Ride on a Subway

“I would ride the subway, cup of coffee splashing a little on my hand. The fantasy of the open road was nothing to me compared to the glories of the subway map. [...] On the subway, you could slip down into anonymity; you could keep your own thoughts, read, watch, draw, let yourself daydream without having always to focus on the lights and the signs. You could do your homework or scrawl in a journal and then you could get out, anywhere you wanted, and simply be someplace new.”

“Often the experience of riding the subway is terrible, but it’s a shared terror, one where its inconveniences (delays, unruly homeless men and women, drunks, and the like) elicit furtive glances and shared exchanges of rolled eyes before riders transition back into their shared state of civil inattention. [...] A ride on the subway is an exercise in solidarity by shared banality. The paradox of the subway allows us to work things out in solitude but to do so in the comforting presence of other people, under the shared solidarity of subway introspection.”

“My first trips were pre kindergarden and was from 104 Street /Jamaica Avenue to (F)(J)(Z) Essex Street / Delancey Street. Me and my father would take the train atleast 4 times a week. I remember always riding in the front car and just staring out the front window the whole trip. I also rember T/O's having the cab doors open(either cracked or fully) and my father talking to the T/O's.”