Fear of the Subway
From the front door of my apartment building it is less than one block to the door of the subway system. NYC Transit. A stairway, two flights, down to an underground system that takes me anywhere in the four major boroughs, within two hours, for $2.00, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If it’s raining, I can be there without really getting wet, to the front door of the station. If I run. I see little of the sky if I don’t want to.
As I take the subway home the concept of subterranean lifestyle crosses my mind; not as per how the underground train itself is pleasurable – it’s not – it’s more annoying, people sit too close to and on you, people make speeches of beggary or mad religious conversion, there is drool and urine and vomit and noise – you have visited our city but have travelled above ground, and so do not extensively know it ….
A comparable topic concerns the tube and skyway system that my mom and dad are connected to in Minneapolis – no one uses it much in the Summer, (some do) but for a very wide convenient twelve block square area of the CBD in the city, there are pedestrian tubes one floor up, “skyways” they are called, that link apartments with the banks, stores, stadiums, sports events, health clubs, shopping; literally everything you could need, so no one has to go outside….
But those are particularly designed for escape from the cold. In NY, the subways are not designed for escape from anything. They are for quick transport.
What brings this to mind tonight, though, is that I leave a theatre at 43rd and 8th and after crossing the street, about thirty feet, turn right another thirty feet and duck into and descend into a subway entrance.
This fairly reputable theatre space is set deep in a ten story building and is darkened and, more pertinently, incredibly quiet. Where I live in Brooklyn, there is street noise, I hear the subway train rumble and I hear my neighbors roar, rant, grunt, and tussle. This is not a complaint or rare where I live, I bargained for and accept it. Even the wealthy deal with these things.
But I realize that when I’m in this theatre, this is literally the only quiet place I ever habit in this city. Unless I wear earplugs. Not a problem. I can handle it.
But as I duck into that subway station, as the first snow of the year falls, slimy, sleety, and spluttering, cold and wistful, and I enter the turnstile and mount the train, I realize that I have avoided a great deal of exposure to the elements. I am as an ant, darting from one hole to another, hoping to not get eaten. The snow will not eat me, but perhaps it is that I literally don’t like the sun. But that’s not right either, because it is 10:30 at night, after all day rehearsals and one performance. No, the point is that there is comfort in the cover of the pavement above my head. Am I safer underground? Not if I read the papers about terrorism and bombs and poison. Do I like the subway better than a car? Well, it’s quicker than any car, yes, and cheaper, but do I like it better? No. I hate driving, but I like it if someone else does. I like sights and road travel.
Perhaps the comfort of you Angelenos in your cars is comparable to my comfort somehow of being beneath the pavement, or like my parents’ ability to go to the bank or a Timberwolves game without wearing a jacket. The sun and moon don’t see me if I don’t want to see them. I am “inside”. I can go places, the theatre, to work, to SNL, NBC, Rockefeller Center; or to Minnesotan stores and theatres without going “outside”.
Cold has nothing to do with it. And if the Angeleno in the Hollywood hills goes from his house to his carport to his car, and then darts across the sidewalk into a studio, avoiding heat, tan, avoiding …… ? Is it not the same?
