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Dante’s Inferno, Perhaps Third Cirlce: The Gross Man
For those who don’t remember, the Dante’s Inferno series are reserved for rants and the literary banishment of those who offend Urban Odyssey bloggers. Watch out, because this post comes from the fury of Bianca. Only mildly censored so as not to ignite an internet riot.
“Dear God,
Why? Why I ask, why do certain people exist?
Picture it, a muggy Spring morning in late May. The 6:00am 2 train. Abnormally packed train for this early in the morning. Seating is limited. As I go into my usual morning trance during my 90 minute commute I am rudely interrupted by foul play. That foul play my friends is Body Odor. A 6′ 5″ inch male, approximately 40 years old, still rockin fubu hard as if they were ever cool or like they ever made anything of quality…or perhaps his Asian themed button down is a “Dragon Ball-Z” shirt. Nonetheless his shirt sucks. His jeans are visibly filthy and 2 inches too short. He is wearing crew cut socks (do they even make those anymore?) and his new balance sneakers look like his lawn mowing sneakers however somehow I doubt he has a lawn to mow. Too harsh? Well you try sitting down wind from this motherfucker standing over you with what I believe to be 2 days worth of underarm body odor. There is no escaping this. I tried plugging my nose, burying my face in my arm then my bag. Shallow breaths from my mouth did not do the trick. “Ding!” The train doors open after this 15 minute violation. He takes two steps toward what I believe will be my freedom to breath. NOPE sits right next to me. I thought for a moment the smell would die down since I was no longer right beneath his armpit. 5-4-3-2-NOPE. Dante’s Inferno, Perhaps Third Cirlce: The Gross Man – continue reading …
Life along the Railroad Tracks
One doesn’t need a television, book, or laptop when your odyssey takes you on the lines of Amtrack. Amtrack affords you not the traumatizing experience of a greyhound bus or the 24 hour day-long military-like operation of airline flying. It is more low-key and has better views that you can actually enjoy.
Railroads cut through some interesting places, unlike the terrifying view of clouds above a very-far-away earth, or the monotony of a never-ending concrete highway with spotted lines (that will hypnotize you if you stare at them too long). On the train, you cut through some pretty amazing places of nature, cross over rivers, fields… and see the scars of human habitation and time.
Lest you leave with a romanticized view of the railroad, it is when your eyes are above the railroad horizon that all seems serene. Lower your eyes to what lives right beside the railroad track and you begin to wonder when the great comet of the apocalypse will come raining down on us as punishment for being born human.
Life along the railroad tracks is pretty grim. It is as if humans can’t resist throwing all their waste down any type of slope or cliff. Though I am willing to consider that floods of water may also be the culprit, the evidence is pretty convincing; the household garbage that splays out from the houses along the railroad all seem to carry the fingerprint of the litterer. You can see it in how the shreds of plastic, tattered clothes, fast food containers all hang from the sides like someone’s squeezed out shit. Life along the Railroad Tracks – continue reading …
Tis the Season for Scum Bombs
Those urbanites who have subways and elevated train stations know the gross factor that cometh with melting snow. It’s the slowly dripping, murky droplets of liquid substances that drop onto your head (or life-ending incidents of landing in your eye) from the beams and ceilings of an aging rail system. Unlike the drops that fall with rain, these scum bombs are highly concentrated with grossness: the filth of the subway and all that hath accumulated in the old snow. What are they made of? Who knows? Human feces, dirt, rodent excrement, spit, toxic waste….? Survival tactics: Avoid the wet spots you see on the floor. They are usually the ground zero of falling globs. Tread like Indian Jones in a Peruvian ancient temple to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Underground talent
JPLogan asks…
Whatever happened to street performers?
“It only takes a great musician, battery powered amp, eye seeing dog and a banjo. Subway music Boston style.”
Nipples on the A train
Armani Exchange might be playing a trick on your eyes. I walked onto the subway car of the A train and while scanning for a seat my eyes were pulled to the sight of two nipples hoovering above my head. Double take. I see these two breasts glaring at me but then I’m able to see the torso it’s attached to: muscular and male. But still, something looks feminine about it and after a few moments I have concluded (with C-mixto concurring as a male) that the breasts seem too pendulous, the shading under them dark so as to shape them as circular as in curvaceous. The lighting on them looks enhanced too, so that they seem to bulge out softly (not hard like a muscle). So coupled with the fact that there is no head, I conclude that Armani is playing on using the female body, sex and hermaphroditism via photoshop in its ad. No surprise, just noting it struck me in this ad. You judge.
