Friday, February 13, 2004, Evening, Brooklyn Bound "F"

There's a new type of cop in the city; or at least one cop of a new type that I suspect belongs to a generation of Gotham personality born out of September 11. All is quiet as ever on the Culver Local, taking us old dullards away from Manhattan's bridge and tunnel weekend riot, when two uniformed police officers board at Broadway Lafayette. The first to enter the car, a middle-aged black guy, crosses the train and posts like a sentry by the opposite door, silent and unremarkable.

The other comes in behind him and takes his post opposite his partner, at the door nearest to myself and the platform. White, much younger, and unlike his veteran counterpart he couldn't have looked any less NYPD. His tousled dandy's hair and his hipster lean, one foot up against the door, made me imagine him assuming his badge and uniform for the benefit of his Ludlow street cronies, themselves dressed as sundry blue collar types, the lot of them promenading through the new Lower East Side's costumed bars.

But what made this guy remarkable was his eyes scanning the car for recognition of the incongruity between himself and his uniform. As an outsider he had an aesthetic appreciation for his role lost on his brothers in blue. Something made this young man, who might otherwise be working for a media company, decide to protect and serve.

I suspect that, like friends and acquaintances of mine, it was September 11 that impelled him to enter this new world of service with its pride of badge and uniform and gave him the privilege of flaunting his unique mongrel credentials, a hipster with a gun. Both of the officers departed at Second Avenue, and as this curious glimpse was lost to us straphangers, it was gained by the city. Don't get me wrong, God bless the guy, I wish I knew him.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, Noon, Manhattan Bound "L" Train

It's official - Quarter Man has lost it completely. For those who might know him by another name, or not at all, Quarter Man is a well dressed about 30-year-old high yellow man with blond highlighted baby dreds. For years he could be found at all hours of day or night walking around the Village with various accouterments, most often a basketball or a boombox, that announce "ordinary guy with a bit of cash doing ordinary things." Having thus established himself on the average urbanite's radar map as a non-suspicious object, he'd ask every person he passed, real casual and friendly-like, "Hey man, you got a quarter," like he needed it for a phone call, or to avoid breaking a hundred dollar bill.

Anyone who's been in the Village long enough is as familiar with that refrain as with Master Lee's proclamation that "I'm going to set these boards on fire and break them with my bare hands but first..." I followed Quarter Man around once in a fit of boredom, and between that and seeing him around over the years, I figure he banks upward of $15 an hour.

Sort of the reverse of Dirt Man, who used to wipe the dirt and soot from a car's wheely belly all over his face and clothes to get that shell-shocked sci-fi apocalypse look, and then walked hands out toward passer-by, all dirt skin and vacant eyes, staggering but approaching fast. People pulled their change with a quickness to move him on, and he'd tilt like a crazed pinball from each group to the next, stopping to menace those who were slow or reluctant to offer money as a warning to the others watching from the corners of their eyes.

I haven't seen Dirt Man in three or four years. And I hadn't seen Quarter Man in 18 months or so, until today when he's sitting on my train, across from the door I'm leaning on. He's well dressed as always, and reading the Post. I want to say something to him, but what is there to say to such a fellow? About five minutes pass and nobody else on the car is keeping my attention occupied. I look back over and he's put the paper down, so I decide to wing it. I kept my eyes on his for a minute until he notices and returns the gaze.

"Quarter Man," I say, not knowing if he'll respond to the name, or what I'll say if he does. He looks up. "Don't think I don't know," I tell him, "You're Quarter Man." He stares at me. Silence. At least 10 second's worth, long enough for me to consider whether to say something else, maintain eye contact, or try to end the conversation right there.

And then he walks across the car toward me, and says in his friendly, high-pitched voice, "Hey man, you got a quarter?"

"Not for you."

And again, louder and a bit hysterical: "Hey man, you got a quarter?"

"No."

We're coming up on Bedford, and people are staring now. I look around and the train has filled up with hipsters over the last few stops, with most of the working class people having exited at Lorimer and transferred to the "G" train. Quarter Man, in the meantime, looks like a hipster in tight jeans and a nice leather bomber jacket, while I'm wearing suit pants and the same hooded sweatshirt for the third day, and in bad need of a shower and shave. And the umbrellas are understandably confused as to why this guy, who a moment ago was just a commuter, is asking a bummy looking guy like me for money. I look back at Quarter Man and he's looking at the crowd in turn looking askance at us, and figuring his next move.

He turns away, and walks up to a kid in a trucker's cap and leather pants - at noon! On a Wenesday! - and, again, "Hey man, you got a quarter?" The kid looks away. Given our public confrontation, and that there's no way to casually need a quarter while riding the train, this is an odd move by Quarter Man. But I've got to give the guy credit for following through. He asks every person on the train for a quarter (including a mother with a small child, who says no, and then the child, whom the mother pulls away), and doesn't leave when we hit Third Avenue, but is still going back and forth when I exit at Union Square, repeating it faster and faster so that now he's saying it even when there's not a person in front of him, "Hey man, you got a quarter?"

Tuesday, February 10, 2004, Afternoon Rush Hour, Brooklyn Bound "Q" Train

No matter how many times I see it happen, it's incredible to watch a good four-fifths of the white people leave the train at Seventh Avenue, in Park Slope, and then practically all the blacks and Hispanics exit a few stops later, at Church Avenue in Flatbush, so that by Newkirk Ave. the polyglot train has thinned down to Jews, Russians, and Russian Jews. There used to occasionally be blacks going all the way out to the Coney Island Projects, but they take the "W" now (which will become the "D" on the 22nd when the new maps come into effect) because of the Stillwell Avenue construction.

I first lost the "D" train to the Manhattan Bridge reconstruction that's finally ending, and now they've taken the "D" away from me for keeps, replacing it with the "B" line. I've lived most all of my life on the "D" line, cursing at the "Q" and "B" trains that would come in to West 4th or whatever station I might be at, and the fools who would take such weak trains. And now I find myself a "Q" train rider. I feel as though I've betrayed my line, and been betrayed by the MTA, which took my line away from me.

Harry Siegel was born and raised in Brooklyn in various apartments and houses along what was then the "D" line. His journalism has appeared locally in the New York Post, Sun and Press, and nationally in Commentary, the Public Interest, the Weekly Standard, and American Enterprise Magazine. He is presently writing a study of gentrification in New York City from 1945 to the present. He is the editor-in-chief of NewPartisan.com, an online journal of politics, culture, and the arts.