The Subway Delinquent

Proof, that I am a dangerous criminal!

My family was known for many things when I was growing up, but being on time was not one of them. As hard as we tried, I cannot recall a single event to which we were not anxiously rushing. My mother would try to combat this by setting our clocks fast by several minutes, but the only thing that came of this was that each room of our house had its own slightly different time zone. When it was 8:15 in my parents’ bedroom, it was 8:17 in the kitchen, and 8:19 in the car. In reality it was 8:05 and we were scheduled to be somewhere by 8:00. On Sunday mornings we were always late for church. This never stopped my mother from making a grand entrance and saying hello to folks in each pew as we made our way to whichever unwanted empty space was still available.

I would like to say that the embarrassment of chronic tardiness has pushed me to rebel in a more punctual direction as an adult, but it has not. Try as I may, I’m always running behind. Luckily for me, New York provides a myriad of plausible explanations for such things, many of which are even true from time to time:

“A street protest closed down my normal route, and so I had to take a detour.”

“A sewer line burst, causing fountains of liquid filth to flood lower Manhattan.”

“My train started running express for absolutely no reason and skipped my stop!”

Because of the unpredictability of the city, New Yorkers have adapted to a culture of leniency, for the most part, when it comes to planning. If you make dinner reservations for 7:00, it really means 7:15. If you tell someone you will meet them in 20 minutes, it really means up to 45. If you say you’re on your way, it means you’re still squeezing into your pants. We understand and accept this, all the while, still hoping that we’ll become our perfectly punctual selves, next time.

On a recent Friday morning, I found myself several minutes behind schedule as usual. Was it my fault that the coffee girl was in training? With a steamy to-go cup in hand, I was power walking with determination. As I bounded down the subway stairs to the turnstile, I felt the dribble of my hot beverage absorb into my woven gloves, and quickly turn cold. I rifled through my pockets to find my MetroCard, swiped and saw the dreaded green letters flash on the grimy display; “SWIPE AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE.”

Every New Yorker’s heart sinks just a little when this happens. It normally means that the card reader at the turnstile is gummed up, but if you switch to another terminal, the machine will likely “think” you are up to no good and refuse your entry. In good faith, I swiped again, only to see the same message. I swiped a third and a fourth time, with the same result, until I swiped a fifth time and saw the worst of all the turnstile messages: “JUST USED.”

My heart was racing. I could hear the train approaching the platform below. When “JUST USED” appears on the screen, it means the machine “thinks” you have already entered at that station, and you are now just trying to let your friends enter with your card. You are prohibited from trying again for 15 minutes. In a normal case, I would have gone to the attendant in the booth to explain the situation and have them grant me a manual entry, but there was a line of at least a dozen old ladies buying single-fare cards with change being counted out of sandwich baggies. I did not have the luxury of time to allow senile and bespectacled octogenarians to finish with their archaic ritual. The rumble of the approaching train was growing stronger and the pace of everyone else in the station was quickening in response.

I had two choices. I could follow the rules; wait my turn in line behind the grandmothers of Brooklyn and be noticeably and inexplicably late to work, or I could take matters into my own hands. I had indeed paid my fare. It was a mere malfunction of technology that caused the problem I was now facing. As the train could be felt slowing to the platform below, my morality shifted toward the quicker and more devious of my options. My heart raced. I looked at the line of old ladies at the booth, half of whom appeared to be sedated, and I looked down at the train doors below me which were now opening. I steadied my hot dripping coffee cup in one hand, and hoisted myself over the cold metal of the turnstile with the other. In one swift maneuver, I flew over the turnstile with the gracefulness of a groggy toddler.

No sooner had I crossed the threshold, then I heard a shrill voice yelling in my direction, “Sir! Sir! Stop! Sir!”

Much to my dismay, my little insurrection was witnessed by two subway police officers lurking in the shadows. The levels of New York City Police presence range from the riot squad holding shields and wielding assault rifles, to traffic cops moderating left hand turns in the middle of intersections to the subway police which have little more respect or authority than a high school hall monitor checking your bathroom pass. The particular individual I was dealing with embodied all characteristics of the classic NYC “Sir Lady.” If you have never encountered a “Sir Lady,” let me explain.

Sir Ladies can be found in airports, movie theaters, train stations and anywhere else that human behaviors are tightly monitored by rules of conduct that may not necessarily have legal consequences. They are uniformed, often uncomfortably in ill-fitting pants that betray the shape of even the fittest of humans. They are given just enough power to be obnoxious, but not enough to carry a weapon and they take themselves very seriously. Sir Ladies are required to look unamused at all times, and more often than not, they have a walkie-talkie holstered at their hip that choaks out static and microphone feedback.

My heart was racing and my stomach felt like it had sunk to my knees. The train below me was being filled and would soon pull away, leaving me behind. I walked over the the Sir Lady and tried to explain the situation as politely as possible. Before I could finish a sentence I was interrupted with, “Sir! Do NOT talk back to me. Just stand here for a minute while I do what I need to do! Give me your ID.”

She was enjoying the power trip.

She retrieved the walkie talkie from her hip holster as I handed her my Driver's License, then started yelling to a supervisor sequestered away in some unseen corridor. “Yeah, we’ve got a jumper!” she explained to a muffled voice on other end of the conversation. “Yeah… No, not a runner, just a jumper… Yeah.... Uh huh… Nope… Yeah… Ok.”

By this time, the train below me left the station and all of the passengers exiting were enjoying the show. It’s not every day you see a nerdy little man being detained by the subway patrol. I was trying my best to look as though I was not thoroughly embarrassed, but I suspect that my strawberry-colored face gave me away. Any time I shifted my weight or scratched my head, the Sir Lady would give me the stink eye. I tried to continue drinking the coffee in my hand, but this act drew her suspicion and so I stopped. How could I be so insolent as to consume coffee in her lofty presence.

After 10 minutes of mysterious walkie-talkie conversation, she pulled out her ticket pad and a pen. A scratchy unseen voice had given her the green light to proceed. It was obvious that she relished the opportunity to fill out a ticket, and she was going to savor the experience. With a smirk, she handed me a very illegibly written ticket from the Transit Adjudication Bureau. Without another word, she walked away to continue her noble work of “crime fighting” in other corners of the subway.

For my crime of acrobatics, I owed the city of New York $100.00. In nearly 6 years of living in New York, I have always managed to stay below the radar of the Sir Ladies, until now. I am officially a criminal, hardened by the harshness of the city. I have disturbed the peace, and been found guilty in the eyes of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Despite my attempted justifications of the turnstile card reader malfunction, she still described my crime as “jumping over the turnstile to avoid legal payment of fare.”

What have I learned from this experience? What wisdom have I gained from my brush with the law? It's hard to say. Will I change my ways in an act of atonement for my sins? Sure, if it’s convenient. Will this teach me to be more punctual and reduce my risks when running late? Who knows. What I have learned is that it’s always necessary to thoroughly assess your risks before committing a small victimless crime. Look around, especially in the shadows where the Sir Ladies may be hiding. My mistake more than being late, was being sloppy. For that, I am truly sorry. I hope that the citizens of New York can sleep more soundly knowing that justice was served.

The Persistence of Memory

The view from my first bedroom window in New York.

When I was a teenager, I would look out to the mountains holding my small hometown in place and I wondered what my life would be like beyond them one day. I imagined big moments and monumental events in a “grown-up” fantasy that would play out somewhere else. My life experience was measured out in weighty milestones, like school years, driving tests, unrequited loves, summer jobs and college applications. Foolishly, I thought those were the things that would stand out in my memory and define the epoch of my adolescence. After all, everyone around me was placing such a high value on them.

Now at 30 years old, I can’t remember who spoke at my high school or university graduations. I don’t remember what scores I received on my college entrance exams, nor do I remember which awards were doled out at assemblies or who wore what to the prom. I do remember the purple silhouette of the mountains as the sun came up in the early mornings on my way to school. I remember the albums I listened to and how I felt when I heard them. I remember the posters on the wall and the placement of the furniture in my best friend’s bedroom, even the smell of the candles her mother would burn. The memories easiest to access are made up of all the little things that were just ordinary pieces of life, things that didn’t draw attention to themselves at the time.

After living in New York for more than half a decade, my mind has simmered things down to a similarly nuanced reduction of memories that bring together the essential flavors of my life here so far. Of the jobs, apartments, friendships, triumphs and tragedies that the city has rolled out before me, it’s the “insignificant” moments that have stayed with me more than the bigger ones. As one chapter of my life in New York recently came to a close and a new one began, my mind has gone back to many of these tiny threads that have woven themselves into my consciousness. 

• • • 

My first bedroom in the city was a nameless polygon shape which had one window that looked out at an angle to the air shaft between my building and the next. There wasn’t much to see aside from the bricks of the other buildings around me, and a gangly little tree that poked out of the concrete ground below. My first summer in that room was hot and humid, and being new to the city without a steady income, I couldn’t afford the luxury of air conditioning. By necessity, that window was opened as wide as possible all the time, which did little to cool the room, but it occasionally welcomed a hot sweaty breeze that did little to cool anything. What the room was lacking in terms of the view, it made up for with its colorful soundscape. Every night I would hear varied combinations of arguments in Spanish, scratchy salsa music playing from a blown-out radio, an aspiring opera singer practicing his baritone melodies, the college girl one floor below calling her boyfriend across the country (and the inevitable break-up that ensued), and a violinist repeating his musical progressions late into the evening. Sometimes I felt lonely, missing friends in far off places, but the chorus of neighbors who I never saw would make me feel less alone. Often, I’d play my guitar and look out into the air shaft, never seeing their faces. Now I wonder if my contribution to the soundscape meant as much to anyone else as theirs meant to me, or if it just became noise in the background.

• • • 

There is a quiet winding street that hugs the western perimeter of Morningside Park, perched on the top of a steep cliff that looks out over Central Harlem and the narrow park below. This rocky precipice is one of the few natural features in Manhattan that never bent to the will of greedy developers. There is a stone wall alongside the path with look-out balconies every so often, each offering a different vantage point of the cityscape beyond. At night, a series of street lamps cast a warm glow through the tree branches which transfigures the pathway into a theater of light and shadows. I’d walk along this route as often as possible, seeing how the shadows would change as the year progressed. I memorized the placement of the trees and the names carved into the stones of the stately apartment buildings across the road. Most often, I’d walk this path alone, but occasionally I would share the experience with worthy companions. It was a wonderful place to go if I was sad or anxious. For a while, it was a connecting line between various pieces of my life, many of which I can’t recall specifically now. It is a place frozen in time, in a dreamy quiet way that makes one feel timeless along with it. I’ve moved three times since then; experienced the charms of other neighborhoods, but that little street in Morningside Heights has stayed with me. 

• • • 

The Hotel Fane is a dirty run-down brownstone on 135th Street with a rusty red sign displaying the establishment's name, hanging precariously one floor above the street. It is three or four doors down from an apartment I lived in for two years, and I’d pass by it almost daily. If you happen to look inside as the front door swings open, you’ll notice a tired wooden staircase that is well-worn and in need of repair. Outside, on the concrete stoop of the building, there are always several fatigued women, usually smoking cigarettes, and often recounting the struggles of their days to anyone around to listen. Their faces are strained with worry and their laughter is infectious. Each day that I lived on that street brought a new crop of these ladies, but each day was the same. Weary women in transition were the only guests of the hotel, which I later found out was a halfway house for folks getting their lives back together after whatever struggle had come before. There was something comforting about knowing they’d always be there, even though they were always different. The smells of their cigarettes and the sounds of their chatter were something I could always count on, and I loved them for it, especially during times when my life seemed anything but stable. I regret to admit that I never took the time to know any of these people, but even still, they were important to me. The residents of the Hotel Fane, though ephemeral individually, as a group made my little stretch of 135th Street special. It’s funny how people you never speak to and see for only a few seconds at a time can become part of your identity, but that’s how it was. Someday soon, when all of Harlem is nothing but high-rent condos and boutique hotels (as the rest of Manhattan has become), I’m sure the Hotel Fane will be another casualty of gentrification, lost to memory, but I’m grateful that it will always be part of mine. 

• • • 

Jones Street is a mostly un-noticed street that only extends one block between Bleecker and West 4th Streets in Greenwich Village. It’s usually very quiet and is home to some of the last remnants of the old Beatnik New York, which has otherwise been consumed by Starbucks franchises and Chase Banks in the rest of the neighborhood. It was the backdrop to Bob Dylan’s album cover for “The Freewheelin’” in 1963, and the backdrop to many days in my life for a couple of years a few decades later. It’s a wonderful street to walk down early in the mornings, shortly after the sun rises. On one end, you’ll pass by Caffe Vivaldi and see the chairs neatly stacked up on top of the tables and the glasses all collected behind the cozy bar in the back. Even though the musicians have all gone home, you can almost hear the tones of their nightly performances, still hanging in the air around the piano off to one shadowy corner hidden from the morning light shining through the windows. Across, you’ll see the bottles glistening in the windows of Jones Street Wines, and subsequently, many empty discards from that point of origin already stacked up in the trashcans of buildings along the street. A little further down, a combination dry cleaning and consignment clothing store is perched above a narrow green staircase, with displays in the windows that harken back to a bygone era. A bit further down, you’ll hear the noise coming from the Florence Prime Meat Market as the trucks are unloaded with ominous packages of frozen animal parts being carried into the basement. Old timers in the neighborhood will tell you that Jackie O. used to buy her Sunday roasts there every week, but there are few left who would have witnessed it. And just next door is a window full of 33rpm Album Covers, showing off copies from bands like The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols or the Talking Heads. Although the exact nights I spent on that street with someone dear to me for a while all blur together in a haze of memories, those morning walks to the subway along the uneven pavement of Jones Street were a pleasure of their own. It represents a time in my life that brought many happy moments. Sometimes, when I'm in the neighborhood, I'll take a detour through Jones Street and transport myself back to those mornings which have since been tucked away in my mind.

• • •

As I look back on these things, I wonder which of the innocuous moments of my life now will make the grade and become part of my future history, and which things will fade away.

The Forlorn Elephant of Broadway

My tragic looking new friend standing watch outside of a shabby little midtown shop.

There is a small diagonal stretch of Broadway in Manhattan between Koreatown and the Flatiron which is home to a street bazaar of peculiar wholesale establishments. Most contain bins full of unnecessary plastic knick-knacks that can only be purchased in minimum quantities of one hundred. The adjacent Fifth and Sixth Avenues are a tourist wonderland full of souvenir shops, hot dog stands and a legion of salesmen offering  "lowest price" guarantees to get to the top of the Empire State Building. This little stretch of road, however; is strictly for folks in the business of doing business.

Sometimes unsuspecting tourists will wander in to one of these shops and bring a single item to the salesperson only to be directed to read the "Wholesale Only" signs hanging rather unnoticeably in yellowed plastic coverings above the door. Some will try to plead their cases to uninterested store clerks for several minutes before giving up and continuing on their way without their coveted treasures. This anomalous zone feels like a relic of dead epoch that will surely be discovered by savvy real estate developers before the decade is over. Until then, the streets are still buzzing with merchants chattering away in a melange of Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, North-African French and a peppering of languages my dull American ears are not yet tuned to pick out.

Recently I've been enjoying the summer weather and taking long walks during my lunch breaks. This helps restore remnants of sanity that my day job holds captive during business hours. I usually buy something along the way, and eat on a bench in Madison Square Park under the shade of stately old trees that have seen many generations of the midtown workforce before me enjoy a moment of daily respite, just as I do now. I like to sit and enjoy an over-priced sandwich while watching the traffic dance around the delicate intersection below the Flatiron, and enjoy being un-tethered from my desk for a few short minutes.

By the time I've finished, and I'm compelled to return, I say hello to Seward's statue perched above the flower beds, and pay my respects to General Worth resting beneath his forgotten obelisk before continuing back up Broadway. Each time I navigate my way through the narrow traffic crossings and construction zones that define this part of town, I try to keep my eye out for details that stand out among the swirling crowds going about their weekday business.

Recently I came across a rather worn out looking figure of a baby elephant made of papier-mâché chained outside of a chintzy looking shop that sells plastic costume jewelry. The poor little character looks as if he's seen a heavy share of life's injustices. He once had a dark vinyl skin which has peeled away around his face and trunk, revealing untreated wounds. Innumerable seasons of hot and cold have made their mark in the materials exposed. One of his font legs was broken and crudely taped back together causing him to lean unevenly on the gum-speckled pavement. Children with ice cream stained fingers assault him with regularity. Tourists use his back as a resting spot for their bags as they rummage to recover misplaced guidebooks and cigarettes. Mostly, he is overlooked.

In my sentimental mind, this little elephant represents so many of the pieces of old New York that have been cast aside and allowed to crumble, even though I know that I am probably over-reaching a bit. I don't know the real history of this object or how it came to be placed outside of a shop in this odd section of the city. I don't know how it received its many scars, but I do know that it has become an enchanting detail that I look forward to seeing. There is something behind the layers of decay that conveys a simple and sweet sentiment given freely to anyone who stops long enough to notice. Part of me wants to rescue the little elephant and take him home to be repaired, but there is something more genuine and powerful about his presence on the street. Who knew that bits of paper and glue molded into an animal would provoke such a reaction in me. Perhaps he has that effect on others as well. I hope so.

A Daily Reminder

The other day, I got off the subway at Herald Square, as I now do each morning. I was consciously ignoring my inappropriate weekday hangover, which is not necessarily an unusual occurrence. Wobbling through the obstacle course of stairways and turnstiles that leads to the exit of the “Manhattan Mall” building, I finally made it to the street after being poked, pushed and stepped on by the groggy mob around me. I’m fundamentally confused by the attempt to have a condensed version of a suburban shopping mall in the middle of Manhattan. I have decided that it makes the commuters feel more comfortable once they show up in the city for work. Sure, you may have JCPenney out on Long Island or in New Jersey, but the feeling of superiority that can be earned by waiting in much longer lines and paying higher sales tax in the city makes all the difference. There are certain cultural activities that unite the bridge and tunnel crowd, which I am unable to comprehend, and this is definitely one of them. At 8:30 in the morning though, nobody is shopping yet. Everyone is in a mad dash to find a source of caffeine before beginning the daily self-betrayal of long-term employment.

There is a certain peacefulness that exists in the act of being carried along in the current of human beings rushing down the sidewalks of Midtown like a steady stream of water. At this time of the day, everyone is determined and united with a common purpose. This enervated singular mindset prevents much of the unpleasantness that is possible after several cups of coffee and a street-cart danish. Unlike the chaos that comes at other times of the day when everyone has energy, the pre-9:00 rush is a sacred time reserved for the workforce of the city in which a universal objective unites us. The key to a peaceful coexistence is chronic fatigue and the hope that no matter how late we left our apartments, we will somehow make it to work on time and perpetuate the illusion that we are, indeed, responsible adults for at least one more day.

I started a new job recently, which means the creation of a new routine. For the past three years, I had my set path from the train to work. There were the familiar strangers I not only expected to see, but looked for in the mornings. There was the donut cart on the corner outside of Penn Station, the one that always charged me a different price for the same Boston creme donut depending on who was shut in behind the glass. There was the window full of fancy cupcakes on 8th Avenue that I always meant to try, but never did. There was the old man that stood barefoot smoking his cigarette in the same doorway every day who I named Fred. There was also the smiling green-eyed Halal meat seller who would sing cheerful songs in Arabic while chopping vegetables and heating his burners for another day’s crop of gyros. I’m sure they’re all still there, carrying on as before, but I am not. I wonder if anyone misses me as part of their own little morning inventory of strangers. Was I part of someone’s tally, or did I just blend into the clockwork mechanism of the Manhattan mornings without making a mark? I wonder.

When I was younger, I never thought of myself as a person who could be comfortable establishing such predictable morning rituals. I used to fancy myself an unapologetic “non-conformist” who would rather die than get caught get trapped in a pattern. Such arrogant thoughts are common in your early twenties. Although I’m not too much further along in my own timeline, now that I look back on it, I’m not quite sure what I was so afraid of. I’ve learned that it’s never wise to spend too much time considering the logic of post-adolescence. Now, I have come to enjoy discovering the patterns that will repeat and form the memories that will become my nostalgia that is cherished later on in life. All of these little things in our routines become part of the stories that we tell, and the stories that we tell become the larger parts of us that extend further beyond our own limited existence, and perhaps for some of us, they will outlive us when we’re gone. A story always becomes richer with repetition, and so does the experience of seeing the same series of things again and again over time. They somehow become more “your own” that way, and I’ve learned to value that phenomenon.  

Now, each morning, as I march into Herald Square with the legions of Midtown, I’m greeted with a view of the Empire State Building reaching far up into the sky, sometimes even gobbled up by low-hanging clouds near the spire. After living in the city for a few years, some of the magic of things which express the canned technicolor ideal of New York-ness have faded a bit for me, but I still get butterflies in my stomach when I walk in the shadow of that building. To me, it’s a firm reminder that no matter what discouragement may befall me, I’ve already come this far, and that alone is reason enough to keep moving upward. You can see the building’s silhouette poking out of the horizon from almost anywhere in Manhattan, watching over everything, keeping it all together. All the the pieces of my routine; the anecdotes, the high notes, the minor disasters and the rhythm that comes with the repetition, they all revolve around this glistening tower, watching over me like God. Sometimes, we all need a reminder of our purpose, and I am lucky to see mine every morning as I trudge forward in the mundanity of my little office job that allows my self-delusions of being a starving “artist” to move onward, and my own New York story to continue ... at least for another pay period.

A collection of momentary romances...

The Harlem sky from my bedroom window.

It is true that I fall in love at least a dozen times a day, sometimes more depending on how many subway rides I might take. Some of these little romances take place for 30, 60, even 90 seconds. Some can last as long as an entire commute if I'm lucky, but they all end in relatively the same way. One moment I'll be sitting (or more often standing and bracing myself against a pole, trying to avoid the sharp elbows and shoulders of others around me) with my nose in a book, and then I'll look up as I turn the page and catch my eye on a person for whom my heart melts like hot butter. Almost as quickly as they appear, they just as easily disappear and then the day continues on...

The violinist:

One evening while changing trains in the labyrinth of tunnels that are tangled beneath the 42nd Street (Times Square) subway station, I took the immense transverse that runs beneath 7th and 8th Avenues. There are times of the day when the maze of tiled passages contain streams of tens of thousands of people all scurrying about rapidly in different directions like ants coming up out of a crack in the earth. There is always the distinct smell of ancient grime, mechanical exhaust and fried food that expands and contracts depending on the weather. Within this vast network of chutes and ladders one can find a wide variety of entertainment from performers to evangelists hoping to make any sort of dent in this ceaseless rumble of footsteps and voices echoing below the city's surface.

At one point there is a very long and steep ramp that runs between the number 7 Train and the A Train. It is lined with mosaics and often with large posters advertising current Broadway shows that can be seen on the streets just above. On this particular evening, I had run out of batteries on my iPod, and as a result, I was unusually more attentive to the sounds around me than I would be otherwise. From the bottom of the great ramp, I could hear something in the distance which was sweet and melodic cutting through the thunder of stampeding humans bounding down the tunnel ahead. It was the faint sound of a violin, singing a sadly beautiful theme. There are often musicians and beggars who frequent this corridor, but rarely do any sound quite as gracefully as what I was vaguely hearing from afar. My pace quickened as I headed forward with curiosity into the great crowd around me. My heartbeat began to hasten as I recognized the tune playing was Chopin's Nocturne. As I drew closer, it echoed through the walls of the tunnel, transforming it into a concert hall rather than a dirty metro station. The tune was being performed with such intimate familiarity that it sounded mournfully sublime. Finally, I was close enough to catch a glimpse of the musician.

He was a smallish man, probably in his mid 30's. He was clean and simple looking. His eyes were closed and his expression was fixed somewhere inside of his mind. He had a black violin case lined with red velvet opened in front of him, and passersby had dropped a few small bills and coins inside. For the most part, he was passed by without a great deal of attention, for after all, a subway station is not a place one generally goes to doddle. Although I had somewhere to go and a train to get to, I stopped for several minutes and listened as he continued to play. If he would have asked me at that moment, I would have surely agreed to marry him, but his eyes never really opened and his awareness of anything but his music didn't seem to falter. Reluctantly, I left after depositing into the velvet-lined case all the change I could find in my pockets (probably amounting to about $1.25). As I turned the corner and the sound of his music faded into the sea of strangers passing by, I made my way to the Uptown A Train with a smile on my face and song that repeated in my head throughout my journey home.

The artist:

There is a section of the A Train that runs express (without stopping) from 59th Street Columbus Circle to 125th Street in Harlem. It is one of the longest singular uninterrupted runs one can take on the New York City Subway. If things are running smoothly, which is often a gamble, from stop to stop it takes about 8 or 9 minutes. This gives one enough time to get involved in some sort of diversion that can make the trip more pleasant, if not interrupted by preachers, political activists, performers or starving mothers begging for change. After a long day of work and running around the city, it's a little treat I often look forward to. I've seen so many peculiar and noteworthy things during this special ride that I could expound for volumes, but at the moment one particular story stands out.

It was one night when I had met a friend for a beer after work at one of those chintzy little Irish pubs that line the streets outside of Penn Station. Was it the Molly Wee Pub, The Blarney Stone or perhaps the Tempest? I'm not quite sure. All I remember is that I had a couple of good stouts in me and I was feeling hopeful about the world. I got on the uptown A Train at 34th Street and by 42nd Street, a group of fashionable young girls got on in my car and took a seat across from me. They all had thick Boston accents, and in their "foreign" dialect, they chattered about nothing of consequence, but the sounds and phrases they used were quite entertaining to me. One of the girls had a particularly flashy pair of boots on, something one would probably find in a mall somewhere in the middle of New Jersey, complete with all sorts of dazzle that made a sure statement of taste. Despite this, and perhaps because of the warm glow I was feeling from the Guinness I had been sipping just moments before, I decided I'd withhold judgment and observe the entertainment before me without expending the unnecessary energy required to mock silently in my own stream of consciousness (or at least I kept it to a bare minimum).

We had passed 59th street, making our way on the long uninterrupted express journey to Harlem, just as one of the girls started talking about something related to Baseball that began to derail my interest. I noticed a hand moving ever so quickly across a page out of the corner of my eye. I discovered a dark thin man in shabby jeans with ink-stained fingers sitting a few seats away from me on the same side of the train car. He had a head full of curly black hair that was pulled back into a little pony tail, revealing a square jaw and a long angular neck. I looked down and saw that he had also made notice of the ridiculous boots of the Bostonian girl in front of us, and he was quickly trying to capture them in a drawing with his pen. He had written some sort of caption above, which I was not close enough to see, but I hoped it said something like "Boston Bedazzled." From what I could see, his line quality and style were reminiscent of Egon Schiele (one of my favorite artists) and for the next 4 minutes I had fallen in love. In my head, Franz Liszt's Liebestraum played, and the rest of the ride was a joy until, inevitably, I had to get off at 125th street and head home to my apartment with visions of the curly haired artist accompanying me along the way. I never saw him again, nor the girls from Boston, but just the same, I'd fallen in love for a good several minutes of my commute which is more than most can hope for in a week.

The Google lackey:

Manhattan decidedly has now joined the world of the tech industry with several large Silicon Valley entities setting up sad little East Coast satellites in old industrial buildings that had seen much better days long ago. It wasn't enough that we in New York had to control publishing, news media, the stock market, the fashion industry, the art world and a number of other trades, but now we've got our fingers in the ever expanding world of the intangible "tech bubble." Situated in Chelsea, in the old Port Authority of New York building, the fortress of Google looks out over the Hudson river, developing new ways to add the woes of New Yorkers to a collection of monetizable analytics. In this relatively new fortress exists an army of awkwardly intelligent minions that can be often recognized without a great deal of effort. They're generally a shade or two more pale than the average person, with insect-like reflexes, a style of dress that reminds one of the folks seen waiting in line at the last Star Wars premiere, and then there's the unmistakable Google lanyard many of them forget to conceal when they leave the building (although I think that some of them purposefully display it as a badge of honor).

One morning, as I stumbled upon the train to work, bleary from an eventful night before, I happened to get squished quite compactly into a very full car. Some insufferable old woman demanded to change seats after the train had already begun moving, which stirred the condensed soup of people into new directions of consolidation. As a general understood rule of train etiquette, once the train begins moving, wherever you have found yourself, you will remain until at least the next stop. The only people who are exempt from this rule are the elderly and Eastern Europeans who just can't seem to get it together on rapid transit. In all the commotion I found myself pushed up against a tall thin man with glasses and a backpack with a water pouch built in. He had the first three signs of Google: the pallid skin, the Lord of the Rings T Shirt and the most definitive - the multicolored and iridescent Google lanyard! My face suddenly found a great smirk growing across it, although I knew not why. I thought to myself, "What about this person makes me chuckle? Sure, he was probably a member of his High School's Audio Visual Club and he probably has a collection of Babylon Five DVD's in his apartment, but how is that so different than me? After all, I was in my school's Lunchtime Library Book Group (which had about 5 members) and I have a whole collection of Woody Allen films in my own apartment that I've memorized forward and backward..."

As I had this little existential debate in my own head regarding which person's brand of nerdiness was more noble, I noticed that Google boy had a pair of very beautiful green eyes behind his glasses. In fact, with less hair gel and perhaps a more neutral T Shirt, Google boy would have been very handsome. Then I looked down and saw that he was reading a biography of Beethoven which made me think of my favorite Beethoven piece, the 2nd movement from Sonata Number 8 (the Pathetique). In realizing that our mutual brands of nerd-dom had found a middle ground, I found Google boy to be quite loveable. For the next two minutes, I debated whether or not backpacks with water reservoirs inside were really so aesthetically bad. As the crowd expanded and contracted at the next stop, he was wrenched from my sight, but throughout the rest of that day, bleary as I may have been, I had a new appreciation for Google.

• • •
There are many other stories I could tell, but these give a small sprinkling of what awaits passengers on the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York. I'm not sure what the moral of the story may be, or if there really ought to be one, but suffice it to say that the older I become, the less I can control my own ability to fall madly in and out of love within the duration of a train ride. Some of these little experiences offer me insights into myself, others offer me warnings about myself, but mostly they are a good source of entertainment that I couldn't imagine finding anywhere else.

Gladys the Great: An Unlikely New York Treasure

A hot afternoon summer afternoon on Broadway in Soho during a street fair. 

There she sat each day, sometimes on an upturned bucket, sometimes right on the pavement, sometimes leaning against the hot dog or gyro stands, a rare non-moving object in the middle of my mornings several days each week. Most of the time she had a little portable radio with her, worn and held together with ragged bits of electrical tape, plugged directly into her brain with stringy little cords that resembled the tail of a subway rat. She had a pleasantly round face, with the evidence of decades worth of smiles left behind in the lines around her eyes and mouth. Everything about her was a bit round, especially her shiny cheeks that always were covered in a thick veneer of rouge. It seemed that her sole occupation in this world was to sit and exist on the corner of 31st street and 8th avenue, keeping watch over the commuters emerging from Pennsylvania Station. 

I'd pass her by on my way to and from work. After noticing her there consistently for several weeks, I would start making a point to look for her each time I'd pass that particular street corner. Of all the mundane things I'd see each morning, she was the event I looked forward to. Not knowing her actual story, I'd invent narratives about her in my head that were derived from my 45 second glimpses of her. I decided with her enormous eyes and her colorful face, she must have a name like Gladys. It had to be a name with the same level of personality she exuded without even trying. I could imagine her in the Old West entertaining gentlemen of questionable morals in a smoky saloon, thick with the smell of whiskey and tobacco, accompanied by an out of tune piano played by a bald man in a straw hat. She’d come down a splintered staircase in a flashy gown with feathers and rhinestones. In my head, she would sound something like Mae West, but perhaps with a touch more sweetness. She would be "Lady Gladys:" a real classy dame. Of course her fame among cowboys and criminals would be known for miles around. I'd paint these little images in my head as she sat with her legs sprawled out in front of her on the dirty sidewalk, exposing a well-fed belly and a partiality to elastic waist bands attached to garishly colored knit leisure pants, or sometimes unfortunate leggings that made her look like she was trapped in sausage casings. Then the street light would change, and I'd be thrust back into to the race of getting to my office before 9:00, which has always been an immense challenge for me. 

There would be days when Gladys didn't show up. I wondered where else she could possibly be. Was she homeless? Was she just some sort of eccentric? Was she a method actress getting into character, or perhaps someone conducting social research experiments? I could not figure out which seemed to be the most likely, for they all seemed to be equally plausible scenarios. She appeared to be clean, or at least recently bathed. She had all of her teeth which were sometimes very visible when she would fall asleep with her gaping mouth open, her head resting against the menu for lamb over rice and falafel on the side of the food cart. She could afford batteries for her hand held radio and as far as I could tell her wardrobe, although somewhat limited, did vary slightly from sighting to sighting. Gladys was a mystery to me, and I liked that.

There were weeks when she was there every day both in the morning and the evening, and then there were times when she would disappear for a week or two. Each time I'd pass her little corner, I'd anxiously search for her. She brought a strange sense of comfort and continuity into my life. If Gladys was there in the morning, the day had potential and possibility. If she was missing, it was as though she'd taken a necessary piece of my day with her. I know it's probably not healthy to let a stranger with whom you've never even exchanged a single word become such a significant part of your life, but Gladys began to seem more than a stranger to me. There were some days when she would leave the saloon in my mind and be transported into a Parisian cabaret of the 1890's and take on the persona of one of Toulouse-Lautrec's colorful subjects. I could see her serving cognac behind a grand and beautifully decorated bar to dandy gentlemen in bowler hats and long jackets. She'd still sound like Mae West in this scenario, with dark maroon lips, perhaps an American expatriate beguiling foreigners across the sea, escaping some sort of disappointing life in the new world. In my mind, she was happy in these far off settings, but in real life, she also seemed quite content on her street corner, just existing and being in the middle of things. I often wondered if I was so content in my own life.

One morning a couple of months ago, I was hurrying along 8th avenue, trying to beat the clock as usual, and it occurred to me that Gladys hadn't been there in quite some time. She'd have her days and even weeks off every now and then, but she'd never been absent for this long. I began to worry and fret over her. From then on, I'd search for her in the morning crowds each time I'd pass her little corner, with frantic effort. I felt somehow abandoned. Even though I didn't know her, or even know her real name, Gladys had been with me for nearly 2 years. I wondered if perhaps she got into a disagreement with the man who ran the food cart and decided to move on to a new corner, maybe several blocks over, or perhaps she went to visit her cousin Pearl in Florida. She had easy access to the Amtrak trains running under the ground beneath the busy streets that would take her to quiet sunny places, but somehow she didn't phase me as the type of gal who would choose Florida. She seemed more like an Atlantic City type of lady to me, I could see her spending days on end playing the slot machines, drinking pink cocktails and listening to her ancient little radio. She’d really be living, there in the casinos on the old New Jersey shore. I told myself that this must be where she went, as it seemed the happiest of all possible situations that my mind dreamed up for her. She definitely deserved a little vacation. Observing that street corner day after day probably wore her out. We all need a little respite every now and then, and I sincerely hoped that my unconventional friend was getting hers. 

Even though I had half-heartedly convinced myself that Gladys was enjoying her days pulling golden levers and putting her silvery hair up behind a snappy yellow visor, I still searched for her each morning. That little street corner, although filled with hundreds of people running in every direction, seemed empty without her there. 

Just when I nearly gave up hope, I was practically sprinting to work to clock in on time one gloomy Friday morning, and there was Gladys, with a new shade of pepto bismol pink lipstick (which had made it on to her teeth), beating her little radio with one hand, propping herself up against the soda menu of the silver food cart. She was yawning, and her full gaping mouth was back again, in all its glory. She even had acquired some eye shadow since last I saw her. I was so happy, I nearly cried. She didn't abandon me after all. Something compelled her to come back and fill the middle-aged lady shaped void that had been so heavy on my mind for quite some time. I was thrilled beyond belief. Even though I’ve never spoken to this woman, she means the world to me. I hope that Gladys and I have many more mornings together in times to come. 

Le petit New Yorker...

