Living in Harlem and heading to the lower East Side to hang out proves to be difficult with every attempt. Sunday night was no exception and being a weekend made the trip even more difficult. First of all, the only trains that cross from the west to the east side are the blue line E, the M60(bus) and the grey S (shuttle between 42nd Times Square to 42nd Grand Central Station - an obviously comfortable non crowded route serving breakfast with each trip ) or the dreaded phantom L train that never seems to arrive. The electronic board flashes "Brooklyn bound leaving in 0 min" for at least 15 minutes before the train even arrives. Thus, the treck to the lower East side begins and ends with one million transfers. The value of the location is often determined by the length of the jounrney traveled to get there.
My roommate recently returned from working at a kids theater summer camp in Lennox, MA. In her return, she brought new and exciting friends who happen to live on the East Side. In an effort to get to know the recently planted frineds, I attepted the journey to enjoy the east side. With a successful arrival, I embraced the laugh fest evening over two cocktails and great company. However, the 12:30am departure ruined the evening because it took 10 years of my life just to get home especially with the extra side of crazy the subway brought to my journey.
My roomate and I waitred for teh F train for literally 45 min. In that time we had crazy #1 listen to our conversation about travel and promptly interupted us to answer my mind musings I was sharing with my friend. He replied, "Get off at West 4th Street" with such a loud authority it was tough to ignore his presence. Thus a much desired silence from our unwanted conversationalist came only when we stopped talking to each other which made the wait for our train last an eternity. 50 min later we arrived at West 4th street to wait for the A train to get uptown. My roommate just haaaaad to remind me that we had gone about 3 blocks and a few avenues that we could have probably walked if we put any thought into our trip home. Here we met crazy #2 who had her two young children in toe at 1:30am on a Sunday evening. In the running for mother of the year, obviously. She asked three times how to get to grand central station from where we were located. She hovered over the gentleman sitting next to me admiring his piercings managing to barley catch her seven year old from putting a nacho in her mouth that had touch the lip of the trash can next to the cracked out toothless homeless gentleman visibly salivating over the plump seven year old herself or the disgusting mangled plate of what could only be nachos she just threw away.
Please.get.me.out.of.here.
The A train finally arrived and we met crazy person #3. Much like crazy #1, he had to join in our conversation. He responded to my roommates question of - "do you think Julie wants her coffe table back when she moves?" Crazy #3 launched into a detailed desercription of an armour we could have if we were interested. Our stop could not arrive fast enough.
Finally we see the 100's and our train stops at 103. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...... Really? We're really going to stall out between stops here? Yes, that's exactly what were are going to do. Apparently, there were workers on the track but I only discovered that when one of them either got clipped by the subway or banged on the window that I happened to be sitting by. Tattoo face laughed hard at my visible jump and my fatigue vanished in two seconds with a yelp that accompanied my jump.
2am arrived and we finally came above ground. Still 5 stops away from our stop, I put my friend in a cab to finish the treck uptown considering our neighbor hood is increasingly unsafe with muggings in our building, drug deals on our stoop, random cat calls to send chills and a broken lock on my door from months past. This is why I convinced my sweetheart to move to the west side since I'd rather pull out my eyelashes then head to the east side.
I then headed over to my sweetheart's place after the dreaded public transport trip contemplating whether or not saving the money for a cab was really worth it.
Sometimes you have to love New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment