It Pays to Have Skills

New York subways are filled with crazy characters. There are the people who deliberately take up two seats, those who refuse to hang on to the bars and step on people’s feet when the train slows and the riders who listen to their ipods and dance along, just to name a few. My least favorite subway fixture is the vocal panhandler.

The subways are filled with signs courtesy of MTA that say things like, “ride in the train, not on it,” and “don’t go onto the tracks if you drop something.” My most recent vocal panhandler experience occurred right in front of one of those signs. It read, “Panhandling: a crime that you can prevent by giving to legitimate charities.”

A man walked into my train car, stood in front of the sign and, in a monotone voice, read aloud from a cue card something along the lines of, “Hi. I’m Bill and I have AIDS. I have a daughter who was diagnosed negative. I have no money to eat. I don’t drink or smoke. If you have change or food for me, I would really appreciate it.”

I have seen different variations of this scenario probably 10 or 12 times since arriving to NYC and it is always completely heart-wrenching. I leaves me feeling a little sick to my stomach. Everyone stares straight ahead as if in a daze so that when the man with AIDS walks by with his hat, they don’t have to make eye contact. I feel guilty for not giving these people money, but I think I would feel stupid if I fished my wallet out of my purse to hand over a few cents when I am not even making money.

In the particular situation, no one gave Bill any money and so he moved onto the next car. Not two stops later three men came into our train car, and sang a Four Tops song a capella. Incidentally one of these men looked so much like Snoop Doggy Dogg that I really thought it might be him. I looked around and people were smiling and clapping along.

As the men sang, they walked by the passengers, a can full of coins jingling with every step, and I was astonished to see that nearly everyone around me was getting dollar bills out of their pockets and wallets to hand over to the singing trio.

I wished Bill could have seen the whole thing. Maybe if he did a little harmonica number or something, he could increase his salary.

Subways Are a Nightmare

I’ve been having a recurring nightmare. I am standing on a subway platform waiting for the 1 train. I hear the train coming, the lights of the train appear coming towards me, and right before the train flies past, someone throws me in front of it.

I partially blame Johanna for this one. She was listening to NPR and heard a story about some girl whose sister was thrown in front of a train by a crazy man. The family wanted to prosecute him, but he was clearly insane, so there wasn’t much anyone could do.

Sometimes I have variations of the dream. Two young guys sometimes pick me up. One of them has my legs and the other one has my arms, and then they hoist me onto the tracks as if I were a kid being thrown into a swimming pool by some friends.

The dream has me really freaked out, to the point that I stand on the platform with my back smooshed against the wall as far away from the tracks as possible and don’t make a move toward the train until it is practically stopped in front of me. As a result, I never get a seat if the subway is even remotely crowded, but I figure it’s better than being flattened.

Of course, this technique doesn’t work if I’m on a platform with train tracks on either side of me. In this case I stand by a pillar and suspiciously eye anyone who has the gall to stand within 10 feet of me.

At my most paranoid, I’ve sometimes considered actually grabbing onto one of these pillars, you know, just in case. But I haven’t stooped that low yet. I don’t want people to know what a freak I am.

Moving to Duluth (or just back to D.C.) Part II

So I had a relatively traumatizing experience after a Yankees game the other day. The Scooby and I had a hell of a time getting out to Yankee Stadium. There are a bunch of trains that just don’t run on the weekends. One of those trains happens to be the express train that stops by my apartment and takes passengers right to the stadium. After waiting on the platform for about 30 minutes, Scoobs and I realized our error of waiting for a train that would never come. We ended up taking a cab because we were already so late for the game. Since my apartment is so far uptown, it was only 10 bucks too.

We considered taking a cab right back to Morningside Heights after the game (the Yankees won and I ate the most amazing hot dog ever), but opted to take the 4-5-6 train. In fact, the train leaves the Bronx and heads down the East side, but after my newfound bus knowledge, I informed Scoobs that we could just get off at 110th and take a crosstown bus.

There is one thing about guide books that really annoys me. They write about all of the great finds in any given area, but never do they write things like, “if you are a young girl with bright orange hair, you may feel a little out of place if you emerge from the subway at 110th on the East side.” You can imagine our surprise, when we walked outside to find that dilapidated buildings surrounded us in an extremely sketchy area. "Oops," I said. "I think we're in Harlem."

My first instinct was to go back down to the subway and take it for a few more stops, but since it was the middle of the day, I figured we would just walk a block, wait for the bus and be back in my neighborhood in no time. We walked about 5 blocks until we found a bus stop and then started waiting. According to the schedule, the bus would show up in about 10 minutes, so we stood there staring down the street.

