NYC series no.5: in a station of the MTA

In the four full days we were in NYC, I'd guess we took the subway about a dozen times. We took a cab only three times, twice to get to and from the airport and once to get from Times Square to our hotel. On Sunday afternoon, Ariel picked us up in a car to get us to Brooklyn and Chris drove us home to our hotel that evening. I was very thankful for that, as I was exhausted and it was great not to have to think about getting us around.

There was a station a block from our hotel that became familiar to us. It was a pleasant walk along Broadway, even one afternoon in the rain, past lovely residential buildings. Broadway at this point is divided with a median of trees and flowers. The sidewalks weren't nearly as crowded as Midtown. It was a pretty entrance to the station, in the center of Verdi square, where 72nd Street, Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway Boulevard converged. People sat in the park near the station entrance, many reading a book or a Kindle. It was our favorite station. Across the street was a Trader Joe's, with its escalator for shopping carts that Jackson, Rylee and Ariel tried, and a Gray's Papaya.

Cyndi helped steer us through the stations and get us to the right side of the tracks for our destination or find the cross overs for transfers and exits. Jackson quickly learned how to distinguish between uptown and downtown directions, listen to the stops over the PA system on the train, find the boards in the stations for the next arriving trains, and read the signs. Cyndi made sure always to hold hands. Rylee learned to duck under the turnstiles. Jackson always quickly found an empty seat.

On Friday morning we bought three passes for unlimited rides, good for a week. Riders under 44 inches rode free, and before we left I measured Rylee. He was about a half inch over 44, but the lady at the station booth said he was free and we never had any question as he ducked under the turnstiles. I would scan each pass for Jackson, Cyndi and myself.

I carried a laminated map with me on most outings, and the best feature of the map was a duplication of the official MTA map, showing the subway lines and stations. From our station at Verdi Square we could get direct trains to Columbus Circle (where we could transfer to a train to Washington Square) and to Times Square (where we once transferred on a shuttle subway to Grand Central Station). We could walk from Times Square to Rockefeller Center or take another line to Rockefeller Center from the station on 72nd at Central Park West. Once we got it down, it became a pretty quick way to get around.

We walked to the American Museum of Natural History and from there we walked to Central Park. On a couple of occasions we walked down 72nd, past shops, to the Dakota and down 75th, past brownstones and trees and flowerbeds, to Columbus Avenue. On Sunday we walked three blocks to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament to attend the 10 o'clock mass on 71st Street. We walked up as far as 83rd Street for markets and restaurants, not even a half mile from our hotel. Cyndi did a quick walk on Monday around the neighborhood and I'd get out in the mornings just in our immediate neighborhood.

What we noticed getting around was the stifling heat in the stations and sometimes on the trains themselves. It made you realize the importance of air conditioning and wonder how people lived and worked during the summer heat before air conditioning or how people may still do without it. We were often dehydrated and depended on Cyndi's water bottle. The worst train was an express we mistakenly took uptown to somewhere around Columbia University and Harlem before we could get off and get back on a local train to our intended station. The air conditioning seemed non-existent on that one. The worst station was probably waiting for the shuttle from Times Square to Grand Central Station. Even the overhead fans placed there didn't help the heat, which seemed to build up during the day and peak in the evening.

I have to say that the people we met and talked with were exceedingly helpful and pleasant. There were times when people even offered help when we hadn't yet asked. At Grand Central Station, I asked a man wearing the vest of someone who worked for the subway how to exit so we came up in the great hall. He led us, saying he was going that way anyway, and we talked about the Yankees (the boys were wearing their caps, which often provoked some comment), the Mets (the employee's team), and even the Brooklyn team. We never encountered a scary person or an uncomfortable situation. Once, while walking from Columbus Ave. to our hotel we passed by a man who had passed out in his own vomit. I wondered if he were alive. That scared me.

Rylee and I took the subway on Monday afternoon to 110th Street to go to the skateboard park. We passed by a music school from the station. You could hear the music from the open windows. We took the stairs down to Riverside Park at 108th. The park was quiet. When we returned, Ariel had arrived by bicycling from her apartment below Midtown through a corner of Central Park to our hotel. That was the evening Rylee, exhausted, feel asleep at dinner, waking up for a few moments to inhale his spaghetti and meatballs before falling asleep again.