The Eagle has Landed...
Phew! There are some days when I wish I was an eagle or, at the very least, I wish I had the gift of flight. I know I described myself as a New Yorker living in New Jersey, but I have got to tell you that there are days - there are days - when the commuter in me makes hate the very subway system that suspends us all below ground!
The NYC subway system, if you want to get technical, is really quite the architectural marvel. I mean this is the island of Manhattan. Yet beneath it, some brilliant minds saw fit to excavate gigantic portions to make tunnels to fit trains cars to transport commuters on an island that is a mere 13.4 miles long by 2.3 miles wide with extensions to all five boroughs. Now that is 'cojones', baby!
Wait! I am not sure if Staten Island is among the privileged boroughs to fully connect with the City’s subway system. Yes, that's what we call it here - The City. It's an island but has its own persona, really. But back to that other island.
Staten Island is sort of the stepchild of the City, I think. No one really talks about it. We know it smells, thanks, we have noses, too. Personally, I have only been there twice myself (and by car). Once was for a baby shower and once for a wedding...but not in that order! I know there is some contraption named the Staten Island Railway that takes those poor lost souls somewhere so they can catch a regular MTA transit train. And there is old reliable, the Staten Island Ferry, horrific 2003 crash notwithstanding. So yes, that's how people from there get to here - The City - the Island of Manhattan.
I was going to start this entry today bitching and complaining about my commute that was supposed to improve when I switched from my company's Long Island (I know - lots of islands here) offices to the NYC offices. And then I went off on this whole other tangent about Staten Island. Honest to God, as bad as I THINK my commute is now, I know a girl who used to commute from there to work here. Each day that she made it in all right, I felt a sense of motherly pride for her. That trip of hers was a daily adventure. On days when the icy winds howled or snow fell, I would sit (or stand) in a warm subway car and wonder how she was faring, either boarding or disembarking the ferry over the frigid waters of New York Harbor. That ferry is free, by the way. And as it is no luxury liner, it should remain free! Although I suspect it's probably just a matter of time before our current moneymaker mayor, Mike Bloomberg, finds a way to charge a fee to the lost souls that depend on it to link themselves with the real world. Although the aforementioned accident in 2003 did kind of give the whole ferry thing a bad image. Yes, I guess I really can't say that I have it as bad as they do. But it still is not as good as I used to have it!
The truth is, I miss driving to work every day. I miss pulling into a parking spot and walking - unscathed by any sort of weather pattern - to my desk. I miss being able to wear cute - though painfully uncomfortable shoes and heels to work because to take on the City's mean concrete streets I have to wear sensible (read: ugly) shoes. You know what I mean - Commuter Wear. Good Lord! I do believe I have coined something worthy of its own fashion line!
Take today, for example. In a week that has seen more water than is welcome in May, we have all had to make it to work under bulging clouds that let loose upon our heads, whether or not an umbrella is present. And as grand a marvel as the subway system is, it is rather gross if you have to use it every day. Rain somehow seeps through and floods parts of the subway each time it rains continuously. It starts to amplify the already putrid scents that lurk down there and further magnifies the unfortunate truth: I have not yet won the lottery and thus must use this form of transportation, along with the poor masses of the City. In reality I want to have a personal driver, named Reginald Van something or other, of course, who will wait for me outside of any location, so that I don’t have to worry about the commute as much. That word leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Excuse me, while I go rinse!
Not to be a whiner, but if I knew just what this new “easy” commute would be like, once I came back to the City, I would have chosen to stay out east. I mean, ok, the bus ride on NJ Transit isn’t bad and neither is the park-and-ride. Really what creates the awful situation is the trek to and from the 42nd Street station where I get the subway to the Port Authority bus terminal where I catch the bus. Aside from the 164 steps up and down each way (and yes, I counted), there is that strenuous walk in that windowless, airless and homeless-folk-filled 8th Avenue tunnel. It is exhausting! I mean for me, it is draining. I guess if you are healthy, then you don’t get it. I am different. I have the size and frame and build of a regular 30+ woman, but I have the health and stamina and resistance of an 80-year-old. So for me, this little commute takes the life and breath right out of me. And not just because of how I physically feel, but also because of how the route on which I travel affects me on an emotional level.