Two boys of about 16 or so were riding bikes toward us. Scooby was reading the bus schedule and I was just standing there watching the boys, and for a moment I thought to myself, “why is this boy riding so close to me? Is he going to run over my toes?” I got my answer in a split second: he tried to rip my tank top off of me as he rode by. There was a loud ripping noise and the boy screamed something and then kept biking. I looked down to verify that my shirt was still intact and noticed three red scratch marks running down my chest.

When I recall this happening, it all turns out differently. As the kid rides by and grabs my shirt, instead of just gasping loudly, I actually punch him in the head, knock him off his bike, kick the shit out of him and run away.

Of course, I did nothing but stand there dumbfounded, and watched the boys bike away, laughing.

After that, Scooby and I decided to just walk home. We were only a few blocks from Central Park, so it wouldn’t take that long to get to the west side by walking through one of the few sanctuaries in New York City. I was shaken up, but pulling myself together by speedwalking home. There were people jogging, walking and bicycling everywhere. A man bicycling shouted to a group of kids, “hey kids. Wrong way!” (Central Park has ALL kinds of rules and most of the roads going through the park are one way. It’s kind of weird actually) and this little boy on a bicycle who could not have been more than 8 yelled back to the man, “go fuck your mother.”

After that, I was totally distraught. I got home, lay on my bed and cried, telling Scooby that there was no way in hell I was staying in this crazy city with all of the evil bike-riding kids. D.C. is a relatively dangerous city, but I've never witnessed any of the violence in Dupont Circle, so I decided I was going to quit school and move back home.

Ten minutes later I was fine. I reconsidered dropping out of Columbia after all. Scoobs and I had to meet some friends in the village, so we stopped by Starbucks on the way to the subway for a much-needed pick me up. As we were walking in, a man who was following us in, exchanged words with a homeless panhandler. I don’t know what happened exactly but the incident culminated with the homeless man following the other guy into Starbucks and yelling at the top of his lungs something about “beating him to death,” the turned around and left.

I looked at the Scooby snacks with my puffy bloodshot eyes and all I could was laugh.

Queen of Subways and Laundromats

Sorry for the delay in posting. The wireless internet I’ve been stealing from my neighbors has been a bit spotty. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t.

Don’t give me that look. I PLAN on paying for wireless internet in the near future, but Time Warner refuses to set up cable and internet before next Thursday, so I’m forced to steal for the time being. I will soon have both internet and Project Runway back. Does life get much better?

While we are on the topic of cable, why do cable companies have monopolies in certain areas? Isn’t there some law prohibiting monopolies? Maybe I shouldn’t complain about paying $70 per month (split with my roommate) for cable and wireless, but in some cities, wireless internet is FREE, so I’m a little bitter.

A lot has happened since we last chatted, and I may have to break my recent life events into multiple posts so that you don’t get too bored with me. One thing I’ve learned in journalism school is that people get antsy easily and if my audience gets fed up, they will inevitably drift their attention to another article, or another website in this case. Gofugyourself, perhaps? I don’t blame you. Those catty girls entertain me to no end.

Okay, back to NYC.

I have officially mastered the subway. I feel like I have been on every line. Okay, I just looked at a subway map and I may have been exaggerating. But, I have been on every major line in Manhattan, plus the 7 train out to Queens. Yes, I have been to Queens, twice actually, but that little adventure will have to wait for another post.

I have fallen in love with the New York subway to a fault. I realized this sad fact the other day when I met two of my best friends from college plus my old college R.A. from first year at happy hour on the upper east side. I looked at a map expecting to see some sort of magical crosstown subway, but saw only a giant green rectangle. Central Park. I had 30 minutes to get to happy hour, so I considered walking, but the last time (and first time) I walked through Central Park, I became severely turned around. I tried to convince the Scooby Snacks that West was South, but then remembered sheepishly that I have no sense of direction.

So I decided to take the subway. It seemed pretty simple to me: I took the 1 train from 110th downtown to the 96th street station, where I switched to the express train that took me to the 42nd street station at Times Square. From there, I transferred to the 7 train, which I took across town to Grand Central and then switched to the 4-5-6 train uptown until I hit 86th Street. When I sat down to drinks with my friends, I told them about my 45-minute adventure. They laughed their asses off. “Ummm. Have you heard of the crosstown bus?”

No, as a matter of fact I hadn’t. The idea of a bus, for no reason in particular, is much scarier than the subway. Here I was assuming that they would applaud my ingenuity with the intricate subway system, and instead I was completely humiliated. Luckily my friend Katie practically held my hand after happy hour and led me to the bus, which dropped me at the 1 train. It took me 15 minutes to get home.

