Subwayland Read online

  And sitting next to them will invariably be a woman like Ms. Costello—knees clamped together, shoulders hunched, bag on lap and newspaper folded into a thin column, hiding a face with the pained expression peculiar to someone who is being touched by a total stranger over a long period of time.

  Her demonstration began yesterday morning at 9:30 at the Bergen Street station in Brooklyn, where Ms. Costello, 35, catches the No. 2 train every morning. Crowding in the cars was light, and Ms. Costello got lucky, wedged in between a woman and what seemed to be an anomalous man, his feet only shoulder-width apart.

  But before the train had gone two stops, she spotted several grievous examples of the transgression. “Look at that guy,” she said, pointing toward a small man wearing a backpack the size of a compact car. The man sat down with the backpack still on, ramming it into several people. And then, as if he had not made his presence sufficiently felt, he butterflied his knees into the passengers on both sides.

  Ms. Costello shook her head. “He’s guilty of several offenses,” she said.

  Next was the very, very big guy down the bench with the black beret and the flowing beard who was not only spread-eagled but sound asleep and swaying from side to side like a boxer in the 15th round.

  Then there was the young guy sitting on a two-person bench at the end of the car. His elbows were on his knees and his knees were spread out so far that no one even tried to sit next to him.

  “That’s not just invading space,” Ms. Costello said, framing her arguments carefully, as if for a judge. “That’s foreclosing on it altogether.”

  When the topic of the Encroaching Male is raised among women at her law firm or at a party, Ms. Costello says, it becomes a kind of rallying cry. It ranks high on the list of subway irritants, up there with people who stand in the door, people who push into the train before letting others off and people who lean their entire bodies against the poles (making it impossible for anyone else to use them to hang on).

  But these other offenses sometimes cross gender lines. Space invasion, on the other hand, tends to be one in which women are almost without sin and so they can cast imaginary stones—right into the crotches of their offenders.

  There are several theories about why it happens, all of them gross generalizations. Women sit with their legs together more often because they are wearing skirts or because they were taught that sitting that way is more becoming. Men sit the way they sit because they think keeping their legs together looks prim or because they are compelled by a primordial instinct left over from the days when they sat on tree limbs and had to make themselves look bigger so something would not come along and eat them.

  Ms. Costello thinks there may be something to the latter theory: “It does tend to be the leaner guys who spread themselves out even more.”

  Of course, there are always exceptions, like the large woman in the leopard-print pants sitting next to Ms. Costello on the C train, whose knee spread beat all the men on the seat. But exceptions are rare.

  Even rarer is the man who recognizes that he is guilty.

  Eugene Lareau, a 56-year-old messenger, was one of the men who impinged on Ms. Costello’s space yesterday. As she left the train, a reporter asked Mr. Lareau what he thought about her lament.

  “I don’t know why people do that,” he said, oblivious to the fact that he had just done it. “I guess the subway brings out the worst in people.”

  —ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 14, 2000

  TOKEN PEOPLE

  They are creatures of habit. They are harborers of history. They don’t trust technology. They frustrate economic theorists, refusing to change their behavior in exchange for a bargain.

  In the language of marketing, they are known as the nonadapters.

  The rest of us can think of them as the token people.

  And they are a dying breed, one that knows its days are numbered. New York City Transit reported last month that MetroCard users now represent more than 81 percent of the fare-paying public. The agency also said recently that within the next two years it expected to start phasing out tokens, which have served as tiny relics of the true New York since the first ones were minted in 1953.

  Most people with reservations about switching have already put them aside in the seven years since the MetroCard was introduced.

  But the token people, like the last old settlers to come down from the hills, are the ones who say they will hold out until the last token slot is welded shut.

  “Other people can do what they want to do,” said Jimmy Harris, a 50-year-old porter, who grew almost defiant the other day at the Times Square subway station when asked why he does not use MetroCards. “I like tokens, that’s why,” he said.

  All around them, the token people have seen their friends and coworkers slowly lose that certain jingle in their pockets. Of course, this switch has not always been easy for the millions who have made it. Staking out a token booth for a couple of hours, one can still detect a high level of affection for the token, an affection that seems mostly to do with urban practicality.

  Flimsy cards can get bent. They can get lost in wallets, wallets that must be pulled out and exposed to thieves while lost cards are being fumbled for. The cards can also lose their magnetic mojo or require you to swipe them 10 times. But unless you happen to get caught in a metal press on your way to the turnstile your token will always work.

  The other benefit to the token in many riders’ minds is that it requires no math. One token equals one ride. It does not offer a discount, but it will also never be hiding an extra ride within it somewhere that you have forgotten about.

  M. A. Horn, a credit manager, really, really did not want to switch. And he’s still quite angry about it. “They forced me to do it,” he complained the other day outside a Times Square turnstile. “And they force me to buy lots of trips. If I don’t, then I’m passing up free trips. And then I’m a fool.” (Mr. Horn has clearly spent too much time thinking about this. He called a reporter later to explain that he had calculated that a penniless homeless person would have to redeem 300 bottles or cans to gather enough money to purchase a $15 MetroCard, the cheapest card that offers a volume discount. “Think of that!” Mr. Horn said.)

  Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer, did not want to switch either. Like everyone else, he gave in mostly because of the discounts. But he still does not use a credit card when he buys his MetroCard. And he still worries, every time he stands before a MetroCard machine, about the ability of the government to track people who use the card.

  “I don’t want them knowing where I’m going, even though I’m as innocent as anyone in the city and as lawful as anyone in the city,” he said. “And you don’t have to be paranoid to think that way.”

  Many of the true token people feel the same way, except they will not be bought off so easily by discounts.

  Carlos Fernandez, 23, a senior at the State University of New York in Purchase, reported by e-mail that when he tried out the MetroCard, he felt as if he were entering a kind of government-controlled “Area 51, where every little bit of information and detail is scrutinized.”

  In his message, he added, “Who will be there to open the gate manually when the M.T.A.computers befall a belated Y2K? In the era of online hackers, one can never be too certain.”

  Nick Liopiros, a waiter, is among that rarest of token people, one who has never even tried a MetroCard. “Forty-one years in city, only token,” he said. “This MetroCard, no. Never.” He added, “With me is strong habit.”

  But that might be changing. Mr. Liopiros was asked if he felt a certain amount of pride in stubbornly passing up the discounts offered by the MetroCard. His countenance quickly changed. He leaned his stubbly face in close to the questioner.

  “They give discount?”

  —ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 6, 2001

  DON’T DARKEN MY DOORWAY

  Honestly, it was not with malice, but in the true spirit of psychological inquiry—think of it as Freud
on the F train—that a reporter set out yesterday morning to ask the following questions of a particular subset of subway riders:

  Why do you like to ride standing in the doorway of the train? Even when there are lots of nice, comfortable seats available? And why do you insist on remaining planted right in the middle of the doorway when the doors open in the station, forcing people to squeeze around you to get into the train?

  They are questions that many subway riders would love to ask themselves, of course, but they don’t have the excuse of writing a newspaper column, so they are afraid they might get punched. The column writer was a little afraid of this himself, but he figured that the subject of door blockers ranked so high on anyone’s list of subway irritants that the risk should be taken. (Besides, he had a 6-foot-5 photographer to back him up.)

  Gene Russianoff, of the Straphangers Campaign, the advocacy group for riders, says that willful door blocking has been a consistently enraging phenomenon as long as he can remember. Once at a public forum, he said, a rider only half-jokingly suggested to transit officials that new subway trains should come equipped with tiny, sharp stakes that would shoot up in the doorway area as soon as the doors closed, so that no one could stand there without puncturing a foot.

  Transit officials demurred. They did, however, propose designing new subway cars with a generous recess next to the doorway, so that standers might have a pocket all to themselves, slightly out of the doorway. But the plan would have meant fewer seats—and in the world of the subway, where nearly every addition requires subtraction, seats ended up a higher priority than sanity. (New trains being tested now have a recess of only about 6 inches, and yesterday, every door blocker interviewed was much wider than that.)

  As his luck would have it, Eddy Colon, 42, became the first subject of yesterday’s survey. Mr. Colon was spotted on the No. 4 train at Grand Central in the familiar stance, the one seared into many riders’ brains: feet slightly apart, squarely in the middle of the door, one hand on the metal handle, back to the platform as the doors slid open. It seemed that everything in the subway was moving except Mr. Colon.

  Five people trying to get into the train had to wait while the four people trying to get out turned sideways past Mr. Colon. Then the people getting on wiggled around him, being careful not to touch him or the gold “#1” medallion hanging around his neck. (“You don’t want to touch them,” said Frantz Malcousu, 47, an electronics technician from Brooklyn, when asked about door blockers yesterday at Times Square. “You never know what kind of mood a guy is going to be in.”)

  As it turned out, Mr. Colon was not in the best mood. He was asked if he was aware he was making some people unhappy. He said he did not understand the question. It was rephrased, cautiously. He said he still didn’t understand, and then he started to smile, in a way that did not make a reporter feel like Mr. Colon thought anything was funny.

  Finally, he shrugged and said, unconvincingly, “This is the first time I ever rode the subway. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do.”

  Jerome D’Aguiar, a conductor, says his favorite blockers are ones who remain fully in everyone’s way at the edge of the door and then lean out when the doors open and look suspiciously up and down the platform, as if they are spies trying to shake a tail.

  “I never can figure out what they’re looking for,” Mr. D’Aguiar said.

  Mr. D’Aguiar is 6-foot-5. He has a big Grizzly Adams beard. He can get away with asking door blockers if they would care to step a little further into the train. But he advises others simply to make themselves skinny and practice the part of valor that is supposed to be the better part.

  He said that people who give door blockers a nice, hard shoulder check on the way out of the train—on the theory that the guy (it is almost always a guy) won’t get off his train to exact retribution—are playing a dangerous game.

  “I’ve seen some guys get off the train,” he said. “These are people wanting to have a confrontation.

  “If you let it get to you,” he added, “you’re going to be having a confrontation every day.”

