‘Vator Haters Unite!

What’s with the gigantic bottleneck at the top of the stairs heading down to the subways from Grand Central?

Yesterday, it was a mass of about 100 people, and it took us about a minute to shuffle ahead to the stairs.

Today, the morass of ass started not far from the GCT concourse, by the Hot & Crusty–a few hundred people jammed up as they waited out another few hundred people coming up the stairs and escalators. (Perhaps an escalator was busted?)

I didn’t even try the stairs. I headed toward the door and was going to walk the 16 blocks and avoid the grief.

Then I saw someone waiting at the elevator heading down to the subways. I always thought the elevators were only for the handicapped, women with strollers, and homeless types, but apparently they’re for the able-bodied, stroller-free homeful persons too.

We waited about a minute for it to show up. I held my breath as I got on, fearing the mother of all malodorous maelstroms, but only took in a lungful of ammonia.

The elevator is about five feet by five feet–it’s tight. There were six of us in there, with a homeless guy’s large gut pressing against my side. I could see precisely where his gray-white whiskers met his skin.

The doors shut and the elevator jerked hard for a second. Then it stopped.

Like many, being stuck in an elevator is a profound fear for me. Not just, wow, that would suck to be stuck in an elevator for 20 minutes; more like, I will have a heart attack if I’m in there for five fucking minutes.

The six of us looked at each other, concern in our faces, then shifted our eyes to the control panel for a magic button that would get us out.  

It turned out to be the world’s slowest elevator; it was actually moving so slowly that none of us even knew we were moving. The doors opened and I was out before the homeless guy’s gut could even touch me.