In Transit

I decided to do something last weekend I haven't done before, so I hopped the train and went to Brooklyn Heights to go to the Transit Museum.

I have a love-hate relationship for the subway, which is a feeling many people share. It makes you wait and wait and wait; it smells sometimes; it's crowded sometimes; it goes slowly sometimes. But there are also its sounds, and speed, significance to the movement of the city. I've always been fascinated with the way it was constructed more than a hundred years ago. And I've long wanted to visit the museum.

So I walked the blocks to Schermerhorn St. and turned left, noting the smoke shop to my right as I headed to Boerum Place. When I got to the intersection, I noticed the sign for the museum. There was an arrow pointing at a downward angle. My view of the thing it was pointing to was obstructed by a scaffold and other miscellaneous construction material. Of course.

So as I crossed the street, I saw that it was pointing to a subway entrance. The museum is underground in an abandoned subway station! Brilliant. As I started down the stairs, my excitement grew. I wanted to whip out my camera and take a picture of the black-and-white cut out of an old (probably long-dead subway worker), but I forgot it, so forget that.

I paid the $5 and started at the beginning. I learned about the sandhogs and the tunnels they dug in danger. The levels of different land fills that comprised New York. The unions that supported the workers who experienced unfair labor practices. The ethnic groups that helped build the underground city.

A sandhog cut-out.

There's a Triborough Bridge exhibit now, which I sort of sped through, not because it wasn't interesting but because I don't have much interest in it, rarely have been over it, and bridge construction blueprints sort of go over my head.

As I left the bridge exhibit, I noticed a woman walking down another set of stairs. There's more? I followed her halfway down and that's when I saw them. The old trains! I stopped dead on the steps wanting to hold off on what would be the most exciting part of the entire excursion. So I headed over to the turnstiles and took a quick look-see; they were interesting in their own right, but they were not trains. And so it was now time to head downstairs to a little slice of history.

Trains from 1917, 1933, 1955! Real ones. The old old ones had that smell of decades' worth of dust and, well, oldness. Straw seats (I think that was straw), ceiling fans, ads with glamorous renditions of people, and green walls that looked straight out of old movies.

A sampling (as seen from my camera phone through my giddy eye):

First class?

Green and old.

Wonderful, eh? (Except I know that I probably wouldn't be in such a mood to sit so closely to someone in the small seats at 6:30 on a random Thursday evening.)

Ok, it's a camera phone.

This one spent some time in Queens. It just looks better than the inside signs do now.

It's only a sign, but...and finally...

Look at that lady drinkin' her lemonade all refreshed and shit.

I got a bit of a late start, so I was cutting it close in the end. I rushed through the museum store, but refrained from buying the subway map shower curtain, coffee mug, apron (I don't cook), umbrella, paper plates, paper cups, et al.

On the way back to the train I stopped in the smoke shop on Schermerhorn. I opened the door and a disgusting wall of heat and humidity smacked me in the face. The store was smaller than I thought it would be, and I got a tad concerned when I didn't see the proprietor. And just then I heard something to my left and I looked over to find the man standing up with his arms in the direction of his groin. He was peeing. What to do here. Shut the door and leave him alone? Walk in and shut the door behind me to give him a semblance of privacy? With me standing there? I did neither. I just stood there, door wide open, Schermerhorn foot traffic walking by.

"Would you like some privacy." He grunted something, not rudely, mind you, but it was a grunt that I couldn't decipher. So I kept standing there. I looked away and started scanning the cigarettes in front of me. Look at all those cigars. I located my cloves just as I noticed some movement to my left. He was done. I watched him to make sure he washed his hands, knowing that I would have to handle the cloves he would give me. He washed them thoroughly.

He rang me up and I handed him my debit card. He paused before taking it, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"You take these, right? That's your machine right there."

"Yes, but such a small amount," he replied as he took my card.

"Yeah. It's small. The price of doing business, I guess." I didn't mean for him to hear it, but he did and I ignored him the rest of the way.

The Transit Museum is great. Goodnight.