Rush Hour on the New York Subway

You've had a bit of a rose-tinted "tourist" view of the subway from me so far, well apart from the Panther / Sloth guy and his mate, but yesterday I used it for the first time in the rush hour.

That's where it was much more similar to the London Underground. It was really crowded, really hot, rushed, people were scowling and grumbling at others with luggage on the escalators. You couldn't really stand around like a dork looking at maps or taking pictures of buskers without get bumped into from behind. Fortunately when I managed to get onto a train, there was a kind of quiet stillness & relief that you were going somewhere and not caught up in the melee of the platform transfers.


I found myself staring at the woman with the worry beads below, as her calming influence was transferring over to me, and I started to feel a bit less hot & bothered.


It didn't last too long though as I made my way to another interchange and joined yet another slow moving, long and narrow queue for the escalators


However, it was all quite orderly & it's not just us Brits who queue well for things. We might be professional queue'ers but the Manhattanites would give us a run for our money. They only got really impatient with people carrying massive luggage and according the rules below, it's actually an "offence to carry bulky items likely to cause inconvenience or a hazard to yourself and others".



New York subway drivers all seem to wear ear protectors to protect them from the noise down there. Maybe just seeing them wearing them, made me think that that their trains appeared much noiser than our Tubes, although as yet, I've not seen any commuters with the massive noise cancelling headphones on that are quite common in London.


Coming home was much calmer and I felt a bit like the sleeping dog in the bag below, wishing that someone would carry me.


Almost by accident though I saw some amazing sculptures on the platform at 14th Street. I just happened to move a little further down and out of the corner of my eye saw some bronze little figures on the platform floor




There were a whole range of them and they were featured little money characters, either being eaten by alligators coming out of New York's sewer or they just hung around watching the trains.

There were some more great mosaics around with a watery theme with quotes from James Joyce, Ovid and err... Mother Goose




Finally, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of night time work that was going on around travellers. The air reeked of bleach & cleaning fluids and there was was loads of spraying, scrubbing and general tidying up at about 11.45pm


The photo on the right shows a woman at a public pay phone, which was also quite novel as in London public pay phones at platform level seemed to have disappeared years ago, well at least I don't remember having seen one underground for ages.

There a more pictures of the sculptures, mosaics and other commuters on my set from Day 5 on in New York and some pictures of the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Staten Island Ferry and Greenwich Village in my set from Days 3/4 in New York.


I'm going to try to pop into their Transport Museum over the next few days as there were some cool NYC Subway badges and bags in the Museum of Modern Art shop. But I imagine there will be a larger selection in the Transport Museum itself. Now it's time for some lunch with the UK Digital Mission guys & gals at the Web 2.0 Expo which I'm visiting while I'm here.

Innocent Village Fete Shortlist - help me get lucky!

Just found out through the power of Twitter that one of my pictures from the Innocent Village Fete back in the summer (yes summer, remember that, it lasted about 2 days) has reached the finals for best photo contest. It's a contender for best overall fete picture. So if you like it please vote



My mate Anna (mondoagogo)'s picture is also up for a vote (Best Bunting) as is fellow Twitterer Tall Rich (photoverulam) for Best Fete Game pictures - so please vote for us all!!!

Voting closes on the 21st September and the winners will be announced on my birthday 24th September. Thanks so much!

Uptown, Downtown on New York Metro

After my 3rd full day in New York, I think I'm beginning to get the hang of the subway now. As some of you have said in the comments on my previous post, you thought that I'd be able to find it easy after the London Underground.

"One of my friends told me she wished she's been on the Tube before she first tried to deal with the NYC subway, because the Tube made so much more sense to her, and when she next went to New York, the logic seemed to transfer over and make it easier for her to figure out how to get around. Which is a long way of saying I'm not surprised you're having such an easy time getting around." said alto2.

Greg said "The subway there isn't so scary, especially for someone from London!"

It's not been entirely easy or unscary though. Specially my first time of using it in the evening on Sunday night. I travelled "downtown" from Grand Central to Greenwich Village and that meant having to get the S or the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square or 42nd.

This looks like something out of Dr Who

Taking the S to get to Times Square might have been faster than taking Line 7, but that's were encountered my first scary moment. The carriage was pretty full and the train seem to sit for an age at Grand Central before moving off the one stop. It was about 8pm and a couple of guys got on who were clearly on something - not sure if it was booze or drugs.

