Subway Chronicles: Episode 1

Some seriously strange things happen in the New York City Subway. I don't know what it is about those underground concrete tunnels, but they seem to really bring out the weirdo in some people. Most of the people who ride the trains have the same stoic, expressionless stare with glassy eyes that look at the advertisements without seeing them. I like to call this the "train face." Everyone who rides the subway has a train face. It's one of our only methods as New Yorkers to have a moment to ourselves... a piece of solitude in the subway car packed with dozens of other expressionless zombies. We need to pretend that we have space.

This subway ad scares me. No wonder everyone has to look elsewhere.

Last night, someone from Connecticut commented on New Yorkers' lack of social space. A stranger in public is very likely to come up to you and stand so close to you that your arms are touching and you can smell his Crush cologne (that stuff sucks, seriously, why?). Odds are, if you have lived in the city long enough, these intimate moments with strangers won't even cause a second thought. Apparently, outsiders are totally creeped out (GASP) by this and end up jumping away from said snuggly stranger, bumping into someone who then doesn't apologize or even glance at him, and then wonder to themselves why is everyone here so mean!?

Leave us alone! We have our train faces on.

No one here wants to talk to you. No one.

In fact, when someone speaks to you at all on the subway, it kind of freaks you out. Even harmless courteous gestures become shocking and suspicious. One day, during my old commute from Williamsburg, a strapping young lad asked me if I would like to take a seat instead of him. I was so dumbfounded that he broke the bleak silence on the 8am L train that I didn't even respond (stupid!) and sat down in the seat like a confused foreigner.

Where do these people come from on the subway? One morning I saw a man with the EXACT same hair cut and color as the poodle that he was smuggling in his purse... Murse?

Sweet hair-do, dude.

Something I've always wondered... you know that blind guy that wonders the 2 train during the work day? He walks from car to car asking for donations to "help the blind"... and my first reaction is "aww, that's sad!" and then after a second I think, "What is a blind guy doing walking by himself in between moving train platforms!? How is he on the subway platform alone at all in the first place?! That shit is hazardous."