The New York City subway
I was going to make the following video an open thread. But then I realized that I had so much to say about it that it seemed to merit a regular post instead.
First, the video:
Boy, did that bring back memories of my youth riding the old IRT. That was always an adventure, and usually not an especially nice one. There was the incredibly loud screeching, particularly as it rounded the bend. Long minutes spent waiting for the local after getting off the express, a wait that could feel interminable, especially in the evening. The exhibitionists. The crazies. The men who told me to smile because I looked too gloomy – and this is when I was a child of ten or eleven.
I rode the subways mostly to ballet classes from the time I was about ten years old till I was about sixteen, often in late afternoon and early evenings. My trip was to Times Square, which was not a fun and kid-friendly place in those days.
I never noticed the different shapes of the entrance and exit kiosks that the video narrator points out, but I certainly noticed the mosaics and other decorations. My mother had shown them to me when I was even littler, and explained that every station was different.
I never saw rats in the subway till many years later, but when I did they were huge and numerous. And in childhood and adolescence I used to have nightmares about concentration camp-type selections that for some reason were always set in the NYC subway.
A better story: once when I was a young adult, sitting in a half-empty subway car in late-afternoon, in walked my brother on his way somewhere. Complete coincidence. We made a big show of crying out in glee and hugging each other.
What is it with New Yorkers and smiling?
I’m male and New York City is the only city in the world I’ve been to where women I don’t know come up to me and tell me to smile. I once got scolded by an unknown woman in a bar in NYC for not smiling.
My experience on the NYC subway system mid 50s to late 60s was always good, with the possible exception of the east side IRT 14th St./Union Square station which was constantly redolent with the scent of urine. When I went back to the city in the late 70s, I was shocked at the graffiti and vandalism of the cars, but happily was never afraid for my well-being, and the only untoward moments involved drunks wishing to sit next to me and tell me their life histories.
My son’s first memory is riding on the subway when he was 11 months old. He’s almost 30 now, and I wouldn’t take him to NYC, let alone ride the subway.
Interesting and different times. A ten year old riding the subway by herself. I doubt that is happening today.
– meeting your brother: I’ve never lived in a large city. But it’s always interested me that of the probably, hundreds of people that I know, other than work itself, I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve run into an acquaintance while going about my day.
Never been to a NY or any big American city subway. But for 2 years in late 70s did use London tunes a lot, never felt unsafe, they were mostly clean of litter and no vagrants to be seen.
As a kid born and raised in Detroit, the subway system of NYC is the thing there that fascinated me the most. I went to the transit website so many times I almost memorized the map.
I came in for the Five Boro Bike Tour, and my buddy backed out on me at the last minute. I used that weekend to just jump on trains and take them anywhere – Coney Island, Shea Stadium, etc.
I’m hoping I can go back once another Giuliani gets elected there. I’m not holding my breath.
I Callahan, speaking of which, you know, when I stop and think about it – why did Detroit not try to build a subway system? Was it just the whole car thing? It just struck me now for the first time.
The New York subway does indeed make me think of the screeching. How I hated that when I rode the system. Why is that incredible level of noise tolerated?
In the mid 1970s I was sitting in on a weekly class at Columbia University and busing to NYC once a week on Sunday evening. I would take the A Train from the bus station up to 168th St (Columbia University Medical Center). At that stop, in order to catch the local to Riverdale (staying overnight with a friend), I would then walk through a rather narrow, dark tunnel to an old dingy elevator . This elevator was just big enough for a wheelchair and one or two other people. It looked like something out of the 1940s, replete with the manual criss-cross folding gate on the elevator car. I would ride the elevator down several levels and enter a subway station which looked like something out of Ghostbusters II and at which there were always less than ten people (Sunday night). I always figured if I was going to ever be mugged in NYC it was going to happen on this walking route between the A Train and the local where there were no crowds to dissuade muggers or anyone to help me.
I was telling this story in the presence of my son-in-law, whom I had never met before 2013, and he was laughing throughout the story. I asked him what was so funny. He said he used the same tunnel and the same elevator to catch the same local to his apartment in the Bronx!
Same station, same dingy walking route, and it hadn’t changed a bit in over thirty years. It’s a small world in space and in time.
Worked in Manhattan for 25 years, lived there for nine of them. I liked it and rode the subways often. Subways and my feet were my prime modes of transportation. I left early Covid and don’t regret it, but I do sometimes miss the experiences there. The decline into lawlessness, on the other hand …
https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/LetterToTheWoke-JamesLindsay.pdf
I thought this was pretty good. Makes it clear why they don’t teach certain portions of history to children any more. Could have been a bit more tightly edited, however.
I’m not a New Yorker but I’m under the impression that the old IRT/IND/BMT designations for the different subway branches have not been in much use for the several decades at least. Maybe older folks have retained the tendency to refer to the lines in that way.
The old IRT routes are numbered and the others are lettered so the distinction does live on in that form. They were at one time separate companies.
Skip on July 15, 2023 at 7:52 pm said:
Never been to a NY or any big American city subway. But for 2 years in late 70s did use London tunes a lot, never felt unsafe, they were mostly clean of litter and no vagrants to be seen.
I took 6 teenagers to London for a week about 1982. I bought 1 week passes for them and told the boys they had to stay with the girls. They had a ball and I never worried about them. Meanwhile, my wife and I had a quiet week.
I’m sure you meant London tubes.
