There is something unique and heart warming about riding at the front of the subway train. It's only in the old cars, the 50 year old cars that you can still do it I think. Now they're all blocked off or blacked out, but in the old cars where the conductor's cabin lies to one side of the train you can still see out.
There is so much more down there than you think about, than you can see looking out the side windows. The twists and turns built 100 years ago underneath the river, the spaces for the maintenance crews, the ancient graffiti. When you look at the tracks from the platform all you see is garbage and rats, but when you see it the mid points, the barely touched points. Dirty, rusty and labyrinthian. It's not so hard to imagine shanty towns and vagrants under the earth.
It's an oblong illuminated pathway to a place you go everyday but have never seen before. You know the train is going to slow down because you can see the lights. You know there's a curve to the right ahead. It's hypnotizing in its pure efficiency. It's like art deco at its hidden greatest. It was the future, human beings traveling at great speed underground, arriving at their destination, quickly and safely.
What a marvel it must have been. It's like the Crysler Building. Overshadowed because now it's just a regular building. Iconic in it's way, but it's not the tallest. I prefer it to the Empire State Building honestly, but it's not the prettiest either.
It's quite something to stand by a building and not be able to see the roof. I remember standing by the WTC towers when I was a kid. I never got to go to the top, not enough time or too expensive or something. But I remember they were so tall they looked like they had to be curving. Maybe memory just has a funny effect on those things.
I remember it right along with my first subway rides. Blurry, confusing, it was just SO MUCH. The city doesn't feel that way anymore. Maybe I'm just older, or maybe the city is the one losing its edge.
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