My 11 Most Common Mistakes On the NYC Subway

It is no secret by now that the myriad improvements and advances foisted upon our civilization have, in many cases, served to pull people further apart, rather than bring them together. This sort of paradoxical isolation is desperately apparent on the New York City subway, where people are packed tightly within inches of each other's faces, but no one says a word. I'm notably bad at navigating situations like this, so naturally, I make a lot of mistakes on the subway.

11. Talking to someone you only kinda know
Ah, jeez... this is rough. Maybe you see them on the platform two seconds before the train comes, maybe they sit down across from--whatever the case they always seem to be going at least one stop further than you, so you're guaranteed a full ride of awkward recapitulations of the three or four details you remember about their lives. ("Hey... so... you were going to Costa Rica for a while, right? Oh... Indonesia. I remember now. Three years ago, you say? Huh. So it's been that long... wait, I saw you when? Two months ago? This very same subway! Well, I'll be.") And at the end, I always say something dumb and overly-sad-to-be-leaving-their-company like, "Hope to see you soon again, sometime soon... this was really special. I mean, I was looking forward to this--seeing you randomly, I mean. We should do it again, but this time we'll plan it. Dinner, or perhaps a marriage?" Then, before you know it, you're not only talking to someone you only kinda know, you're friggin' engaged, too. Oh, folks... I've made many mistakes.

10. Waiting on the wrong side of the car for the doors to open
Why don't I just wear a goddamn shirt that says, "I don't live here and that means that I don't know the difference between local and express stops. I bet I'd make an easy target for armed robbery. Also, if you asked me which way to 'the museum', I would mostly respond in broken English, with a few snatches of Hungarian." Then, once I've made this mistake, I usually make a face to anyone who has noticed that's kinda says, "Trust me, I have bad shit going on in my life--this door confusion is just the tip of the iceberg." Most people sort of smile reassuringly.

9. Getting too caught up in your iPod/phone and blocking the doors
I have a slight dependency on the Solitaire extra on my Nano, sometimes to the detriment of my own safety. I'm not proud, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. I'm convinced that at some point, a representative from Apple will come and give me the $12,000 I've won so far.

8. Losing the Express v. Local bet
Honestly, there needs to be a government funded, massively staffed, universally publicized study on what times/days/months it makes sense to take the express between certain locations and when it makes sense to stay local. I spend most of my days thinking I've made the wrong choice.

7. Verbally acknowledging you have missed your stop
This usually happens in conjunction with #9... I beat my best time for iPod solitaire just as the train chugs away from 50th Street, "AW CRAP! I think... I don't live on 42nd--I live like, five streets away from there... I'm gonna have to walk an extra two blocks to get home! Plus, the 42nd Street station is full of yahoos and ethnics--I won't fit in whatsoever... This has sent my day down a terrifying spiral of uncertainty. What if I get confused while walking up--NOTE, up not down--8th Avenue? What if my confusion leads to me stopping at Auntie Ann's Pretzels and buying a carton of frozen pretzels covered in frozen mustard!? I don't have the money for that transaction!!!" I usually sum up this string of cognitions with a good, piercing "Gah!", followed by a disgusted clap of the hands, and possibly a quiet aside to the Asian couple next to me, "That was my stop..."

6. Doing anything over the shoulder
Most people just read, but I have been known to critique crossword-solving-style. And once I asked if I could try someone's corndog. IT LOOKED REALLY TASTY, OKAY?!

5. Trying too hard to read a funny ad that is partially obscured by someone's head
This is just a recipe for disaster and despair, and not the good kind of recipe that you get out of The Joy of Cooking... it's a recipe you googled because you were pressed for time and don't even own The Joy of Cooking, because guess what, you are not a cook! So by the time it's ready to eat disaster and despair, your kitchen is going to be half covered in flour and half on fire, most of your fingers will have been burned to some degree, and you will no longer be hungry, but you will be drunk. Drunk on self-pity.