One of them loudly made his through people to get to an empty seat at my end of the carriage. With much "F**k you, mother f**ka" and "Get your ass up here" to his mate. He slouched in the corner and was at that partial "I'm passed out" and partial "I can take you on if you challenge me" stage.

His friend eventually made it down to the carriage but first gave some rather surly advice to a woman who had her bike on the train. "Hey lady, you're blocking the passageway here. Can't you move that thing?". She sort of managed to move it, with an almost inaudible apology & he wound his way through people, all the time being loudly "encouraged" down by his half panther - half sloth mate.

I did the London thing of keeping my head down & not trying to stare at Panther Sloth guy who was only a seat away from me. All the other locals had a similar idea. The general light mutterings of conversation virtually stopped and you could sense that we all felt that something might kick off if someone did the wrong thing. Whatever the wrong thing here might have been.

That's the thing about public transport in a strange city, you don't really know what the unspoken rules & etiquette are. You might be able to understand the maps and the insistence on having two names for most stations (Times Square 42nd Street - 66th Street Lincoln Center - Christopher St Sheridan Sq - we don't do that in London!), but you also need to know the "rules".

There are Rules to this Game - seen at New Rochelle Station

After what seemed like an eternity waiting at Grand Central - with more "Mother f**ka's" and "Why don't you get up and let this pretty lady sit down?", directed his mate about a young woman standing next to me, there was a collective sigh of relief when the train finally decided to move.


Earlier that same day I had got Line 7 or the purple line or whatever it's called in New York to Times Square 42nd Street and at the interchange there saw some fab mosaics paying tribute to the industries there.

We actually have a very badly lit version of our tribute to Leytonstone's best known director in the East End of London. There's a little known series of 17 mosaics which honour Alfred Hitchcock who was born there.





The ones at Times Square were equally as detailed & colourful, but as with London, most people rushed by them, even in the daytime & hardly seemed to notice them




Overground architecture seems to get a snapped a lot more in New York, just as tourist spots above ground in London do. But at least these mosaics in New York had some lights thrown on them.

There were also some stunning Klimt like golden mosaics at 66th Street Lincoln Center


I've mentioned in the previous post how clean the carriages on the Metro appear (admittedly there are still mice / rats on the tracks scuttling around the pools of dirty water), so the cleaners don't seem to have as much work to do as in London.


This woman came on my carriage, had a quick look round, and like the Fonz from Happy Days looking in the mirror, must have thought "Heeeey, nothing needs doing", and went on her way.

If Heroes ads have taken over Grand Central - well at the least the Metro North Railroad side - Showtime & Dexter ads were all over the Broadway side of the Metro.


It was quite a shock to see UK faces like Billie Piper from Secret Diary of a Call Girl & Jonathan Rhys Myers from The Tudors sharing space with David Duchovny & Michael C Hall. Also a nice reminder that some bloggers can make the "big time" (specially when they write about sex). My blog was highly commended in the Guardian's Blog Awards 2003 the same year that Belle de Jour won her award for best written blog. Look her now, she has two successful TV series & a book based on her blog and I, well ... err ... I'm sitting in a hotel room in a New York suburb blogging about her.

There's more pictures on the Metro & train journey into town from my 2nd full day in New York on Flickr.


The set includes my day in Central Park & some New York pigeon shots for Brian Pigeon my favourite pigeon blogger back home in London. You might want to check out Brian's theories of the Circle Line being London's very own Large Hadron Collider - you can now see where the term "bird brained" comes from.

First impressions of New York Subway

So, I did it. I travelled on the Metro in New York for my first time ever yesterday. As someone who's been blogging and writing about the London Underground for about nine years now (crikey) what did I think?


I have travelled on subways in Mexico, Paris, Lisbon & Toronto, so this wasn't my first non London Tube experience. It was really, really familiar but totally unlike anywhere else too, which is obvious really. Buskers on the subway carriages actually weren't treated with scorn or total indifference (not sure if it's legal in New York - "on carriage" busking on the Tube was never legal).


It was busier than London I reckon. I was on the Metro at about 11am on Saturday morning & I left it at about 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, and the stations I travelled through were pretty crowded. In fact the first train was too crowded to get on. But that may have been because engineering works meant that some lines weren't fully operational.