(**More on that “came back to the City” part in a future entry**)
Every day when I am walking up and down the tunnel’s hills and valleys, I despise it just a wee bit more. I walk it with what seems like hundreds of others in a collective grunt of injustice. I gasp for air, I feel the familiar burn in my calves and thighs of trying hard against all resistance to just make it to the damn bus terminal. That’s the physical drain. But in addition, I see the same sorry homeless souls who get to their self-claimed posts, more punctually than if it was a real job, to sit or stand and beg for money. Some of them have talents they try to share, like the short facial-feature-driven Italian man who plays his piano accordion quite nicely and fills the tunnels unwelcome echo-y space with old world charm that is hard to find down there. He looks like he is straight out of the Italian restaurant in Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp”. And there is the funny always-smiling Rastafarian who wears dark sunglasses below ground – because he is cool like that - and hides a radio beneath his colorful cultural garb playing the music he is pretending to play on his steel drum.
Some aren’t so funny, though. Some will break your heart each day you see them, like the tiny old Asian woman who can’t weigh more than 80 pounds fully clothed and soaking wet. She sits for hours each day, her knees hugged to her chest, a tiny dark beret askew on her head, with a sad and beckoning look in her eyes, hoping someone will either leave her a bite to eat or toss some change at her so she can buy something to eat.
There is the heavily intoxicated bony-faced Latino man with a week’s worth of scruff for a beard. He only shows up randomly and will stand, paper cup in hand, eyes closed and leaning on his cane for hours, singing ancient songs in Spanish that I vaguely recall from listening to Spanish radio at home as a child. Some days his mental illness is more obvious and he will ramble on in terribly broken English above his love for NY and his life back in his homeland and the loss of a lover and children he never sees.
There is the much-too-young African American man who sits in his wheel chair, his legs absent from his broken body, doing much of nothing but staring out and hoping for a little sympathy from the populace whose sympathy is running low these days with life getting so damn expensive. When I see the empty legs of his blue jeans dangling off the chair I wonder what keeps him going each day when his face only reflects the despair of someone whose life was over long ago. That’s the emotional drain
And I don’t want to pay attention. Really I just want to walk oblivious through there with everyone who manages to do so, iPods plugged into ears, eyes focused ahead and quickly walking to their destinations. But I can’t. I have to look and it makes me feel so sad for these folks.
So, as I close this long-winded (says my brother) entry, I think I just had an Oprah-approved A-ha Moment. Much as I hate my commute right now and as exhausting and smelly and long as I think it is, I am lucky. At the very least I can say that I am rushing between two points because someone is expecting me to be there at some point every day. On the one side is my job, because I am needed there to perform services for which I will be paid, and on the other is my love, Joe, because he waits for me, too because there is a life we have agreed to share and that is as important, if not more so, than any other place I need to be.
So I guess to complain about being loved and or needed is truly a selfish thing on my part because some of the people that I see on these trips I take daily wish they had what I do right now.
The NYC subway system, if you want to get technical, is really quite the architectural marvel. I mean this is the island of Manhattan. Yet beneath it, some brilliant minds saw fit to excavate gigantic portions to make tunnels to fit trains cars to transport commuters on an island that is a mere 13.4 miles long by 2.3 miles wide with extensions to all five boroughs. Now that is 'cojones', baby!
Wait! I am not sure if Staten Island is among the privileged boroughs to fully connect with the City’s subway system. Yes, that's what we call it here - The City. It's an island but has its own persona, really. But back to that other island.
Staten Island is sort of the stepchild of the City, I think. No one really talks about it. We know it smells, thanks, we have noses, too. Personally, I have only been there twice myself (and by car). Once was for a baby shower and once for a wedding...but not in that order! I know there is some contraption named the Staten Island Railway that takes those poor lost souls somewhere so they can catch a regular MTA transit train. And there is old reliable, the Staten Island Ferry, horrific 2003 crash notwithstanding. So yes, that's how people from there get to here - The City - the Island of Manhattan.
I was going to start this entry today bitching and complaining about my commute that was supposed to improve when I switched from my company's Long Island (I know - lots of islands here) offices to the NYC offices. And then I went off on this whole other tangent about Staten Island. Honest to God, as bad as I THINK my commute is now, I know a girl who used to commute from there to work here. Each day that she made it in all right, I felt a sense of motherly pride for her. That trip of hers was a daily adventure. On days when the icy winds howled or snow fell, I would sit (or stand) in a warm subway car and wonder how she was faring, either boarding or disembarking the ferry over the frigid waters of New York Harbor. That ferry is free, by the way. And as it is no luxury liner, it should remain free! Although I suspect it's probably just a matter of time before our current moneymaker mayor, Mike Bloomberg, finds a way to charge a fee to the lost souls that depend on it to link themselves with the real world. Although the aforementioned accident in 2003 did kind of give the whole ferry thing a bad image. Yes, I guess I really can't say that I have it as bad as they do. But it still is not as good as I used to have it!