Anyway, if you try to hard to read a funny advertisement that is partially obscured by someone's head, there is a good chance that that person will think you are flirting with them and then you'll have to deal with that.

4. Making eye contact with an obviously not single person
...Because immediately after than happens, you make eye-contact with their boyfriend, and his eyes are angry and full of fire. He's wearing a shirt that says "I Fuck Up Bigger Dudes Than You" and holding a falafel like a club. You have pissed this man off. Your eyes go into evasive action, but here's the thing... that bullshit about the eyes being the windows to the soul? Well, um, like I just said, it's bullshit. Your eyes are scattering about, trying to convey such pleading sentiments as "I'm sorry, bro... I was reading your girl's shirt. It seemed funny, but not in a sexual way!" or "I was staring off into the middle distance and your significant other happened to get in the way!" or, as a last resort, "I am gay?" Unfortunately, it just looks like you are having a seizure.

3. Getting a phonecall from someone who sucks and then NOT losing signal
Whoever made it possible for cellphone reception to permeate the deep, dark, mole-person infested tunnels below Manhattan surely thought that they were doing the tech-addicted hordes of this city a favor. Well, here's the thing. Used to be I'd get one of those freak calls and I could be all, "Oh, hey... I'm in the subway, I'm probably gonna lose... {click!} service." (In this example, in which my life is a sitcom, I lose service before I actually say "service", and then I mug to the camera, noting the hilarity.) But now, here's what happens: "Oh, hey... I'm actually on the subway, so I'm probably gonna lose... {pause} yeah, I'm still here. Yeah, I dunno, I guess it'll go out any second, though. Y'know, I probably can't answer that because of that thing I said about the signal. Right, but you probably won't get to give me your whole address before we lose the connection, so I don't think I can make it to your party. Thanks for reminding me th--123 W. 23rd? Apt. 3B? Hmm. Well, I don't really know what time it starts, and since I'm under--9 o'clock. Hmm. Rather early for a party, but I guess since now I know all the details, I'm bound by law to attend. Well, fuck. Oh, you have to go? You're getting on the subway... I gotcha. Um. Bye?" You guys. I went to that party. It BLEW.

2. Being a skinny person who still manages to take up two seats
You guys--I don't like being touched. It's not an obsessive thing or a compulsive thing or a conjunction thereof, I just have this thing about letting my thighs touch the thighs of complete strangers. Even where there are two layers of pants separating the thighs. So, to avoid this sort of thing, when I ride the subway alone, I clench myself into a little ball so I don't touch the people sitting next to me. Of course, after work, I'm usually too tired to clench, so I have developed a solution: if I sit on two contiguous seats, I look like a jackass-jerk, and no one wants to do a jackass-jerk the kind service of sitting next to him. Oh, this is surely symbolic of something.

1. Falling asleep
Hahahahokay here's one that I actually didn't do. (Well, fine, I fell asleep on a G train platform once, but that had way more to do with how shitty the G train is, than it had to do with my inability to function properly as a real human adult. ) Once, this guy I know, who we will call for anonymity's sake Shmatrick Figgiston, went to a party. At this party, he drank a whole bunch of punch. Why did he drink a bunch of punch? Because it was a party for the kind of people who think a fun thing to do is to make really, really potent punch that basically tastes like all the juices mixed together with a hint of gasoline. Am I saying it was a party for date rapists? Not quite. Anyway, Shmatrick had been at the Belmont Stakes earlier in the day and barely remembered what it was like to be a sober guy of Catholic upbringing. At one point, he was trying really hard to speak French. That was around the time I left. APPARENTLY, dude gets on the subway at 3 AM or so, rides for a while, falls asleep around 34th Street and wakes up, a few hours later at 42nd. HE WENT AROUND THE LOOP! This is the Manhattan equivalent of circumnavigating the globe! Then, he proceeds to fall BACK asleep... and wake up at the Kings Highway stop out in Brooklyn... which, to be fair, is close-ish to where he lives. I forget the details after this point, but the moral of the story is, Shmatrick got home at 9 AM and somewhere between 3 and 9, many people probably took pictures of him with their balls on or near his face.

