Although it was constructed in 1536, the New York subway system boasts an annual maintenance budget of nearly $8, currently stolen, and it does a remarkable job of getting New Yorkers from point A to an indeterminate location somewhere in the tunnel leading to point B. It’s also very easy for the “out-of-towner” to use, thanks to the logical, easy-to-understand system of naming trains after famous letters and numbers. For directions, all you have to do is peer up through the steaming gloom at the informative signs, which look like this:
A 5 N 7 8 c 6 AA MID-DOWNTOWN 73/8
EXPRESS LOCAL ONLY LL 67 +
DDD 4 I K AAAA 9 ONLY
EXCEPT CERTAIN DAYS BB eg 3
MIDWAY THROUGH TOWN 1 7 D
WALK REAL FAST AAAAAAAAA 56
LOCALIZED ExpREss-6
llyy 4 1,539
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any “spare” change.
Within less than an hour, Chuck and I easily located what could well be the correct platform, where we pass the time by perspiring freely until the train storms in, colorfully decorated, as is the tradition in New York, with the spraypainted initials of all the people it has run over. All aboard!
Here is the correct procedure for getting on a New York subway train at rush hour:
1. As the train stops, you must join the other people on the platform in pushing forward and forming the densest possible knot in front of each door. You want your knot to be so dense that, if the train were filled with water instead of people, not a single drop would escape.
2. The instant the doors open, you want to push forward as hard as possible, in an effort to get onto the train without letting anybody get off. This is very important. If anybody does get off, it is legal to tackle him and drag him back on. I once watched three German tourists—this is a true anecdote—attempt to get off the northbound No. 5 Lexington Avenue
IRT train at Grand Central Station during rush hour. “Getting off please!” they said, politely, from somewhere inside a car containing approximately the population of Brazil, as if they expected people to actually let them through. Instead of course, the incoming passengers propelled the Germans, like gnats in a hurricane, away from the door, deeper and deeper into the crowd, which quickly compressed them into dense little wads of Teutonic tissue. I never did see where they actually got off. Probably they stumbled to daylight somewhere in the South Bronx, where they were sold for parts.
Actually, there is reason to believe the subways are safer now. After years of being fearful and intimidated, many New Yorkers cheered in 1985 when Bernhard Goetz, in a highly controversial incident that touched off an emotion-charged nationwide debate, shot and killed the New York subway commissioner. This resulted in extensive legal proceedings, culminating recently when, after a dramatic and highly publicized trial, a jury voted not only to acquit Goetz, but also to dig up the commissioner and shoot him again.
Chuck and I emerge from the subway in Lower Manhattan. This area has been hard hit by the massive wave of immigration that has threatened to rend the very fabric of society, as the city struggles desperately to cope with the social upheaval caused by the huge and unprecedented influx of a group that has, for better or for worse, permanently altered the nature of New York: young urban professionals. They began arriving by the thousands in the 1970s, packed two and sometimes three per BMW sedan, severely straining the city’s already-overcrowded gourmet-ice cream facilities. Soon they were taking over entire neighborhoods, where longtime residents watched in despair as useful businesses such as bars were replaced by precious little restaurants with names like The Whittling Fig.
And still the urban professionals continue to come, drawn by a dream, a dream that is best expressed by the words of the song “New York, New York,” which goes:
Dum dum da de dum Dum dum da de dum Dum dum da de dum Dum dum da de dum dum.
It is a powerfully seductive message, especially if you hear it at a wedding reception held in a Scranton, Pennsylvania, Moose Lodge facility and you have been drinking. And so you come to the Big Apple, and you take a peon-level position in some huge impersonal corporation, an incredibly awful, hateful job, and you spend $1,250 a month to rent an apartment so tiny that you have to shower in the kitchen, and the only furniture you have room for—not that you can afford furniture anyway—is your collection of back issues of Metropolitan Home magazine, but you stick it out, because this is the Big Leagues (If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere), and you know that if you show them what you can do, if you really go for it, then, by gosh, one day you’re gonna wake up, in The City That Never Sleeps, to find that the corporation has moved its headquarters to Plano, Texas.
Now Chuck and I are in Chinatown. We pass an outdoor market where there is an attractive display consisting of a tub containing I would estimate 275,000 dead baby eels. One of the great things about New York is that, if you ever need dead baby eels, you can get them. Also there is opera here. But tonight I think I’ll just try to get some sleep.
At 3:14 A.M. I am awakened by a loud crashing sound, caused by workers from the city’s crack Department of Making Loud Crashing Sounds during the Night, who are just outside my window, breaking in a new taxicab by dropping it repeatedly from a 75-foot crane. Lying in bed listening to them, I can hardly wait for ...
DAY TWO: Chuck and I decide that since we pretty much covered the economic, social, political, historical and cultural aspects of New York on Day One, we’ll devote Day Two to sightseeing. We decide to start with the best-known sight of all, the one that, more than any other, exemplifies what the Big Apple is all about: the Islip Garbage Barge. This is a barge of world-renowned garbage that originated on Long Island, a place where many New Yorkers go to sleep on those occasions when the Long Island Railroad is operating.
The Islip Garbage Barge is very famous. Nobody really remembers why it’s famous; it just is, like Dick Cavett. It has traveled to South America. It has been on many television shows, including—I am not making this up—”Donahue.” When we were in New York, the barge—I am still not making this up—was on trial. It has since been convicted and sentenced to be burned. But I am not worried. It will get out on appeal. It is the Claus von Billow of garbage barges.
Chuck and I find out from the Director of Public Affairs at the New York Department of Sanitation, who is named Vito, that the barge is anchored off the coast of Brooklyn, so we grab a cab, which is driven by a man who of course speaks very little English and, as far as we can tell, has never heard of Brooklyn. By means of hand signals we direct him to a place near where the barge is anchored. It is some kind of garbage-collection point.
There are mounds of garbage everywhere, and if you really concentrate, you can actually see them giving off smell rays, such as you see in comic strips. Clearly no taxi has ever been here before, and none will ever come again, so we ask the driver to wait. “YOU WAIT HERE,” I say, speaking in capital letters so he will understand me. He looks at me suspiciously. “WE JUST WANT TO SEE A GARBAGE BARGE,” I explain.
We can see the barge way out on the water, but Chuck decides that, to get a good picture of it, we need a boat. A sanitation engineer tells us we might be able to rent one in a place called Sheepshead Bay, so we direct the driver there (“WE NEED TO RENT A BOAT”), but when we get there we realize it’s too far away, so we naturally decide to rent a helicopter, which we find out is available only in New jersey. (“NOW WE NEED TO GO TO NEW JERSEY. TO RENT A HELICOPTER.”) Thus we end up at the airport in Linden, New jersey, where we leave the taxi driver with enough fare money to retire for life, if he ever finds his way home.