A guy next to me sighed when the woman over the subway PA was politely telling everyone about the alternatives. "Just get on with it, and get us there", he said to no one in particular. I kind of knew how he felt!

However it was refreshing to actually hear what she said very clearly (even though it may as well have been Greek to me as I had no idea what she was talking about). I also liked the recorded announcer who said "Watch the gap" - it sounded more like a cheery and proud invitation than our drony, yet "quaintly" London "Mind the gap".


Grand Central Station however was much less crowded that I was expecting. It's an amazingly palatial station, cool, high ceilings, wonderful zodiac murals above and like a cathedral with stunning windows.




However it's a showcase and I'm sure gets more loving care than the bits that fewer tourists photograph. The platforms I used from my train which came in from New Rochelle were completely taken over by Heroes advertising:


That was another surprising thing. I was expecting loads and loads more ads down there. So far Paris has to win for the subway system with the most ads. Some station walls are literally covered with ads (eg Trocadero), so much so that it's hard to read the station names - like in Edwardian times in London when they first started experimenting with ads.

Like London's Tube there were some nice architectural bits at some stations


But also like London the stations were tatty in places and could do with a visit from some serious spring cleaners.

The great thing was the air conditioning on the trains themselves. It was a welcome relief, however it made the stations seem like infernos from hell, though as there was nothing to cool people at platform level. We sometimes have the opposite problem with our big comedy fans cooling down interchanges and areas around escalators but nothing to keep us cool on the Tube itself. You can't win!

Their public service ads were less inventive than ours though. There was a vague attempt with the one saying don't run on the escalators


But the "do not lean on the door" & "do not hold the door" signs were fairly basic in comparison to our more err visual ones about not holding the doors open:




Yes I know what it might remind you of!

If you've not been following my Twitter feed, you might not know that I'm staying outside of New York City itself and am in a suburb called New Rochelle. It's a really simple and cheap (well in comparison to London) 30 minute commute into Grand Central station.


I've probably spoken too soon about the "simplicity" but I've bought a week's unlimted travel into New York for $54 dollars & I paid an extra $20 to get $23's worth of Metro subway value added to it. To me this is a Bobby bargain.




The Metro North Rail Road runs from Connecticut into New York and provides a commuter link to NYC taking in suburbs around the Hudson River & on the East Coast like New Rochelle, Harlem, Pelham and Mount Vernon.


That's it for today. I'm sure I'll be filling you in on other New York Subway impressions. There's more pictures of the subway and Metro North Rail Road in my Flickr set along with some other pictures of New York - including the ... ummm ... delights of Deep Fried Oreos & some NYPD police who weren't living up to their doughnut (sorry I'm in the US) donut eating, coffee swigging stereotypes.

London Underground Fashion Victims via New York

I'm in New York!!!!! Strangely in the week before I left London I spotted a number of Tube Fashion Victims who looked like they'd be borrowing a Big Apple look.

Baseball Caps

It's been unseasonably cold in London so some people have been wrapped up like it's October right now. Yet others are braving it out. The woman below is in duffle coat, boots and New York Yankees baseball cap, yet the guy next to her is only in an American football style T-shirt


I won't be buying a NY baseball cap even though I'm in New York as I'll look like a card carrying tourist and I don't get on with baseball caps. I don't have the right hair for it or pony tail to stick through the hole.

Once again we see the "air traffic controller" style headphones over a hat look.


I preferred the headphones over the silver beany from last week. This guy looks like he's really trying a bit to hard to say "I'm a DJ".

The Fame Look

Legwarmers. Wow are they making a comeback? I did expect her to leap off the District line and start singing "Fame! I'm gonna live forever".


She must have a good washing machine to wear white legwarmers over the bottom of her shoes.

That's it for now, not sure if I'll be able to grab any New York Metro Fashion Victims as I'll probably get lamped, but we'll see. Hopefully later today will be my first trip on the subway here, so I'll report back.

In the meantime, the previous fashion victim post is here and the complete picture gallery of all the TFV's can be seen on the following Flickr set.


While, I'm here I must say many thanks to Janine from my hotel (Marriott in New Rochelle) for leaving me a little gift of snacks - much appreciated!