Further reading: Camile Paglia, Sexual Personae.
The Accordion Player at Broadway-Lafayette
photo taken at...?
There is an accordion player whom I see on Sunday afternoons at the Broadway-Lafayette subway stop. She is young, has white skin with almost a talcum powder glow. Her hair is raven black. The music coming out of her accordion sounds so old… as though she channels an old Eastern European soul from its wooden frame by pressing its white keys.
When I descend the stairs into the underworld of the MTA and hear her accordion cry, I freeze. I am chilled by its misplaced melody, as though someone opened up a jewelry box somewhere and its notes are echoing through the labrynth of tunnels. I feel I am suddenly being haunted by a ghost. The accordion player smiles if you smile at her. I often wonder her story, and indeed took a card should I want to end the mystery. Her song makes you think you have time traveled back to the cobblestone streets of early 20th century Prague. Seeing her as the source of the music is just as unexpected as first hearing the notes; her modern image jolts you back into the present. I see her as an unlikely historian, a priestess of an old craft, keeping what’s dead in history alive in our memories.
The return of the paperboy
NYC’s free newspapers, Metro and AM New York, have resurrected a chummy memory of the 1930’s: the talking newspaper, or the paperboy. Newspapers usually remain mute, sitting on newsstands, bookstore racks or milk crates outside a deli or bodega. They lost their human liaison of the 1930’s, a time when we relied more on human interaction to learn of local and global events, to discern our individual and collective experiences, and when information downloads were less a private affair than a community one.
But walking out of the subway in the morning recently, I’m hearing not just the hustle of Metro versus AM and the advertiser of the day who happens to be sponsoring the news… Now I’m hearing clips from what you read inside. And I time travel back to the 1930’s. I feel a momentary connection to the news bearer. It is pleasing because besides reminding me of the chumminess of the old newsboys, it forces me back to the collective world of news and not just my office-based and personal one.
For a history of newsboys, the Depression and the marketing scheme that helped bring it to be, read: Masculine guidance: boys, men, and newspapers, 1930-1939 Postol Enterprise Soc.2000; 1: 355-390 .
For an early history of newspaper publishing in New York, “The Early History of Newspaper Publishing in New York State”
Dante’s Inferno, 8th Circle, Bolgia 9: Broken MTA announcement systems
“Sowers of discord” are placed in this circle of Dante’s Inferno, and who’s going to argue that those shrieking gargles we often hear on the subway or the platform do not perform such a function? In with air-conditioning you go, broken MTA announcement systems, and here’s why: when you’re broken, and broken real good as you often are, every minute or so we have to hear horrible scratchy blaring screams from subway speakers that are supposed to be in English, but are actually a high frequency form of alien language that must be meant to make your ears bleed. We’re already pissed we have to go to work, the caffeine has already got us jittery. We need to also listen to a cacophony worthy of the late X-Man Banshee?
Bus Graffiti
Seeing this mural on a bus in Acireale, Sicily made me think of NYC subway cars in the 80’s. During my brief trip I observed that the eastern coast of Sicily has a healthy appetite for graffiti, but more so “messaging” than art murals.
Loaded like a Freight Train….
GNR fans will appreciate this story. I was coming home from one of those miserable days at work, when a cloud follows you from the office, to the stairwell, to the revolving door of your work building, creeps down the subway stairs like a horror-movie mist and stands beside you in the smelly underground world of the subway. (People, wise up-it is not a coincidence that you go underground like a troll every day to be barfed up an hour later onto the surface to enter a slave-master’s domain. Think you’re any different because your job is “helping the world”? Its slavery nevertheless and will stay that way until our world and its masters start respecting the holistic individual). I was waiting for the A train, when a middle aged man with dirty-blonde (in every sense) long hair clad in jeans (pants, jacket and shirt) started to stumble towards the benches where I was standing. The man was drunk; he was clutching his forty-ounce in a crumbled brown paper bag that reminded me of life at the corner bodega before plastic bags. He suddenly burst out in chorus, air guitar and all, to the lyrics of Nightrain, except he changed it to match the train he was waiting for. So goes his song: Loaded like a Freight Train…. – continue reading …
