Tag: #MTA

  • The MTA Gods

    Oh! How the MTA gods have forsaken me!

    It was only to be a minor trip. An expedition to the 93rd Street Trader Joe’s.

    A goodly visit to precure sustenance for myself and my family. To feats vastly not only for this week, but for the conclusion of the week when the Bowls are Super.

    But low, my hubris caught up with me. The flaw was tragic, the results ordained by Oracle of the IRT. For I, though humble in my ways, forgot to leave the sacrificial offering of Beam in the Holy Shot Glass on thy fire escape, thus anointing me, and allowing my transits to be good.

    Neigh, as the sacrifice was forgotten, so was the transit ruined. The signals of 59th refused to obey thy will of the conductor, and thusly the trains ground to a halt.

    No, this was not an incapacitated passenger, not a police investigation. Nor was it the, not as rare as you think, fire on the tracks.

    This was green, yellow, and red lights escaping to the realm of “No Power,” and leaving New York City at a standstill. Well… At least the Upper West Side.

    It was I, stuck at the 96th Street Station, with three heavy and bulging bags of well-earned groceries, that was stuck for almost an hour, waiting on a C Train. I could have been happy with a B even – I could have made that work.

    But I, fortune’s fool, who forgot his sacrifice, was punished by the MTA gods. BMT and the Lexington Line punished me by blowing up my schedule. Not allowing me the time to do my work.

    Learn, dear ones, from me. Never let the cold, or the hour of night, delay you bourbon offering for good and safe travels. Because if you forget, the MTA never will.

  • Learning the Subway

    The kid is off from school today. A teacher in-service or something. She’s getting old enough now that I don’t have to keep an eye on her all the time, nor do I need to keep her entertained endlessly. But I don’t want her sitting around the apartment all day either.

    So, I made her run errands with me. Errands that took us out of the neighborhood. Errands that meant we were going to ride the subway together.

    New York City is not the best place for kids, I admit it. Kids see and hear things maybe they shouldn’t, and it can cause them to grow up a little too soon. But, when that happens, me and the kid have a conversation about what she saw and heard. I mean, that’s the job of being a parent sometimes; talking about uncomfortable stuff. And yes, the subway has lead to a great many conversations.

    And the subway is how the kid will primarily get around in this town. I feel it is my duty as a parent and a transplanted New Yorker, the teacher my child who is a natural born New Yorker, how to use this world famous example of mass transit.

    We started with learning the difference between local and express, followed by what uptown and downtown means. Then we talked about the difference between letter and number local and express trains. Now, we are trying to memorize the stops; 125, 116, 110, 103, 96, 86, 81, 72 and 59. Sure, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the MTA, but from the kid’s perspective, that’s her world when running around New York.

    I know for her, the City is vast, and these stops really don’t register as distances in relation to being away from home. It’s a little like magic for her. You go underground, get in a train, and come up in a different world, with different places and people. in that sense, NYC can be a pretty wonderful experience for a kid as well.

    (Say! If you like what you have read, please like, share, and leave a comment. It would help justify my existence.)

  • That Song Triggers That Memory

    I went grocery shopping this morning. It is one of the rare moments in my week where I can listen to music uninterrupted. I take the subway down to the Trader Joe’s on 93rd, and there is a little bit of a walk. Early in the morning, after the kids are in school, and people have left for work, there aren’t many folks on the street, so I can jam out to my music; I can get it.

    And as I was riding the subway home with my bags, my playlist randomly gave me “Bye Bye Love,” by The Cars. I have heard this song since forever, and its hints of unrequited love made it such a wonderful juxtaposition of a song, contrasting with its upbeat rock tempo.

    Not sure why, but I added it to a playlist in mid 2018, and listened to it quite heavily. In September 2018, I was visiting a friend from college and her husband in a rather cool Brooklyn apartment that was in a walkup building, and they had access to a rooftop garden. That kind’a cool apartment, you know? We were drinking, a lot, and started playing a game of finding videos and concerts on YouTube of songs we loved. I picked “Bye Bye Love,” from a club concerts The Cars played in 1979. I liked it, but not sure if it played well in the room.

