Subway is my favorite mode of transportation. Over the years I've seen many, many things: from a homeless,   running around batman-like,  dressed an a garbage bag superhero costume to a girl riding home with a pot containing a huge pot plant.

This morning I looked I was finishing the last Dortmunder  book remaining on my bookshelves. Sitting next to me was an older man, who could be best described as having the "hangdog look" ala master thief John Archibald Dortmunder. All of a sudden he started taking off his shirt. He took out a fresher blue shirt out of his bag and started to put it on. A black lady sitting across from him gave him the dirtiest look she could muster.

When the old dude went for his belt buckle, the same lady stomped her feet a couple of times and in a profanity-laced monologue informed him of inappropriateness of his actions. It was a good call - it's very possible that he was planning on changing his underwear.

The unapologetic old codger replied with a tirade (also profanity-laced), in which he blamed the politicians for making a 50 year old man work (retirement age in the USA is 65). His opponent noted that it's possible that his habit of using MTA trains as a dressing room hinted at the root of his problems in life, i.e. lack of common sense.

You can see my older subway-related articles here.

I haven't written about the subways for a while. My commute changed somewhat and after years and years of seeing  the peeling paint at the 47-50th street station, I am now instead being watched by the mosaic eyes of the Chambers Street station.

Those remind me of Sauron, his eyes and his "chambers of doom" (I think I encountered that particular expression  in LOTR somewhere).  By the way, MTA's "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign has a new poster, that claims that last year 1,944 new yorkers saw something and said something. As my former co-worker Gur rightfully noted, this is a rather crappy PR move (and Gur knows a thing or two about PR). 1,944 does not seem like such a great turnout, especially considering that trains and bus stations were plastered with the ads imploring to IYSSSS. If I understand it correctly, those 1,944 people saying something did not foil 1,944 terrorist acts. If they did, it's not very clear from the ad.

Besides the eye mosaics, my new subway station has another interesting feature. Some of the trains arriving and departing make a very strange, I would even say haunting sound. I'll try to record it somehow and post it then. My guess is that the "singing" trains are the R142 on the IRT 2 line - they have induction motors that are said to produce a weird sound when accelerating and decelerating.

NYC Subway is a stage to many performers of various level of annoyance. I've seen many hip-hop acrobats and gymnasts who dance,  and jump around to the headache aggravating boombox. The kids I recently encountered demonstrated a very interesting move. After an impressive, but not uncommon gymnastic routine in a semi-crowded train, one kid announced - "ladies and gentlemen, please do not try this at home." The other kid took a running start, somersaulted, and then vaulted off the third team member  into the air. He positioned himself parallel to the floor and  reached the ceiling of the train car, slamming into it with a loud bang, then proceeded down for a controlled landing. I wish I recorded that on my Treo camera.

47-50th street station, Rockefeller Center, might be the portal to  Top of the Rock, but it is still one of the most dilapidated stations, even by the IND standard. And Independent Subway System stations are some of the most dilapidated stations ever  (thank you, Robert Moses).

Paint is peeling everywhere. On the railings it provides for an interesting history lesson. From what I can tell, the original color was a cheerful yellow, followed by white, followed by orange, followed by black, then white again, then a redder orange, then yellow again and finally black.  Some of the colors might be primers, of course.