I spent the weekend in the Big Apple and while there is plenty to talk about when it comes to the streets like drag queens, pushy vendors and moronic tourists, there’s even more when you walk down the gum covered steps to the subway. The New York subway made me believe that America is still the melting pot and when you grow up in a beach town in the midwest, the ‘land of opportunity’ is just a history lesson. In NYC, it’s reality.
Walking down the steps and through the turnstile is like walking into another world, a city under a city. Despite how dirty the ground may be and how many germs are on the handrail you just touched, there so much beauty down there. It’s more than basic white subway tiles you’d put in your kitchen. It’s age old mosaics telling you where you are, much better than green and white street signs, it’s ‘vandalism’ that’s actually a stunning piece of art made with spray paint commenting on political corruption, it’s a man in the corner drumming on old pots from restaurant dumpsters and construction scraps in his week old unwashed clothes. There’s art down there that is left unappreciated amongst the screeching brakes and molding grout.
The subway is just as hot, crowded, smelly and dirty as the movies show. But it also so much more. It is filled with art, life and culture. One platform can be home to two hardworking immigrants, five lost tourists, seven city natives, one farmgirl with a broadway dream, one struggling artist, three single mothers, and literally anyone else, all waiting to cram into a metal tube going 55 mph. Lives stop and converge the moment those doors close.
Everything moves so fast, catch this train, get to that shift, make your meeting. Nobody has time to care where you came from or where you’re going because they are so focused on finding their platform. But when you step into your cab everything freezes. You’re trapped with essentially the world. No two people have the same story, same goals, same lifestyle, but everyone has one thing in common. The cab. You’re all going uptown, downtown, wherever, for your own reason. Just in one trip I saw the tired woman with an energetic child fresh from the playground. She sat with shoulders slumped and head in hand from exhaustion, tattered canvas bag filled with groceries at her feet in well worn nurse shoes. I saw the ‘big scary black guy’ with piercings and slightly too big clothes who gave up his seat so I could sit with my mom while he risked whip lash holding onto the overhead bar with a smile and a ‘have a nice day’ as we left. I saw the cosplayers dressed up for Comic Con, the kid bent over a biology book stuffing his face with pop tarts, the waitress chewing on a pen from her apron while studying sheet music, I saw every race, heard every language.
New York streets are one thing, it’s kinda like walking down Washington on Coast Guard night in Grand Haven, you just have to step on a few toes and photobomb a few selfies. But the New York subway is another world, a culture smack to the face for this midwestern. It’s dirty and beautiful, full of 8.4 million lives coming together, just for a moment.