    But the memory of what I was feeling in that moment is still attached with that song. I felt lonely, because my wife and daughter were 3,000 miles away in California. I felt paralyzed as I was supposed to be packing up our apartment for our move to California, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. I was about to start rehearsals for what would be the last show I worked on, which had me excited to see my friends who I love and I am amazed by. And I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom, as my mother had cancer, and I knew she wouldn’t recover.

    My college friend lost her father when she was younger, and I knew if there was a friend who could understand what I was feeling, it would be her. And I think of her as one of my close friends, but I couldn’t talk about it. I just lied. I said it was looking better, and we have to believe in hope, and all that stuff. But I didn’t mean it. I said the thing I thought was expected. I didn’t tell the truth.

    I don’t hate listening to “Bye Bye Love,” or The Cars. Sometimes that memory and feeling doesn’t settle over me when I hear it. Some days, I’m okay when I think of my mother’s passing. And then one day, I hear a song, and it all comes back to me while on a B train, heading uptown.

  • ODDS and ENDS: The Subway, Aaron Rodgers, and I’m Not Talking About Tottenham This Week

    “ODDS and ENDS” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    Riding on the subway sucks right now. I keep on thinking that I am going to get comfortable with it, but it still makes me anxious. Though I am vaccinated, I still don’t like people getting near me when I am in a car. And I especially don’t like unmasked people being around me. Then, the kappa donna is when I ride with the kid. I become super edgy with people, and try to get as far away from them as possible, in an attempt to keep my kid safe. I know that when she gets vaccinated, which will be soon, some of these feelings will ease up. But as of now, it’s like a necessary evil to get around the city.

    So… Aaron Rodgers was having so much fun because he was fooling everyone. Or he was all hyped up on B-12 shots. Either way, nice try Rodgers…

    Tottenham has a new manager, and barely got past Vitesse in their Europa Conference match. Sure, it was Conte’s first time leading the team, but looks like they have the same old problems that a manager can’t change. Spur’s defense is awful, and that’s where the fix needs to happen. I think between Lucas, Son and Kane, goal scoring is taking care of. They just need to stop the other side, and get the ball back on transition. (I sort of sound like I know what I am talking about.) Tottenham play Everton this weekend, and I don’t see them pulling it off. But… I’ll be there with my scarf on, watching them play.

  • Your Level of Bullshit

    If you ask most people, they will tell you that they don’t put up with people’s bullshit, or that they have a “Bullshit Detector,” or my favorite which is that they are a bullshitter and one cannot bullshit them. These are all lies because people put up with bullshit all the time, especially from our friends and family. Probably because we love those people, and we just deal with their little lies.

    So let’s just call it what it is; we accept other people’s bullshit all the time. No one exists in the world who calls everyone out on everything. That person is not real.

    But we all do have a threshold. A line, once we get pushed over it, we start to fight back.

    I was told when I first moved to NYC that I would have a moment that I would yell, “Go Fuck Yourself,” to a person for either a minor or great indiscretion caused upon me. And that was true. I yelled at a guy in his car who almost ran me over in a crosswalk in Midtown.

    But today, I crossed a new threshold, and I thanked the pandemic for it. My tolerance for bullshit is lower, but I no longer feel the violent reaction to scream and yell at people.

    See, I was on an uptown local, coming back from grocery shopping. I had got on train at 96th heading to 125th, and there was a homeless person on the train, which is common and I don’t have an issue with that. But when the train started moving uptown, the person decided that this was a good time to start urinating from their seat.

    Yup, done here.

    I didn’t make a scene, just got off at the next stop and awaited for the next train.

    Now, you might say, of course you did that as that is a right normal thing to do. But I retort with that I was the only person who got off that half full car. Just me, everyone else put up with it. That was my line, and I guess it wasn’t the same for everybody else. I guess to them, that’s normal.