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Pick up your copy of
The Subway Chronicles
today!
The
Subway Chronicles is available at
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble
or your favorite local retailer.
The book
contains 27 essays from some of your favorite straphangers
like Jonathan Lethem, Francine Prose, Calvin Trillin and
Lawrence Block, and some of the writers you've discovered on
this site, such as Anastasia Ashman, Megan Lyles and Ken
Wheaton. Read more!
Click here
for more information about the book or to view the
table of contents.
What's neW
Markus Hartel .
http://www.markushartel.com
New York black and white street photography
Inside...
About Us
Founded in March 2002, The Subway Chronicles is a
journal written by commuters - the people who ride
the New York City subway every day.
We publish essays, creative nonfiction and subway
diaries each month, and we're always looking for new
material. Click here to read our
submission guidelines.
So if you want to check out the best reality show
around, stay a while and see what's going on
underground. Fear Factor has nothing on us.
Contact us with questions, ideas or to send your
essay.
submissions [at] thesubwaychronicles
[dot] com |
links
- NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign
is a great place to start for information about public
transportation in NYC.
www.straphangers.org
- Join our friend network
at on My Space at myspace.com/thesubwaychronicles.
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Book Excerpt
from "Subway
Mariner," by
Stan Fischler
Coney Island was Christmas
in July (August, too) and getting there was, at the very
least, half the fun.
There was only one "best"
way to reach the beach, and that was via the West End,
Sea Beach, Culver, or Brighton Lines; all o them rolled
into the vast Stillwell Avenue Terminal, which also
housed a separate trolley station for the Norton's Point
streetcar that connected to Sea Gate, an exclusive
residential community at the western tip of Coney
Island.
If there ever was a
Rolls-Royce of subway cars, it was the
Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company's (BMT) Standard,
which was introduced to the Brighton Line during World
War I and - with improvements over two decades - was
still in service when I began riding in the late 1930s.
Five-passenger rattan seats were a feature of its
interior, along with three sets of wide, sliding doors
and large overhead fans that seemed to spin faster than
airplane propellers. The most youngster-friendly item
was a tiny rattan jump seat just of the left of the
front window. The seat - about two feet by two feet
square was always in the open position and almost never
was occupied by a passenger.
Even a four-year-old could
hoist himself up and onto the jump seat, which is
precisely what I did in 1936 for my world premiere ride
on the Brighton Line. Designers of the BMT Standard were
considerate enough to provide a front window. The top of
the window has a pair of knobs on each side. By grasping
and then pressing the knobs with index fingers and
thumbs, I could manage to lower the window down each
brass ratchet until the opening was wide enough to fit a
head, and then some!
The open window also brought
me so close to the track itself that I could hear every
significant subway sound, from the screech of flange
against rail to the special clickety-clack of
wheels rolling over the rail gaps. Almost sensuous to
the ear, the clickety-clack replicated
contemporary jazz rhythms, including Gene Krupa's
drumming behind Benny Goodman's "After You've Gone."
Find The Subway Chronicles at your favorite retailer. |
Online Essay Of The Month
May 2008
The Garbage Train
by Laura Podolnick
The garbage train scares everybody. It moves too
slowly and quietly. "It's like a ghost train,"
my ex-boyfriend told me, when I confessed to him
that I was afraid of it, that it gave me chills
and made my nipples hard when it passed me at
night as I waited alone on the platform. "It's
like a view from the past. They're all just
these old trains. So weird and old, and now they
pick up garbage."
At this point, we are not even waiting for a
train. We're in his tiny, dimly lit room, under
the comforter, naked. We have just had sex.
We've been broken up for four months, which is
almost as long as we were together.
The garbage train is scary perhaps because it
does call to mind the past, and because it
moves. It's a train coming from the past. It's a
train coming straight from the past to remove
our present garbage. Seeing it is like visiting
a nursing home and looking into the sad and
impotent eyes of the people whose world we've
inherited and who we now keep as we keep
flowers, in sterile,
not-aesthetically-unpleasing utilitarian pots.
Serviceable, like the garbage train is
serviceable.
But what of lost love? I ask him, changing the
subject. Did we ever really have it? He honestly
doesn't remember, and neither do I. We notice
that it's late - very late, four - and we begin
to dress. He puts on his shoes and his coat,
because it is our custom for him to walk me to
the train and wait with me for it to arrive. I
always appreciated that. Before, I'd rail
against the condescension of that thing called
chivalry, meaningless empty gestures meant to
keep me prim and tiny and helpless as a fainting
petticoat priss in the 19th century. But, I find
this little effort touching from him. He's
younger than me, and I find that touching too.
When I was eight months old, he was a helpless
newborn. I like to imagine us then - though of
course, we did not know each other. My mother
tells me I was talking already at eight months,
but I did not have teeth. I could have protected
him with words, then. Fought off the taunters,
even if they only exist in my mind. So does all
of this. Back then, I bet I was bigger than him,
even. Though probably not by much. [More...]
See more featured
essays here.
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