the terminal is closed. So there I was, at three in the morning, walking up and down 42nd (and a bit of Park Avenue, and Madison Avenue) trying to find a way underground, and back home. GCT looks much less magnificent when you’ve been walking for more than a half hour, seeing it half a dozen times. All of the entry staircases were within GCT (or the commercial buildings nearby). The street stairwells are all exit-only.

Resisting the taxi drivers who grabbed this opportunity to cash in (because why should Wall Street have all the profiteering fun?) and relentlessly annoyed passers-by, I eventually found one entrance on Lexington, embedded in a building without the distinctive green lamps. After half an hour.

The 7 was suspended. I got my ass on the S, which was running overnight.

“Hey, buddy. I need to pee.”

That was when I met Andrew, a visitor from Atlanta, breath laced with beer. Poor guy was lost, liquored up, and on the S when what he really needed was the P. I explained that subway stations almost never have bathrooms; GCT will have some, but it is closed. Fine then; he asked for directions to Washington Heights. Terrific; that’s my train. Just follow me, I told him.

On the train, we made surprisingly good conversation. Buzzed people talk a lot. About what? We complained. In a forty-minute subway ride, we complained about (at least what I can recall):

Four subway services

The MTA wankers (figuratively, but also literally)

The frustrating difference between American and British English

Not just the ongoing presidential election but Clinton’s husband as well.

Getting ticketed for public drinking

Police brutality: love-child of “broken windows” and the militarization of the NYPD

Racism and tyranny of the majority

Price of bars in Midtown

Inverse correlation between price of a drink and quality of said drink

Gentrification and insane rents in the city.

How Corona Light still tastes like piss

How there’s nowhere on the subway system to take a piss

There’s more. My memory does not serve. But the point of it is this: it’s not just New Yorkers who are legendary complainers. I suspect it is a big city thing, from experience. Why? I can only speculate. I guess when the population of a major city can be orders of magnitude larger than small towns, the social problems that are a part of any settlement must also be more prevalent; and the governance less easy. Or perhaps when living is so damn convenient, people just plain lose perspective of what is an annoyance and a real problem. The city is a place where, if I feel hungry in the dead of night, I can stop by a 24/7 McDonalds and get some food in quick time – instead of being in a town where everything shuts down after business hours.

Compared to Asians, Americans may have (purely speculation here) been brought up in an environment where it is OK to express dissatisfaction, which I find to be a bit healthier than quiet seething for a few passive-aggressive weeks. Hey, we all get angry. Outspokenness is embedded in the culture. When the Pilgrims had that Thanksgiving dinner in 1621 with the Wampanoag Indians, the settlers complained about the lack of vegetarian options right before they slaughtered those hundreds of natives.

Should we stop complaining, and focus on solutions? That’d be great. But there’s a limit as to what ordinary people can do to change their lot. It is very unlikely that the solution to unaffordable costs of living would have been conceived and enacted by two dudes on that 3am subway train. Anyway, as the NY Post likes to point out, even if my partner that night was Mayor de Blasio, he’d also be hard-pressed to make any substantial changes to the city.

Perhaps what we were doing was embracing the positive aspects of certain types of complaining. There are rules: don’t complain about your own life or (God forbid) the other guy’s. The city is fair game. It is sufficiently distant enough, shared enough, and us helpless enough (who hasn’t been fed up when somebody complains endlessly about something they have the power to change?), to complain in good taste. I’m sure Manhattan won’t be offended. Complaining on that subway car brought two strangers together.

Why make conversation like that, when can we praise? How do you think that conversation would go?

Me: Isn’t rent in this city just so damn affordable?

Other: Totally.

Versus the conversation:

Me: It’s out of control. Millions for a shoebox apartment? You’ve got to be flipping kidding me.

Other: Tell me about it! I have this friend, actually, whose entire family was…

There’s more to talk about. We trade stories, and have an opportunity to discuss big issues – and humanizes those issues. Having a common enemy unites strangers – and goddamn we need some unity in what can be a distant, individualistic city.