"Quand j'étais un petit garçon, je voulais être un New Yorker/
When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a New Yorker"

When I was growing up, my perception of media was somewhat warped. For the majority of my childhood, my family had a small black and white screen TV with no knobs and no cable to bring us the magic of brain-rotting consumer entertainment. We were the only family I knew of not to have a color TV set, and one of the few still using rabbit ears to bring fuzzy incomprehensible images of late 80's/early 90's broadcast network programming (primarily Star Trek the Next Generation and ABC's TGIF lineup). My parents were quite proud of this. We were more of a radio family, listening regularly to our local NPR affiliate station out of Paonia, Colorado for the majority of our news and "cultural enrichment." Our one window into a wider world of media was our primitive VCR, equipped with a remote control attached to a three foot long chord. I remember walking to the "Q and T" gas station a few blocks down the street from our house which had a small video rental service, boasting of dusty titles mostly from decades past. Ironically, the bulk of the films my mother would let us rent were originally shot in black and white, so the limitations of our colorless television set didn't pose a problem. By the age of five, I was enamored with the personalities of actors like Cary Grant, Kathryn Hepburn, Fred and Ginger, Clark Gable and so many others who I thought of as familiar friends. I had also developed a love for two cities that provided a backdrop to many of the stories that played out on the screen: New York and Paris. In my imagination, I would place myself on the Art Deco balconies of New York or the street cafés of Paris, never thinking that these were places that actually existed in real life. Now that I have made a life for myself in one of the cities of my childhood daydreams, I feel that I owe it to the little boy inside of me to experience the other.

Somehow, last summer I had accumulated a slight savings surplus in my bank account. I am still in shock that it happened, but in late July, after all of my bills had been paid, I had several hundred dollars sitting there, just staring at me, daring me to make some sort of choice. I stewed and I pondered and I turned over the possibilities in my mind of what could be done with the money. It wasn't a large enough sum to even pay a month's rent in my Manhattan apartment, but it was too large to just ignore. I thought of a number of very sensible things that could have been done with the tiny little gift I'd accidentally given myself, but then the little boy inside of me began tugging on my shirt sleeve reminding me of my life-long hope to someday see the "city of lights." I remembered the passport that I gotten six years ago and had never used, and then without even thinking, I was looking up airfares and plotting which cheeses I needed to try. I wasn't about to grow another year older without having at least a stamp in one of the empty pages of my little navy blue travel document, so I booked a ticket that happened to be just the amount of my savings, landing me in Paris 5 days before my next birthday.

For the past six months, I've been dreaming of Paris. I've been revisiting many of the old films that I watched as a child and reviewing museum catalogs for the Louvre. I've gone to many of my favorite museums in New York to brush up on the French painters and sculptors I hope to see while there, and I've even been reaching deep inside of my brain to pull out my dusty college French class vocabulary. I suppose I've always been a bit of a Francophile, which was no easy task to become while growing up in a rural mountain town of Western Colorado, but I am as I am nonetheless. The majority of the fun has been in the hope itself of fulfilling a dream and making it a reality, but a strange thing occurred in my process of indulging in my Paris daydreams, that I had not expected...

For these months that I've been trying to connect with a city across the ocean, I've found more reasons to embrace and experience and love the city in which I live. I have always loved New York, but in searching for Paris, my own city has become so much more alive to me. Whether I've been listening to French language audio programs while on the subways, and taking more time to contemplate the world around me, or sitting in coffee shops and cafés, making time to meet with friends and discuss plans, I've been making more time to slow down and be open to the wonderful things happening here and now. I've even been taking time to sit by myself in public places and make new drawings with no particular objective in mind. I've been taking more frequent little weekend walking excursions with my camera to capture the lovely things I see every day in the city, and becoming giddy over the possibilities of more New York adventures to come. The main new discovery for me has been that now I've lived here for nearly two years, I am finally beginning to feel like this place is my own and that I really do belong to it. There have been many places I've loved, but nothing has ever penetrated deep into the core of my being like this place has. For the first time in my life, I know I am right where I need to be.  If I could ever love a person in the way I love New York, I would be content for the rest of my days.

At the end of this month, I will finally take my long-awaited journey to a city I've hoped to know since I can recall. I am certain that I will find a great deal to love in Paris, but I feel confident to say that my heart will always belong to New York. I am sure while there, I'll be thinking of Josephine Baker, the archetypical American in Paris singing "J'ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris" (I have two loves, my country [America] and Paris), only in my case, I'm a man in love with two cities.

Life and death in the city that never sleeps...

Central Park after the First Snow of 2012

When I was growing up, my mother always did her best to explain the concept of life and death, trying to make it digestible and less abstract, so that when we encountered the passing of a pet or a friend or a loved one, we could be as prepared as possible to deal with all of the feelings surrounding those losses. Being that my mother is a very social person, she probably had more friends and acquaintances than most. With such a large circle of friends and family, we seemed to encounter inevitable losses more frequently than many people we knew. I was one of the few children at school who had attended funerals quite regularly throughout my early childhood, or had seen a corpse. It never felt morbid to me to participate in services for loved ones, because my mother always presented it as a way to celebrate their life and give them a "good send off" to whatever comes next. Although the cold sting of losing someone wasn't any less real, I am grateful that I was taught to embrace the experience and taught not to fear it.

As time passes for me here in my life as a relatively new New Yorker, I continue to encounter a lot of "firsts." I've been fortunate to have met a number of dear people in this great city, and as always, when gaining something of value, like a friendship, one is more vulnerable to the loss of such a dear thing. I am experiencing a new "first" now; the first death of an important friend made in the city, here in my new life. In a city of eight million people, death is all around us in the news and on the lips of strangers overheard in fragmented conversations while passing by. It's another beat in the rhythm of "the city that never sleeps." With so much variety of life co-existing so close together in one tiny space, it shouldn't come as such a shock that not all of the lights twinkling in the beautiful city skyline can stay lit forever, but I still find myself taken aback at the absence of a warm glow that I had grown fond of.

I keep thinking of his little studio apartment on the Upper West Side that he had lived in for at least a decade. He had imbued so much of himself in the little environment he had created, that to separate him from it and have it emptied, painted over and all traces of his life erased from this space seems like such a cold and sterile conclusion of an existence that was vibrant and colorful. I always wondered how he could fit so much "stuff" into such a small space, but it suited him and he was happy there with his menagerie of colored lights, shiny nick-knacks and photos of old movie stars posted proudly next to the images of his mother who had passed away many years before. I wonder what will become of his guitar that he used to play while singing lovely songs in Portuguese, reminding him of Brazil and a home far away. Individually, they are all just  "things," but clustered together, they painted a picture of his little life, which seemed to be a happy one. As with the unexpected conclusion of anything, thinking of the "what-if's" always follows. There's nothing like regret to remind us that we're alive, and I now find myself haunted by a number of feelings of how I could have been a better friend.