For this, I submit Shmatrick Figgiston for consideration for Balla of the Year.

The Top 13 Things I See On My Way To and From the Subway to Work

I'm still pretty down about the passing of David Foster Wallace and don't think I can muster up much snark or pluck. I wish I could throw my hat onto the pile of fond remembrances, but there are too many good ones out there already. (And frankly, I spend too much of my life rehashing the good thoughts of wiser others, so... I figure I'll pass this round. It might cut it for The Top 18 Ways Can't Hardly Wait Maybe Changed My Life, but, y'know... this guy actually changed my life.) For starters, there's this post from Rob, this one from my good friend Matt, and this piece from the Times that I found particularly touching.

Anyway. These are things that I see when I leave my apartment on 47th and walk to the subway on 50th to go to work in the morning. Not good or bad things, not in any sort of order, just things that stick out particularly.

On the way to the subway:

1. The Blarney Stone in the morning

This is one of the many old school Irish pubs named "The Blarney Stone"--honestly, there are as many Blarney Stones in NYC as there are Starbuckses. (HAHA, and there's even more of that type of joke to come, ladies!) Tom, Caitlin, and I went there maybe once or twice when we first moved into the HK. It's an absurd amalgam of everything you'd expect from a stone's-throw-from-Times-Square-pub, but somehow, that does little to recommend it for regular patronage. There's darts, reheated chicken fingers, seven bucks for a shot of Wild Turkey (I mean, really?), Erotic Photo Hunt, and generally terrifying toothless regulars. I don't mean to sound elitist, but teeth are a comforting thing. Their absence is the distinct opposite. Anyway, the B-Stone basically opens at 9, and sure enough, they're there, hanging around in front, two beers in already, by the looks of it. Again, that's not a judgment--it's a weirdly wonderful slice of a Hell's Kitchen that barely exists anymore, but is most certainly clinging to this turf with every last cracked, dirty fingernail.

2. The view down 47th

If you peer down towards 7th, where the hellish mass of sweat and flesh ebbs and flows from The World's Biggest Applebee's towards The Neon-Lit NYPD Station, you'll catch a few choice sites. First, there's the Brooks Atkinson Theater, currently home to Grease, currently blaring the soundtrack of Grease, currently annoying anyone in the neighborhood with enough taste to stay the fuck away fromGrease. Then, across from that there's the Biltmore Theater... which Caitlin has dubbed the Mamet-Esparza Theater, since all of its productions since we moved in have all been either Mamet plays or shows that featured Raul Esparza. (Okay, it's not the most inventive name. Oh, also, there was like a week in between when Duran-Duran was inexplicably performing at the theater.) Finally, at the end of the block, there's usually a huge movie poster on one of the billboards overlooking 7th. During the summer, it was a Dark Knight poster with Heath Ledger's visage on it. It was an eerie, yet somehow heartening reminder, to be sure.

3. The fire station on 48th and 8th

I never notice the fire station so much, but there's a little bumper sticker on the side of it that always gets me. It's one of those ripped-off images of Calvin (of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes fame), except instead of peeing on a rival sports team's logo, he's praying at the foot of the Twin Towers, their silhouettes predictably forming the '11' in 9-11-01. The mind boggles. No, the mind more than boggles. The mind stops dead in its tracks, stares dumbfounded, feels the angry urge to spit, and finally, chalks it up to post-"post-9/11" poetry.

4. The many New York novelty shops

There are maybe four of these in between 47th and 50th and they are all hilarious. And all vehemently pro-Obama? Or perhaps they simply expect their clientele to be pro-Obama... which begs the question: since most NYC tourists seem to be red-staters, or, at least, since most of the tourists I see dropping by the I LOVE NEW YORK STORE store are presumably of such a persuasion, might these shirts be a bit of a gamble?

