Grand Central Party Balloons
The Subway Chronicle, New York City
Some generic subway experiences always stick in your mind. The lights of Manhattan as your train crawls over the bridge on your way to see your friends. I am here, you think. It’s one of the sappy thoughts you permit yourself in a place where people pride themselves on jadedness.
Another is the feeling of cool subway air on a hot day. After waiting on a platform stagnant with a potpourri of metabolic detritus, you feel the rush of air as the train arrives at the station. The gust purges the smells and you bask in the wind. But this is a mere amuse bouche to the train’s AC. You feel it as the doors open. And then you step in. There’s the refrigerated reprieve of urban modernity as you try to stop sweating all over your shirt. It is no longer hard to think cool thoughts. You remember ice bits clinging to a bottle of Lone Star on a Gulf Coast afternoon or the invigorating chill of walking around Södermalm in autumn.
You remember these nice subway moments because most MTA sensations that stick in your mind are aggressively bad: the smell of hot takeout or Doritos or patchouli oil on the guy who’s clearly the sort of asshole who slacklines in the park. Or the feeling of some guy trying to the carve out more space than he has a right to as he bumps up against you repeatedly on a crowded car.
But the worst, perhaps, is the crushing disappointment of an empty subway car at rush hour. On off hours, that long Saturday morning ride to some place in upper Manhattan or the bittersweet solace of a late ride home after a long workday is pretty damn nice. Yeah, you’re hungover or you’re exhausted from working twelve hours, but this nine AM/PM ride is all yours. Listen to that podcast or crack open that paperback. Stretch out. Cross your legs. Maybe manspread for a change. No one cares.
Rush hours are different. For a brief second, you can’t believe your luck, seeing all the empty seats. And then it registers. You don’t feel that polar vortex from the ceiling. Shit. The AC is busted. This is a Hot Car.
You have two choices. One is to endure. Most people take this option. The risk of leaving the car and running to another, more crowded one before the doors close is a gamble, and you have to make the decision immediately, not unlike a batter deciding whether to swing or lay off a slider. Staying for one stop and switching at the next station is understandable — even smart — , but many stay for the duration of the ride, determined to suffer out of embarrassment or laziness or some human motivation I’ve yet to understand.
Today, I go with option two, as I usually do. I bolt out of the car, conditioned intuitively against discomfort, and slide into the adjacent one as the doors are closing. The trains are running on time today, so while it’s standing room only, the car isn’t crowded. It’s my lucky day. I can see the people sweating it out in the Hot Car through the windows on the end doors.
I put my headphones away and work my book out of my brown, leather satchel. The satchel is a choice that reflects more a past me, the one that got an MFA and taught writing before moving back to the city. It is out of place in Midtown, a neighborhood of dark suits, black accessories, and blank stares. Still, I like the bag.
The book is A Little Life. Hardly a day passes without seeing someone reading it on the subway. I’m not actually sure if it’s a good book. It’s compelling for now, but the plot is quickly sliding into melodrama and I’m skeptical it will recover — but we’ll see. At any rate, books are a statement on the New York subway. People notice. You catch them staring at you, only they’re not staring at you; they’re reading the cover until they catch you looking back. Then they avert their eyes downward, embarrassed. Similarly, I’m embarrassed to be reading the same thing as everyone else.
But the embarrassment is short-lived all around. In the summer, everyone is mostly grateful for the cold AC. And for the fact that subway rides are a time when no one can make demands on your reading time.
Entering the main concourse of Grand Central is treacherous. The side passages and Metro North gates crisscross and there is no order in the intersections. Like a geriatric in a Lincoln Town Car, you just go for it and hope people have the sense not to crash into you.
The main concourse in the morning isn’t much better. People scurry and tourists gum up the hive dynamics by standing in the thoroughfares to pose for pictures while their friends taking the shots get annoyed at all the people getting in the way of their delicately arranged tableaux. Tour groups mindlessly follow the tour guides with their banners held aloft. Men and women in suits roll their eyes and sneer as they make their way through the tourists.
For the past few days there have been party balloons on the roof: the shiny ones with the picture on one side and the metallic sheen on the back. I can imagine the crying children to whom they belonged — and the parents, worn out from sightseeing, watching hopelessly as the balloons come to rest on the armpit of Orion. No one is going to go retrieve them.
— July 12, 2017
There is now one more balloon on the roof. Maybe this is going to become a trend.
— July 17, 2017