The day he passed, was the first snow we'd had in the new year. Having not had any snow yet this winter, it created a great deal of excitement. Although I'm not fond of the cold, I do love how snow in the city causes everything to slow down a bit, and makes the noise seem to lessen and a beautiful glow to be cast on everything. In the quiet of that evening, there was a peace that I had not felt in quite some time. I was walking through Central Park, taking photographs and embracing the beauty of the sun setting, at the same time my friend was transitioning into the beginning of his next great adventure. I didn't know it at the time, but I found out later that the images I had captured during that quiet night in the park were very near the moments when my friend was leaving us. Somehow, they captured a peace and a softness in the snow that felt very tangible. He was a deeply spiritual man with a belief in a beautiful after-life waiting for us all. Whether there is a connection or not between his passing and the beauty of the twilight in the park, I would like to think that if there is a heaven waiting for him, it was reflected in the warmth I felt on such a cold night.

Dating and Other Natural Disasters...

A happy couple I saw one evening on the Subway

When I was 19 years old, a young art student with long beautiful locks of hair (golden like the sun, I might add), I received one of the best pieces of advice that I have ever come across. I was casually seeing someone in some undefined artsy bohemian co-mingling of lives who I felt was way out of my league. He was a very well educated, well groomed and well built man who took me out for Tempeh burgers one evening (back in my Vegetarian years) at this little hippie café decorated in macramé just off the university campus, and in my wild naïveté, I was smitten. I couldn't understand why such a dreamy guy would ever have any interest in an awkward, skinny little ne'er-do-well like me, but he did. This was in my younger, more unsophisticated days - before I had blossomed into the wildly saucy and vivacious individual that I have now become, and I was often perplexed that he enjoyed my company as he did. One night, in a lavish moment of brutal self awareness (or perhaps just graceless angst), I asked him what my appeal was to him. I wondered if I was part of some social experiment he was conducting, or if he genuinely found me attractive. I will also point out that he was a bit older than me, and perhaps wiser, and he responded to me saying, "we all have a target audience, and it's just a matter of finding it..."

To look at me, you wouldn't assume I'm a person who gets out very often, much less on dates, but it's just not true. Although throughout my teens and early twenties, I was a perpetual loner aside from a few rare blips on the radar (one blip lasting for two whole years), when I arrived in New York, I found myself in a new world. It could be just the vastness of the population and the unfathomable variety of people from every situation imaginable that have all been crammed together in this one little space, but suddenly my "target audience" seemed to have expanded. Before I knew it, I was going on dates and meeting new people at a pace that I had never before thought was possible (I realized this is what life must be like for pretty people in the normal world outside of the city, only I am neither conventionally pretty nor very normal). For the first time in my life, I was five feet and six inches of "Grade A" eligible dork, and people other than me were noticing. I went through some sort of brief re-adolescence, only this time without curfews or watchful eyes noting my every movement until after about two months I realized what a drag dating actually can be.

After a while, I feel like meeting new people is very similar to going on endless job interviews. You both show up on your best behavior, generally dressed nicer than you would typically care to be, putting on a very one-sided show, selling an image of  yourself that is far from accurate. You both tell bits of a memorized and overly rehearsed monologue highlighting a very brief summary of your general life story, one which you've told before and will probably tell again. Just like a job interview, you can often tell within the first five minutes that the position is really not right for you, and then you spend the rest of your time making polite small talk, forcing a smile of courteous interest and hoping that you'll make it through without breaking character and revealing your true and dismal feelings about the situation as a whole. At least half of the time, one or both of the members of the party feels this way. The worst is when it's not you, and you're actually buying the act the other is putting on.

Although I feel lame for admitting this, I mostly date online. I've never been good at talking to new people at bars or in social gatherings. I believe the last time I was set up on a date by a friend, I seriously contemplated leaning too close to the candle on the table, just so I could "accidentally" catch on fire and have a reason to leave. At least with online dating, you can weed out the folks who list interests like World of Warcraft, Romantic Comedies or the Republican Party on their profiles. You can politely judge them from any number rubrics (I often choose written grammar and photographic lighting to start), and then fill in the gaps of what isn't said with your own imagined version of who this person may be outside of their collection of words, pictures and categorical taxonomies. Even with my very skeptical eye, and my overly cynical imagination, I sometimes make complete misjudgments and realize that I've stepped in something worse than dog mess on the sidewalk. Some folks are really more photogenic than they ought to be, and some must have aspiring fiction novelists writing their online profiles. I try not focus too much attention on appearances, remembering the Sunday School lessons of youth like "Judge not, lest ye be judged" (and I probably "be judged" quite a great deal as it is under that adage), but there is a big difference between saying you're 37 and actually being 50, or showing an image from before you discovered the extra 63 pounds that found their way around your belly. If one has obviously lied about such noticeable things, how can one be trusted about anything important? I'm not actually expecting a response to that question, but I feel there is a difference between leaving out things like your dislike of children or your secret collection of Friends DVD's (both of which I'm guilty of), as opposed to fabricating a completely artificial person who doesn't really exist. I'd much rather be disappointed by "the real you," than a psychotic delusion.

I have been fortunate enough to meet some very dear people and I've even made some great friends as a result of my delayed foray into the world of dating, but ultimately, I go on a lot of first dates that are left at just that. Some people have had potential, and some I genuinely liked, but often the stars just don't align themselves as one's romantic heart would hope. For being such a misanthrope, I am always surprised at my drive to meet new people and see what is out there. I know that I'm no easy pill to swallow - I'm often too harsh, too critical and too eccentric for my own good, but the irrational thought of finding someone to share all of my rantings with who may even show me new things to over-analyze is a pleasant little brain morsel that occupies the realm of demi-thoughts that occur somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. I just need to keep on burning through that "target audience" of mine I know now is out there until I am either satisfied that I've exhausted my supply, or I've finally found what I didn't even know I was looking for to begin with.