The train pulled into 96th. Andrew said, “I’m getting off. I really need to piss bad.”

“Aren’t you lucky? There’s a Mickey D’s across Broadway. Hit that up.”

[justsubwaythoughts]

This service is being rerouted

So I needed to get a new laptop computer after the last one was broke on the flight to JFK. I was looking forward to finally catch up on work, email, drawing, TV and those birthday wishes from two months ago. It was a freakishly productive month though, since I am much more motivated to not slack off and Facebook/Netflix when there are other people around me in the computer lab. Silver lining.

I have also learnt: it never pays to go down to a store in person instead of ordering the damn thing online. They did not have the computer model I wanted at the 62nd Street Best Buy, so I’m trapped on this uptown 1 train for jack diddly. Because the MTA made the decision to both suspend 2 and 3 service plus run all trains a) local and b) on the weekend timetable, I’m sandwiched against the doors, hoping they do not suddenly open, to the tracks.

Here, in this subway car, we are no longer narcissistic, self-involved bastards. Fused together as one homogenous collective under pressure from the crowd, no longer are we each insignificant pieces of an 8 million strong puzzle. We have formed one whole - our hearts beating in beautiful synchrony with our fellow man to form a symphony, led by a single masterful conductor. We have become one New York. And New York is now moving at a snail’s pace because of train traffic ahead of us, which is just a hoot as the 1 train before us left Columbus Circle 10 minutes ago. You can fit a sixth borough in a gap that big.

It is always when I find myself with nothing to do that, well, my thinking goes into overdrive. This time, I am getting myself worked up as to if I’m truly making full use of my time here. Week after week – now it’s suddenly October. Where did September go? That insecurity is not a problem of attending university, per se. It’s a problem with attending university in Manhattan. There will always be something going on, somewhere, that I just plain can’t go. I may not know what that “something” is but damn it, some lucky bastard is having more fun than me.

I am still trying to accept that, no, I cannot be everywhere at all times – and that FOMO or not, I have to make some sacrifices. If I want to catch up on my CC reading with Parks and Recreation playing in the background, I cannot also hit Chelsea. If I want to have dinner with one friend, I can’t with another.

There’ll be more cuts in the future, I foresee. I managed to be averaging a D in Econometrics. In some ways, this was a significant improvement (at the 5% significance level) from the F I was averaging in September that prompted my advisor to schedule a “come to Jesus” talk. To be honest, I don’t think even the son of Christ himself would be of help. The Israelites were merely lost in the wilderness, not Rokkanen’s econometrics class. What happened to the gentleman’s C? Who does the registrar think we are – fucking Princeton? I’m hoping the grades are being normalized; if there’s one class where the grades should be curved, it’s got to be a statistics class. I’m having a confidence crisis.

And this is occurring at a time when I’m considering dropping Computer Science and just majoring in Economics, because CS is killing me. Got to pull that one up. Bootstraps and all that.

We will see indeed, when the time comes. Because right now all I’m seeing is some selfish bastard’s backpack clobbering me in the face.

[justsubwaythoughts]

Quite a handful of my formative winter experiences in NYC were formed trying to find my way back uptown after a late night out and about, in freezing rain. I can’t be the only one whose drenching hunt for the subway home feels exactly like this.

You wake up the following morning, always, with a greater appreciation of the good things of life.

I keep forgetting to take into account that whatever goes down...eventually has to come back up.

[justsubwaythoughts]

Nothing gets the attention of all four straphangers (including myself) within earshot in the 3.20 AM subway car heading uptown quite like a group of three young  and - let’s just say “ethnically diverse” - men getting on board and saying “make sure there’s no police getting on”.