  A reporter took the advice to heart but felt compelled to seek out a few more confrontations. He quickly found the next one on an uptown C train, where a man walked into a car at Times Square with a short line of people behind him. As soon as he cleared the threshold, he stopped and planted himself and the line had to snake around him.

  “There’s two doors here, see,” the man explained later, when approached. “I’m only standing in front of one.”

  A little later, he added, “It’s America. I can stand wherever I want.”

  When asked to spell his name, he smiled—that smile again. “Joe Blow. B-L-O-W.”

  —ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 22, 2001

  LOVE AND PROSECUTIONS

  Among places for making a romantic connection, the New York City subway has long ranked down around the bottom of the list, just above jail or the proctologist’s office.

  But along with the drop in crime, the rise in subway cleanliness and the herds of new riders who have discovered the trains over the last few years, there are signs that the subway as singles scene may also be having a renaissance. (The subway was once considered a place of romance, after all. Think of “On the Town,” in which Gene Kelly spotted the love of his life on a subway beauty-contest poster.)

  Examples of public transportation’s newfound sexiness seem to be all over the place. A new television commercial in which a gang of D.J.’s commandeer a subway car and turn it into a dance club. Another in which a subway motorwoman stops her train to remark on the nice pants worn by the guy in the next train over. An article on the Web magazine Salon last year in which the writer bragged about how she and her friends were “collecting so many phone numbers on the subway these days.”

  This column began looking for a way to tap into this phenomenon, but it was a little too awkward to interview people in the middle of hitting on each other. So it was decided that the best way would be to solicit letters from friends and acquaintances recounting their true tales of finding—or, alas, losing—love on the subway.

  Dear Tunnel Vision:

  A good friend and I decided that reckless date-finding measures were in order, and so, on a mutual dare, we agreed that we would each accost and arrange a date with at least one stranger on the N.Y.C. subway. I was soon equipped with a business card on which I had written, “I swear I’ve never done this before, but call me?”

  I never used the card because I ditched it after nearly passing it out at several important business meetings. Luckily, I was shortly thereafter caught kibbitzing on the platform at West Fourth Street by a woman more reckless than I. She had been ribbing her friend and noticed by my smirks that I admired her wit. The three of us began a jovial banter, and as I prepared to disembark at 23rd Street, the witty ribber said, “So how will my friend ever find you again?” I promptly produced a business card—undoctored—and slipped it into the friend’s hand. Half an hour later I checked my voice mail and already there was a raucous message from the two of them, including a phone number for the promising ribbee.

  She was only briefly promising, however, as subsequent communications revealed the existence of a “boyfriend” who, for whatever reason, had not merited previous mention.

  Still, not bad for the subway. And, since it’s essentially true, I now have another business card that says “I swear I’ve never done this before…”

  ROBERT WOOD

  Economist, 34

  Dear Tunnel Vision:

  I was on a train coming back home to Brooklyn and, at the Broadway-Lafayette station, I noticed a man who got on and sat near me. He was probably 19 or 20. I am 35, married and a mother. There was nothing flirtatious going on. You know how you get on the train and pick out those people who you think would be the ones who would help you if someone started to rob you? That’s what I thought about this guy.

  But as I started to get off, he jumped up and ran after me. I thought I had
dropped something, but he handed me a card that said, “Clean-cut kid.” With a phone number. (Actually, he didn’t look very clean-cut. Maybe it’s a generational thing.)

  The card also said his name was Ben. Apparently, he was feeling a little Mrs. Robinson about me.

  SARA GOODMAN

  Film company employee, 35

  Dear Tunnel Vision:

  I was clutching at a string of hope. My boyfriend of six months, a lawyer, had just spent the night at my apartment. Now, on our walk to the Borough Hall train station, I was pondering things. Sure, we had our share of troubles, but we had fun together, and we had grown close over time. I was dreaming of a future.

  But as the No. 4 train came screeching into the station, he was weighing the evidence: his idea of a holiday is Rollerblading across the country; mine is floating in tropical waters. His day at the beach is a triathlon; mine is a clambake. He is an exhibitionist; I am an extremely private person. As the car doors tried to close for the ninth time, he prepared his opening statement. An elbow jammed into my kidney as he listed the pros and cons of our relationship out loud. I heard a stomach grumbling behind me. I smelled someone’s chewing gum.

  Seemingly unaware of the commuters crushing around us, he kept building his case, telling me the reasons why it would never work out.

  When he had convinced himself, he didn’t bother with a closing statement. The No. 4 pulled into City Hall. As my boyfriend got off the train, he became my ex-boyfriend. I’d been prosecuted.

  ANNA KOVEL

  Chef, 35

  —ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2001

  CHEAP SWEETENERS

  If you keep an eye on other subways around the world, you’ll detect what could be a strange new trend in public transit.

  It appears to have come about like this: ridership is growing in nearly every city in the world that has a subway system. But the systems, which require unthinkable sums of money to build, are not growing nearly as rapidly. So what are poor transit officials to do, beset on one side by their budgets and on the other by several billion sweaty, crowded riders who are late to work and looking for someone to blame? The answer is to try very, very hard to be nice. Maybe it will work, and if not, at least it doesn’t cost much.