Subway Stories

Processing a flood of fond memories of my straphanging days after an old friend (and 15+ year Manhattanite) announced that she recently took her first ever ride on the G Train (that would be the only subway line in New York City that doesn’t go into Manhattan).

I’m not sure I realized how good I had it back in my Brooklyn days. I was 2 blocks away from a double subway station: Lorimer Street/Metropolitan Ave, where the G and L lines meet. Now that I think about it, it was quite possibly the nexus of urban civilization. The L train, that fabled hipster shuttle, and the gritty, outer-borough G Train: they both spit you out into one of the most glorious neighborhoods on the planet. At the time, the hipster scene was spilling over from nearby Bedford Avenue, but the neighborhood still retained its old school Italian charm. There were several good bars and upscale bodegas but lots of nosy old lady neighbors at the same time. And it was safe. I never felt the slightest bit nervous walking home at night. There was even an NYPD outpost right there in the subway station.

The L Train took me into Manhattan, a direct shot to the East Village, West Village or Union Square. But the G took me straight to friends in Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Astoria. The G was quirky, unreliable and plagued by weird service interruptions on weekends. The announcements were always unintelligible so you were taking your chances if you happened to be trying to take the G home from Queens on a Sunday evening. But when I complained about how crowded the L Train always got during the AM rush hour, a friend suggested I try using the G to commute into midtown (you get off at Court Square in Queens and takes the E into Manhattan). It turned out to be a piece of cake. I always used the L Train to come home though. I was unwilling to forgo the opportunity for social interaction. I was forever running into people I knew on the L train and once (briefly) dated a Vincent Gallo look-alike I met on there. It was that kind of scene. There wasn’t any of that kind of funny business going down on the plodding old G Train. But it usually got the job done.

That, I would say, was certainly the case on 9/11 when I walked (a little dazed) across the Queensboro Bridge, with hundreds of other stranded office workers, on that brilliant late summer day. There was the G Train like a beacon, and it took me safe and sound to the haven that was Williamsburg, where we watched the smoke rising all the next day from across the East River.

Anyway, I found the car-free lifestyle very liberating. And driving is a total drag in my book. Now, of course, I drive everywhere. Even when I want to take a walk, I usually have to drive to wherever it is that I’m going to be walking. I suppose, though, that most of my nostalgia is a little misplaced. After 9/11 and the ensuing anthrax scare, I became convinced something terrible was going to happen in the subway and often felt like I was going to have a panic attack while riding. The same NYC friend who recently delved into the uncharted territory of the G Train also posted that her mother had suggested that, in light of the swine flu outbreak, she buy some surgical masks to wear to work. Must admit I don’t really miss the teeming throngs all that much.