I grew up in NYC in the 50’s and 60’s and remember riding the subways pretty much from the beginning of memory. First the “IRT” 3 train from Nostrand Ave and, later, the E&F trains from Queens. Most of my vacations from college were spent riding nearly empty trains to and from a night job in Manhattan. I still love and am fascinated by the system and wish it were still rideable. I’d go to NY a lot more often.
I remember riding those trains throughout the ’70’s. I think I took some photos inside the system and trains in the early ’70’s, though I doubt I could find them now. It did fascinate me.
My wife and I rode the subway frequently on a trip in 2017. The memory seems recent, but it isn’t anymore. We’d ride the #1 line back and forth between mid-town and the north end of central park where our host lived.
My earliest experience on the subways; no AC and some of the older cars had “straw” seat covers. (These were the days when there were still Horn & Hardart Automats in Manhattan).
A pre-AC subway ride in the summer time was like being in a sauna, fully clothed.
When I was a kid, a subway ride was 15 cents.
During the apex of graffiti-covered subway cars you literally could not see out many of the subway windows; they were covered in graffiti.
Only got mugged once in a subway station; 145th Street and 8th Ave station. I used to carry “mug money;” that is, I would have pocket change , but I would keep the bills in my shoes. I am not kidding. My thinking was if the muggers – usually young males of a certain race – at least walked away with something, they would not beat me up. The two that mugged me were kind enough to return my subway token and not beat me up.
No point reporting anything to the cops.
Did witness a professional pick-pocket group in action on the subway as passengers – all jostling and crowded together – were entering a subway car.. One pick pocket would open the purse of a lady standing in front of her and immediately hand it over to her accomplice behind her, and he would scoot off. When confronted by the victim, the original pick pocket denied doing anything and suggested the victim search her.
Of course, nothing happened to the crooks and the poor women lost her wallet.
Once in a while a very crowded train would pull into a station and one car would have only one “passenger;” that’s because the occupant was a passed out bum laying across the bench seats who had defecated in his pants. You and everybody else would immediately exit the car because of the stink.
A few times – during rush hour – some well dressed lady would begin yelling and screaming at some guy who was grabbing her. Was quite the site to see a well presented lady unleash a string of F bombs at the culprit.
Can’t think of any more fun experiences I’ve had using the subway.
John Tyler:
Yes, the straw seats I were on the BMT, I believe, and they were arranged differently, in little catty-corner groupings.
No AC in the subways until after I was grown-up. At least, no AC in the ones I rode, which were usually on the IRT. First I would swelter in the summer for an hour and a half in dance class with no AC and no cross-ventilation (speaking of steambaths or more like sweatlodges), then the subway ride without AC. Good thing I was young.
Ha. Glad I dropped by.
For many years Detroit had a street railway system run by the DSR. It ran well beyond the city limits out the major radial arteries.
Popular and legendary explanations for its demise in 1956 were various and partial and include a conspiracy by General Motors, and the observation that auto traffic mixed with pedestrians attempting to access the trollies in bad weather led to injuries and deaths. The actual reason was probably just economic.
There are plenty of websites on the Detroit Street Railway, and numbers of home movie clips of the street cars. But the one really fine cinematic quality shot of one in operation which I can think of consists of a few seconds of a film noir movie location shot: in 1947’s “T-Men” starring Dennis O’Keefe.
The short scene of O’Keefe disembarking from the street car and heading to the Detroit public library gives a shocking glimpse of an orderly, well maintained, clean and tree lined civilization that no longer exists. The once famous Belle Isle fountain, back-drop for thousands of wedding couple poses, is shown too.
T-Men was on YouTube, but a brief glance indicates it might have been deleted. Without further checking I don’t wish to launch off on a tirade about corporate vermin and their parasitic dining off of even 75 year old B movie noirs which someone curious might watch as a harmless diversion in preference to the woke sxit spewed as supposed entertainment currently. No, I don’t want to do that.
Probably just as well to leave well enough alone, and play out the rope. When the current system abrupty hangs itself, not too many will mind. LOL
Hi, DNW. That is indeed interesting. I’m still a little puzzled why no transit system underground was attempted, but we can leave that aside. I found this about the DSR operations, which seems to give some kind of idea about what they looked like, at least:
Getting About – Part 1 – DSR
My great grandfather was an engineer on the construction of the IRT into Brooklyn. Apparently, as work progressed, they’re move along with it, and ended up in Flatbush.
An “engineer” back then want exactly what it is today. It was more of a construction foreman type role.
I loved riding the NY subways back in the 60s, and on occasion when I was visiting, even up into the 2000’s. But they were slow if you had to travel any distance. Last time I was there I took the express bus from the Bronx down to around 44th street. It was comfortable, quiet, and fast, much nicer than the subway that I rode to get up to the Bronx in the first place. Nostalgia aside, I prefer busses to subways these days.
Boston was my first real big city when I moved there in 1977. Soon after I visited a friend in NYC and I was overwhelmed by the crowds and the energy.
I could understand Frank Sinatra’s claim, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
New York had a real reputation then, most of it earned.
Do New Yorkers have that sort of pride these days?
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There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.
–Humphrey Bogart, “Casablanca”
Thanks for that DNW. As a former Detroiter I found that interesting, I am a big Metro/Subway fan. Having worked many years on Metro projects worldwide, I try to visit Metro stations wherever I am. If you find yourself in Greece, check out the system in Athens – especially the archeological treasures found during the excavation works.