The truth is, I miss driving to work every day. I miss pulling into a parking spot and walking - unscathed by any sort of weather pattern - to my desk. I miss being able to wear cute - though painfully uncomfortable shoes and heels to work because to take on the City's mean concrete streets I have to wear sensible (read: ugly) shoes. You know what I mean - Commuter Wear. Good Lord! I do believe I have coined something worthy of its own fashion line!
Take today, for example. In a week that has seen more water than is welcome in May, we have all had to make it to work under bulging clouds that let loose upon our heads, whether or not an umbrella is present. And as grand a marvel as the subway system is, it is rather gross if you have to use it every day. Rain somehow seeps through and floods parts of the subway each time it rains continuously. It starts to amplify the already putrid scents that lurk down there and further magnifies the unfortunate truth: I have not yet won the lottery and thus must use this form of transportation, along with the poor masses of the City. In reality I want to have a personal driver, named Reginald Van something or other, of course, who will wait for me outside of any location, so that I don’t have to worry about the commute as much. That word leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Excuse me, while I go rinse!
Not to be a whiner, but if I knew just what this new “easy” commute would be like, once I came back to the City, I would have chosen to stay out east. I mean, ok, the bus ride on NJ Transit isn’t bad and neither is the park-and-ride. Really what creates the awful situation is the trek to and from the 42nd Street station where I get the subway to the Port Authority bus terminal where I catch the bus. Aside from the 164 steps up and down each way (and yes, I counted), there is that strenuous walk in that windowless, airless and homeless-folk-filled 8th Avenue tunnel. It is exhausting! I mean for me, it is draining. I guess if you are healthy, then you don’t get it. I am different. I have the size and frame and build of a regular 30+ woman, but I have the health and stamina and resistance of an 80-year-old. So for me, this little commute takes the life and breath right out of me. And not just because of how I physically feel, but also because of how the route on which I travel affects me on an emotional level.
(**More on that “came back to the City” part in a future entry**)
Every day when I am walking up and down the tunnel’s hills and valleys, I despise it just a wee bit more. I walk it with what seems like hundreds of others in a collective grunt of injustice. I gasp for air, I feel the familiar burn in my calves and thighs of trying hard against all resistance to just make it to the damn bus terminal. That’s the physical drain. But in addition, I see the same sorry homeless souls who get to their self-claimed posts, more punctually than if it was a real job, to sit or stand and beg for money. Some of them have talents they try to share, like the short facial-feature-driven Italian man who plays his piano accordion quite nicely and fills the tunnels unwelcome echo-y space with old world charm that is hard to find down there. He looks like he is straight out of the Italian restaurant in Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp”. And there is the funny always-smiling Rastafarian who wears dark sunglasses below ground – because he is cool like that - and hides a radio beneath his colorful cultural garb playing the music he is pretending to play on his steel drum.
Some aren’t so funny, though. Some will break your heart each day you see them, like the tiny old Asian woman who can’t weigh more than 80 pounds fully clothed and soaking wet. She sits for hours each day, her knees hugged to her chest, a tiny dark beret askew on her head, with a sad and beckoning look in her eyes, hoping someone will either leave her a bite to eat or toss some change at her so she can buy something to eat.
There is the heavily intoxicated bony-faced Latino man with a week’s worth of scruff for a beard. He only shows up randomly and will stand, paper cup in hand, eyes closed and leaning on his cane for hours, singing ancient songs in Spanish that I vaguely recall from listening to Spanish radio at home as a child. Some days his mental illness is more obvious and he will ramble on in terribly broken English above his love for NY and his life back in his homeland and the loss of a lover and children he never sees.
There is the much-too-young African American man who sits in his wheel chair, his legs absent from his broken body, doing much of nothing but staring out and hoping for a little sympathy from the populace whose sympathy is running low these days with life getting so damn expensive. When I see the empty legs of his blue jeans dangling off the chair I wonder what keeps him going each day when his face only reflects the despair of someone whose life was over long ago. That’s the emotional drain
And I don’t want to pay attention. Really I just want to walk oblivious through there with everyone who manages to do so, iPods plugged into ears, eyes focused ahead and quickly walking to their destinations. But I can’t. I have to look and it makes me feel so sad for these folks.
So, as I close this long-winded (says my brother) entry, I think I just had an Oprah-approved A-ha Moment. Much as I hate my commute right now and as exhausting and smelly and long as I think it is, I am lucky. At the very least I can say that I am rushing between two points because someone is expecting me to be there at some point every day. On the one side is my job, because I am needed there to perform services for which I will be paid, and on the other is my love, Joe, because he waits for me, too because there is a life we have agreed to share and that is as important, if not more so, than any other place I need to be.
So I guess to complain about being loved and or needed is truly a selfish thing on my part because some of the people that I see on these trips I take daily wish they had what I do right now.
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