What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

Just the other day, I was trying to describe my NY commute to a friend of mine and I realized all the little details were already gone. So before it all runs away from me, I wanted to capture my commute.

I lived in East Village at the corner of 14th street and Avenue C (yes it was almostBrookyln.com). I had to first walk from Avenue C to 1st Avenue and enter the L subway station. If you do not know the L line (Loser as I used to call it.), this is a major line that runs pretty deep into Brookyln and then runs underneath the east river and emerges in Manhattan right at 14th street and 1st Avenue. I soon realized that unlike my apartment broker's version of the story, L was an infrequent, overcrowded, and poorly maintained line. The schedule never seemed to make sense to me. Some days 3 trains would arrive one after the other, or some mornings I would wait 30 minutes with no trains. And then there were the times the train would arrive and it would have everyone and their grandmother from Brookyln on it.

The thing with subways is they're the ultimate tool of democracy. There's nothing like public transport to bring everyone down to the same level of misery. So here we were, the Wall Street ingénues, the new economy turds, the clueless Turks, the school children with questionable clothing and the last but not the least the homeless ... all stuffed into the same steel container speeding underneath the city of sex and glamour. Strangely enough there was nothing sexy nor glamorous about my commute. On the L line, designated with a round gray emblem, there were no colors, we were all washed out, tired, upset, bored, too late to places we never thought we would rush to this early in the morning.

The L line on Manhattan does not go far; and for a good reason too. The L line goes from the East side of Manhattan to the West side in a straight line. If you know Manhattan you will realize it's in the shape a long turd so it does not take long to cut it from side to side. Anyhow, enough about turd, the stops on Manhattan are 1st Ave, 3rd Ave, Union Square, 6th Ave, and final stop at 8th Avenue.

During the first few months, I took L to 6th Avenue changed over to the red line: 1,2,3 and 9. These different trains are on the same line but two were express and two were local. The groups of two further had unique stops, destinations and quirks as soon as they left Manhattan. To tell you the truth, I do not remember all the small details about these lines because I never used them for anything other than going to work and going to my cousin's apartment on Upper West Side.

To switch between L and the red line stations, you have to walk down this really long, and sometimes depressing underground tunnel. The only time that tunnel was fun was when they had street performers down there. I remember, there was this very tall, thin black guy that used to sing and play his guitar with the widest smile on his face. He brightened my day anytime I ran into him. I always tipped him, always --anyone who can brighten up your day in that city needs to be tipped. Perhaps this is why we pay so much money to entertainers, to all these movies, and musicians. They make our unbearable lives bearable. So in a sense we take what we should be entitled to: good living, and turn it into this rare feast, an occasional decadence, a shot of our favorite drug of choice and compensate for it with entertainment be it chemical, mental, physical or all of the above. I don't know where I fit in all of this. I seem to be pointing a lot of things and shitting all over everything but I am just as guilty of as anyone else for buying into, and contributing to the mess.

From 6th Avenue Red line station, I would throw myself into an express train and that usually was a major feat. The express trains were always sardine packed with the Wall Street people. A group of people that never seemed to dress down even during the sweltering hot of the summer months. I do believe that they really must be cold-blooded --otherwise there is no way anyone can have three layers of clothes on in the subway in August and not break a sweat.

The express line took me to World Trade Center station within one hop. It was amazing. I would stand in the train looking outside and watching all these stations race past us in a mad rage, all the colors, the light, the dark, the sirens all blending, running into each other like a Van Gogh painting. And there was a strange hope, a strange thrill there, as in now that I was moving faster I was somehow making up for all the time wasted?

World Trade Center station was amazing. It was not the most beautiful mall I have seen but it was full of stylish stores, all these tunnels and exits, and finally the entrance to Path, the New Jersey trains.

You have to appreciate the strangeness of the situation. In the morning everyone from NJ is commuting to the World Trade Center with the Path trains and I am commuting out along with a handful group of crazy people. So I would literally have to swim against the current of people flowing out of the Path stations and go down to the trains. The Path trains were always cleaner and mostly on time. They actually had a schedule if you can believe.

Almost there. The path train would eventually fill up and the doors would close and the train would always do this strange loopey turney thing so that it could re-enter the NJ PATH tunnel. We would speed underneath Hudson, and soon enough I was finally at my final destination, Exchange Place New Jersey.

A couple of months into my employment in NY, a coworker of mine recommended a less stressful route. Instead of taking the red line she suggested I take the orange like, the N and the R. It really was less stressful but it sometimes did not seem fast enough. NR transverse the same distance and roughly the same number of stops as 1,2,3,9 but there were no express trains, well at least for the part of Manhattan I was traveling in.

My cousin affectionately had named the NR, the Never and the Rarely. And that name says it all really. These trains would disappear for 30 mins at a time and would keep you waiting at the scalding hot platforms for minutes on end. When you finally got onto one of these, the cars were usually old, the A/C broken. I must admit however the most colorful people were always on the NR.

NR also converged at the WTC station. In fact many of the lines that traveled down to lower Manhattan were connected to WTC in one way or another.

I did not like my commute. I did not like the first day I did it, I did not like it the last day I had to do it. I never cared for underground trains, especially the ones in the US. If I was in London on the Jubilee line maybe my story would have been different and I would be raving. But I have a hunch that you could put me on a golden subway line with free express service to any station, I still would manage to be unhappy on it.

Maybe it's not the cities, maybe it is not the subway, maybe it is not a job, maybe it is not my parents, maybe it is not anything at all, perhaps it is not even me.