The Subway

Well today is my 3 month anniversary in NYC! Woohoo! In honor of this day and in an attempt to move on from the somewhat depressing previous entry, I’m going to tell you about the New York City subway!

I love the subway. My first impression was “Ack! Dirty!” and “Scary…” but over the months I’ve really grown to enjoy the mass transit beneath the concrete of the city. The subway runs 24 hours a day and there are always people riding. In a way the subway is the great equalizer in the city and you get a real mix of people and characters from all walks of life. I sometimes get excited by the things I see. For example…

While waiting for the train, you sometimes see rats and mice running around on the tracks. They always look really dirty, but still kind of cute.

One Tuesday night at 1am I had an entire train car to myself. The only strange anomaly was identical pale pink vomit at both ends of the car. I wasn’t sure if one person had puked at one end and then managed a completely spew free walk to the opposite end OR two people from the same party had puked at either end in unison.

At about 11pm one night in Williamsburg I saw an undercover drug bust occur on the opposite side of the tracks with lots of police and shouting and handcuffs.

A quartet once got on near Time Square and sang for money while I was trying to take a nap.

A homeless man carrying toothpaste asked me for a quarter to help him get back to the future.

A little dog escaped from his owner—a high heel wearing woman with sunglasses and diamonds—and ran past all the people while the lady shouted, “Marky! Come back! Mommy is gonna spank!”

Seeing my friend Tom on the same train but not believing it (because you rarely randomly run into someone you know) and ignoring him until my stop when I gave him a second look and could only manage a smirk before the doors closed (oops).

Dancing with Madonna in an impromptu dance party one night on the L train. Naw, that didn’t actually happen…yet.