5. My daily flirtation with Food Emporium

Aaaah, Food Emporium, every day I pass you and think, "No, Peter! They have microwaveable Chicken Tikka Masala meals for like, $3.99! You like that food and you like saving money! If you buy lunch up at work, you'll end up spending at least twice that!" But I never do it. I can't close. It's always been a problem...

6. The CitySights tour bus, and all its silly patrons

I consider it a special badge of honor that the dudes in the blue CitySights windbreakers stopped asking if I wanted to buy a ticket about two days into my career as a real life adult person.

7. The Two Starbuckses

There's really no reason to make fun of the by-now obvious proliferation of the finest coffee Seattle has to offer. Frankly, there are days when I pass the one on 47th and by 49th, I've totally changed my mind. They are simply capitalizing on the indecisive-and-sleepy-in-the-morning market.

8. The Fantasticks playing at The Snapple Theater Center

When I'm lucky--which hasn't been most days lately, but I'm holding out hope for a 9th inning rally--when I'm lucky and I pass the Fantasticks theater, they're playing the Jerry Orbach recording of "Try to Remember", the most recognizable tune from what was once Broadway's longest running show. To say that it is comforting is both indulgent and an understatement. The combination of the voice, the melody, the words, and the context do something wild for me. Simply put, it's exactly what I need before I get on the uptown 1 train.

On the way home:

9. My nightly flirtation with Blimpie

It's like Subway, but... um... it's somehow different? There is no Jared, for instance. Also, I have a good relationship going with not one, but two of the sandwich artists at the Subway around the corner from my apartment, so... I've got that going for me. Also, there is a good chance that if this Blimpie were a Quizno's, I would have been frequenting it for half a year now. Full disclosure: I have never been to a Quizno's but on their commercial, they say that they are "toasty" and after a long day at work, I could be into toasty... I could be way into toasty.

10. The strip club doorman

There are only so many occurrences in a guy's life that make him feel like a character in a Dickens novel. This is one of them and it happens almost every night for me. I come out of the subway on 50th and I pass the Bare Elegance club and I see this guy barking, "Girls, girls, girls... come on in, we've got hot girls, hot girls, hot girls!" He looks maybe 50-55, dressed in either a suit or a gray and red doorman's outfit, sometimes with white gloves, glasses, and thinning hair. He's short. He's not great at what he does, but then again, whois good at that? But the thing is... I can just imagine someone, a guy like me, even, hearing that litany--"Girls, girls, girls"--and thinking, "Y'know... tonight, I am not going to slink off to my garret, where I will cook myself some EasyMac, and either watch I Love The New Millenium or 'work on my novel'. I'm going to go see girls, girls, girls!"

11. Brazil Grill, the putative inventor of the Churasco

Dudes. It is a piece of grilled chicken on a roll, perhaps with some lettuce and tomato. That is most definitely nothing new, and certainly nothing that I would expect an overpriced, potentially not-really-Brazilian restaurant on 8th Ave. We need higher standards, ethnic food providers of America! I've seen this before and I know where it goes from here... in Buffalo, NY, we have like, 17 different Greek places that claim to be the Home of the Souvlaki. THE souvlaki. The original souvlaki. The primogenial souvlaki. Back in the days when souvlaki was just some inchoate twinkle in the mind's eye of some budding line cook... that creation was born in Buffalo (read: not Greece). 17 times.

12. The duct tape X in front of Duane Reade

Oh, lord, this is embarrassing. Um. So, once Laksh and I were walking up 8th and these two dudes were all, "Hey, we're from MTV... we're doing a TV thing for inner-city music programs... stand on this X and say this stuff and give us twenty bucks for some CDs we probably burned! The camera is up on that balcony across the street... you can't see it." And, um, we did it. I mean, one of the dudes had a mic headset on! Plus, I have a decent amount of white guilt? Welp. Every day I see that X (because it is still there and was likely there prior to our "appearance" on "MTV") and I think, "Ah, fuck... I am an even bigger dork than I let on." And yet, somehow, I sleep well most nights.

13. The Blarney Stone at night

The folks that were there at 9:45 AM? Still there at 7:30 PM. I love New York.