I’m happy to say that all present were able to hang on to our possessions in the end. In my case that consisted of: a MetroCard with a $31 transit pass good till 5 May, a college ID, $1.20 in cash, a McChicken sandwich and an almost completely eaten bag of small fries. While I’m told that this almost guarantees that any armed mugger will be royally pissed off, I still don’t like carrying my phone and wallet on short errands: a Mickey D’s run in this case. I planned to just throw the burger at them, then book it to another car.

The idea, also, is that the nutritionally horrendous additives, sodium and fat contained in any McDonald’s meal will shorten their life expectancy and keep the Upper West Side / West Harlem area safer in the long run.

Turns out that the group of very stupid teenagers just wanted to enter the vestibule between the cars and see which among them could “subway surf” while hanging on to the top of the door frame the longest - feet off the ground.

Then I looked at the seats across the aisle and saw somebody had drawn a “You Are Here” circle around Riker’s Island. I can’t fathom why anybody would say the city has a mass incarceration problem, ya?

[justsubwaythoughts]

In Economics 101 today, we learn about the Theory of the Firm and market structures. Dedicated to the unnamed token agent who took away my $31 7-day unlimited transit pass.

Also, just what are those MTA signs above supposed to achieve? I doubt the thug whaling on the conductor with a chain is going to look at it and go, “Oh I’m sorry, kindest sir - I was not aware you did not want me to beat the stuffing out of MTA staff. A thousand heartfelt apologies.”

[justsubwaythoughts]

I, for myself, have had it up to here with having to ride the P train. It’s very, very sad that New York City has some of the world’s best infrastructure but residents who treat them as a literal shithole: a hole in the ground to shit into.

[justsubwaythoughts]

So I spend over an hour at the 1st Ave L train station yesterday. Damn it, Zabb Elee - you’re just so good! I have literally never (not once) taken the L train when it was not delayed, not running express through my station, or abducting me to Brooklyn (surprise express!)

My theory: All those “man under train” incidents on the L train (there is a disproportionately high rate of them on the L) are actually the result of Williamsburg, East Side and north Brooklyn residents who just could not tolerate just how much their subway fucking blows and decided to end the suffering - still a better alternative than moving to New Jersey.

[justsubwaythoughts]

So I compared the MTA to genital herpes. Uploading it now in case I get trapped downtown again tomorrow. They cost me “no late seating” theater tickets: hate to say they deserve it but...

[justsubwaythoughts]

Overheard on a downtown 3

Conductor: Wearestoppingmomentarilybecauseoftraintrafficaheadofus. Weapologizeforanyinconvenience.

Straphanger 1: MTA gotta get like a subway that don’t run on tracks. So if there’s a train stuck up ahead, we can just overtake the thing. The rest of us behind aren’t screwed.

Straphanger 2: What, like a bus?

[justsubwaythoughts]

So here I am. Standing on the platform after our 1 train conductor closed the doors right in front of our faces. Everyone’s a tease. Leave it to the MTA to turn a one-seat ride from Rector Street to a massive rectal pain of an odyssey: a bus and two trains.

And like Odysseus, cast adrift to foreign soil, doomed to wander; drifting from here to there without a way home. "The next...Ithaca-bound...local...train to...Ionia...will arrive in...10 years," no doubt wrote Homer. What did Odysseus think, when that realization hit home that he would not be going home?

Us too were stranded on this concrete pee-stained, gum-caked island. Helplessly watching train after train pull in and out on the downtown side of the station, across the wide expanse, oblivious to our plight. What if somebody here made an "SOS" out of our MetroCards to get their attention? Some of the resident destitute have set up a Hooverville on the other end of the platform - do we dare interact with the natives? Will they take us to their chief; the legendary token agent of 42nd Street whose presence has been rumored but not confirmed by any straphanger? But I am a man of reason: mere footprints, trails of expired MetroCards, and grainy photographs of sometimes contradictory signs to the “24-hour booth” are no proof. Superstition alone will not save us. I need evidence.

"The next...uptown...local...1 train to...Van Cortlandt Park – 242nd Street...will arrive in...32 minutes."

I hate riding the subway on late nights.

May as well start writing.