You learn something new every day. Or in my case, you learn many new things each day, including how to do laundry at a Laundromat.

Stop laughing. When I lived in D.C., I did laundry in my apartment building exactly 3 times. The other hundred or so occasions I had to wash my clothes, I took them to my parents’ house and did a couple loads while I enjoyed Sunday dinner.

Sunday dinner. I’m actually drooling right now. Mom! If you’re reading this, I’m sorry I made fun of the 5 meals you continually make. I would do anything for a nice flank steak with some twice-baked potatoes right now. Instead I’ve been reduced to Smart Ones, which are the cheapest frozen, microwave meals at DAG (my new grocery store), and since I’m now a connoisseur of (subways and) Smart Ones, I can say with great conviction that the fettuccine alfredo with broccoli is the best. My runner up? Macaroni and cheese. Sometimes I think that there are two things that have gotten me this far in NYC: Smart Ones and this song by Neko Case called “Star Witness.”

I have the attention span of a gnat. I was talking about Laundromats. My roommate took her clothes and had the people do her wash for her. We were both a little sad to find out that a bag of dirty clothes costs $18 to wash. If you do it yourself at the same place, you pay about $2.75 in quarters.

I threw my clothes in the double capacity washing machine (I would have loved to see the single capacity, because the thing was tiny), threw in my quarters and waited for the clothes to start spinning in a tornado of foam. But nothing happened. The machine said there were 22 minutes left of the cycle so I just stared at the minutes, waiting for them to decrease, but they didn’t. I was about to go up to the front and ask the lady, and THANK THE LORD, I didn’t, because after I fiddled with the door a bit, I realized that I hadn’t actually closed the thing fully. Embarrassment #1 averted.

In my neighborhood Laundromat, there is one small bench in the front of the store where people can sit and wait for the washing process to end. I squeezed myself in between to fellow launderers (just like on the subway) and waited. Pretty soon, a woman with a big rolling cart came up. She needed to dump her wet laundry into the cart to take it over to the dryers, but there was not room for both waiting room legs and the cart. I followed my bench-neighbor’s lead and switched to Indian style so that she could scoot by.

When she was finished and wheeled her clothes away, she left a hot-pink thong on the ground. I immediately turned red and pretended to read my book. Luckily my neighbor on the bench was less bashful than me. She actually picked up the underwear and followed the woman to the dryer, yelling, “you forgot panty!”

I didn’t think it was possible; I turned even redder.

When it was time to take my clothes out of the washing machine and move them to the dryer, I actually contemplated the process a little. Here’s how I initially envisioned the transaction: I will pick up a load of wet laundry in my arms, and sort of jog over to the dryers, which are across the room about 30 feet away. Repeat 4 times, all the while hoping that MY underwear doesn’t land on the dirty floor.

Luckily embarrassment #2 was averted, as a light bulb flashed above my head and I remembered the thong lady. “The cart,” I thought to my self. “It’s ingenious!”

I had some trouble with the dryer as well, which I won’t bore you with. Let’s just say that I have towels that no longer smell mildewed and I don’t have to dip into my backup stock of Costco-brand granny panties.















Mmmmm. Delicious dish.

"Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Man"

I had a traumatic experience at he gym again. I decided to give the New York Sports Club another shot and signed up for the 6 p.m. yoga class one night. I knew there were a couple of different studios inside the multi-level gym and I didn’t know where to go, so I decided to stalk a girl I had noticed in the locker room. She had on spandex pants and flip flops, so I figured she wasn’t planning on hitting the treadmills. My investigative work paid off, as she led me straight to the class. The downside was that I sort of dawdled in the locker room as I waited to follow her out and she gave me a weird look at one point, justly curious why I was tailgating her through the weight room.

Once inside, I came upon a new-age yoga instructor. He was middle-aged, with long gray locks tied in a ponytail and an overgrown beard. The final flourishes of his offbeat ensemble included parachute pants and a tight black tank top that fit snugly over his generous paunch.

Every direction he gave us, he stated three times and the last time he sang the words. He would say, “focus on your breath, focus on your breath” and then the last time he would sing loudly “focus on your breath” in a sort of Peter, Paul and Mary rendition of yoga commands. It annoyed me for several reasons, the most obvious cause being that it distracted me, and so instead of focusing on my breath I would focus on the freak of an instructor I had stumbled upon.

In the end I felt homesick, missing my no-nonsense yoga teacher and the regulars from my class. We used to chant together at the end of every practice, and I imagine that newcomers probably scoffed at us the way I did at Mr. Ponytail Man. He seemed to be a very popular instructor, but I don’t plan on going back.