Not Said in All of This

It's raining again this morning, and while the subways are all running normally (except mine -- there was an "earlier incident" at 125th Street that took out the 1/2/3 for a half hour), the MTA is on high alert.

In the first days of the post mortem of the GFof07, there's one thing that keeps coming up that I find really interesting. One of the reasons for the track flooding was that the MTA didn't have enough workers on the tracks to clear debris that was blocking the drains. Newspapers, principally. There's a reason you use newspaper for elementary school papier mache projects. It takes a long time of sogginess before that stuff disintegrates.

So the MTA has to put more track workers out to clear tracks, is the conclusion that seems to have been reached, by the MTA at least. But you know what? How about asking -- or even telling, there's a crazy thought -- passengers not to throw newspapers and other trash on the track? How about sending a bill to the publishers of the Metro and AM New York, the two free newspaper that are pressed into your hand outside of every subway station?

Yes, it feels like we pay a lot to ride a subway that's dirty and hot and breaks down in the rain. But does that give everyone the right to treat it like their personal dumpster? Has the concept of personal responsibility completely evaporated in this city?

The Great Flood of Aught Seven

It's hard to be an Excellent Walker in August, particularly the hot August we've been having. But I had no choice but to hoof it to work today, since all the subways were shut down after the three-inches-in-an-hour of rain we had this morning. By the time I got to the office, sweaty and on my way to a sunburn, I was in no mood for the cheery greeting I got from the receptionist, who, on a normal day has a problem getting here as early as 10am, so who is she to be all "I'm at work before you" on me?

People are complaining that the MTA should be better prepared for these situations (apparently many of the water pumps date from the 1930s, though I can't find a source for that), and I guess they should be. I think it's unrealistic, though, to expect a fully modernized system when that system is over 100 years old, operates 24/7, and transports millions of people a day. If you've tried to take the subway on the weekend, you know that they are always working on it. There's only so much they can do, though, without shutting the whole thing down. With that kind of daily use, they might as well be bailing water out of a sinking ship with a teaspoon.

What I do think is possible is a better communications system, both in terms of the hardware in the stations and the updates on the website, and getting instructions to the MTA workers who are -- rightly -- interrogated by commuters when something is wrong. All of those things failed this morning, and are still in failure mode at 2:45pm. The best information I got was from the media, who had dispatched reporters to various sites to, you know, report what was happening. Considering how likely it is that we'll have a true emergency in the subway one of these days -- i.e., a terrorist attack -- and that it's been six years since we've put urban terrorism on the top of our "to worry about a lot" list, you'd think we'd have at least made some progress there. You would, however, be wrong.

Four

That's the number of dorks holding onto my subway pole on the trip to work this morning reading the new Harry Potter.

Full disclosure: one of those dorks was me.

"I Hope You All Are Cozy"

On my warm, damp subway car this morning, just past 72nd Street, the conductor's voice came over the PA. "I hope you all are cozy," he began, and right away, I felt people tense up. This is one of the newer subway cars, the ones with the recorded announcements about the upcoming station. It's unusual to hear the live conductor's voice, except when there's a problem.

"I hope you all are cozy," could mean, "we're going to be stuck in the tunnel for a while." But he went on, cheerfully, about how we all needed to be considerate of each other, and make sure to stand out of the way to let people on and off the train. To a sodden and cranky group of people -- I describe primarily myself here -- he struck just the right tone of friendliness. Too much of that and you want to stick things in your ears. Like pencils.

"If you are traveling in a crowded car," he continued, "look at it as an opportunity to get to know your fellow New Yorkers." I heard only one person groan at that; the rest of the car was laughing (though not taking him up on the getting to know your neighbor part). He wished us to have a safe and pleasant day, to get to our destinations and be happy to be there.

There's something about an unexpected deviation from the script that we seem to like here in the city. Maybe it's the idea that the conductor might actually like his job, instead of being one of those resentful civil servants who hate everyone. Maybe it's that it reminds us that no matter what very serious thing we're thinking about, we are, after all, traveling in reasonable comfort around a reasonably safe city. What do we have to complain about?

Whatever the reason, I ended my journey at 34th street in a considerably better mood than when I started, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

My Head Itches

I could post an overheard cell phone conversation every day, but so many of them are of the "What? Wait, when did she say that? No, you're kidding," variety, that it's hard to imagine rendering them any more interesting than that in print. Today on the bus, though, I got 20 alarming minutes of a middle-aged woman talking to what turned out to be her mother, that began, "I have to take Jamie to get a really short hair cut tomorrow."

The Jamie in question was undoubtedly one of the two little boys she had with her, who were chatting about video games and telling each other dumb little-boy jokes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was a lice outbreak at Jamie's school, and while Jamie's classroom wasn't affected, he shares a table with Katie, and Katie's little brother Sean, you know, Melissa's son, has lice, and they didn't even know about it.

"I'm going to have them cut it like a Marine," the mother told Jamie, when she finally got off the phone -- the conversation with grandma had included a lot of F's and A's and D's, presumably standing in for words she didn't want little Jamie and his brother to hear, but inexplicably, it also included a lot of "shits" -- and asked "do you know what that means?"

I couldn't hear whether Jamie did know what getting a Marine haircut entailed, but I did hear his mother warn him not to talk about it at school. I guess she didn't want Jamie to tell Katie that Sean, her brother and Melissa's son, had lice. But telling the entire bus? That's okay.

This Has Been a Metropolitan Diary Moment

Sunday afternoon, the M72 bus after a few hours of sale shopping. We're stopped at the corner of 66th and Fifth, waiting for the light to change, to turn into the park, homeward. On the opposite corner, a group of five nuns wait for the light to change as well. I didn't know there were young American nuns anymore, but there they are, in their long black-and-white habits, laughing, having fun on their afternoon off. I look down at my black-and-white Barneys bags; my afternoon off cost me $159.