Currently browsing 'on the subway'
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 …
Gross Factor I… Public Grooming
New Yorkers, listen up. Nail care does not belong on the subway, or any other public place. It is not cool to whip out your nail clippers on the subway and clip away. Would you wipe your ass in public? Do you think people sitting next to you want your nail clippings flying into their laps, or into their eyes because those suckers have velocity and direction? As I write this, a woman is filing down her nails on the subway on top of her black leather purse, a pile of nail dust streaking her bag like it’s a fashion statement. I am brought back to memories of a few years ago in a class, when a guest speaker started clipping his nails as he waited to go on. I gritted my teeth and proceeded to write a one page reprimand on his evaluation form on how rude and disrespectful the act was. Plus this is New York! Do you know the kind of shit people can put on you from gathering your nail clippings?
I disagree with the self-appointed editorial board on whether to post this: this is a part of one’s urban odyssey.
So now it’s ok?
So it’s not new news that NYC subway cars now have advertisements slapped on their steel sides. But this blog is new so I’ll bring it up now. These advertisements are just a sanitized version of what graffiti artists knew back in the day when they were bombing the cars with their art. They are perfect canvases for moveable art. Art that is not stationary but travels and takes its message TO YOU. Don’t like what I have to say? Gonna say it anyway AND in all the boroughs. Then I’m going to do it again tomorrow. But I digress. The difference being now it makes money for companies. Its artists aren’t predominately lower income kids, city kids or kids of color. It’s Joe from marketing! I know, I know… we can get into the differences between the two (I mean OTHER differences than the ones I mentioned), one being something invited and legal, the other not. We can talk about the broken window theory that Malcom Gladwell discusses in his book The Tipping Point. I don’t carry sanitized memories from childhood of riding in subway cars with lights that flicked on and off half the time you were between stations, with car walls painted in a cacophony of contorted, dripping letters that made me feel like I was in a funhouse. But history does a good job of reminding you of how race and class often determine the validity of your societal voice.
For a collection of subway photos visit:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/nycsubway/
For a blog on subway graffiti art (where I got this picture) visit
http://oldschoolscholar.com/graff-writers-artists-nonetheless/
On the subway
Harlem Hubris is always finding stuff to comment on from our childhood, and versed me on the benefits of you tube. Break out into this song next time you are annoyed on the train.
