It’s been a while since I’ve really looked at the other passengers on the subway. Maybe that’s what winter does to you - it numbs you. Or maybe I’ve just been tired of people and there are too many around you on the train. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Well, my vision lifted this morning, probably because it’s supposed to reach 58 today and my bones are aching for some sun.

I took the E-train, a new blue car. It seems like all the cars are now blue-benched. The changeover happened while I was hibernating. All my favorite orange benches are gone.

I almost didn’t get on the train. It was packed. I tried two different doors before I stopped just outside the last one and, looking in at a space that could fit maybe two more people, debated on whether to go in or wait for the next train. I stepped forward as the doors closed, pushing me further in than I wanted to go because my backpack was still on and I hadn’t had a chance to take it off. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.) A young woman to my left had her back to me. She was reading a book and taking up an additional foot of space with the hardcover. There aught to be a law against that. I reached over someones head and grabbed the center pole. My book was in my hand but I couldn’t get to it. There just wasn’t any room. I made eye contact with three people and looked away after each one, smiling half-heartedly. A large woman in a bright red wool coat came in behind me and we all accommodated her space as she took central pole position right underneath my arm.

I looked across the car towards the other door and saw a young woman in business attire with wispy hair ruffled as if it had been pushed about by the wind. She was reading the Dailey News and making little sounds as she read, pinching her cheeks in then puffing them out, then biting her teeth together - a veritable orchestra of tiny sounds and small dramatic movements. I couldn’t tell what she was reading so I shifted a bit around the large woman in the red coat in order to get a better look. It was either movie reviews or the obits.  Without large headlines to see or my glasses, I couldn’t tell. My glasses were in my bag and my bag was inaccessible. I watched her face as the orchestra of twitches, grimaces and frowns continued.

Stops came and went. The orchestra played on. Finally in an especially crowded moment I lost sight of her. The woman in the red coat looked up at me - I was a little too close to her so I moved back. My backpack poked into someone behind me. “Sorry,” I said over my shoulder. I looked back but tall heads and reaching arms obscured my view.

At the next stop, 42nd street, most of the car left in a giant exodus of folding papers, closing books, and iPhone and cell button pushing fingers. I saw the back of the woman’s head and her wispy brown hair, then a flash of the paper under her arm, and… she was gone.

I looked around me and found myself free of most of humanity -the car practically empty. The woman in the red coat was gone. I had the pole to myself. I opened my book on Iyengar Yoga and read. Although there were now seats empty, I stood the next two stops and got off on 23rd. It was still cold outside and windy. I’d worn a spring jacket, like an idiot. Maybe it’ll be 58 later in the day, but right then it was still pretty damned cold.

Standing on the 5:46 home the other day, I had the express pleasure of scoping out a bunch of faces from my unique vantage point. One guy had just plopped himself down on a folding seat. The folding seats always give their user the look of being beaten down, perhaps because they’re a little lower than the typical seats. This poor fellow looked like he’d had a horrible day. His hangdog face was twitching, his cheeks thrusting upward every five seconds or so as he tried to unwind, which seemed to make the problem even worse. With each thrust of his cheeks, the gentleman’s eyeglasses, perched near the end of his nose, rose and fell about a half inch.

I was able to grab a seat after things cleared out in White Plains, and boy, was I happy I did. I was facing, albeit three rows down from, a heavy-set woman of about 20 who’d boarded with a friend at 125th. The woman boarded with a giant frosted bun of some sort. Not the tasty and vaguely fresh ones, such as those for sale at Cinnabon, but some nasty one you’d buy for 75 cents at the bodega. Her hands were covered in the sticky stuff, and people were sure to get out of her way as she squeezed her considerable frame into a tight five-seater.

Once she’d polished off the frosted bun, the woman started on what looked like a batch of fake grape Starburst candies. She chewed the gummy candies with noticeable effort, mouth wide open, frankly resembling a cow making her way through the morning cud.

Periodically, the woman would jam an index finger in her mouth, and scoop out the stuck grape candy like a croupier raking chips across the felt table.

The woman across from her, packed knee to knee, looked on in horror, fearful some purple saliva would land on her person.

It was a bit difficult to get myself psyched for the Missus’s dinner after that experience.

[image: animationlibrary.com]

THE POWER OF NOW

At 9:10 a.m. I enter the F-train from my usual spot: the no-man’s land between the two stairs going up to the main level of Roosevelt Station in Jackson Heights.

Inside, a roomful of open seats becomes the setting for a game of musical chairs—and the music has just stopped.

When everyone’s finished jockeying for a seat, I find one in the corner at the bottom of the “L.” My bags between my legs, my pad out and my pen jotting. Two seats are still free in my third of the car. Nothing unusual, except three commuters happen to remain standing.

I know why nobody has taken one of the seats. It’s next to a man who is asleep and seated in the pair of seats at the front of the car, next to the door. He also has placed a shopping bag and two suitcases on the seat next to him against the wall. Wearing a black baseball cap, he’s maybe in his forties and using his fist to keep from nodding forward. His belongings aren’t moving, and nobody’s asking him to move them.

The other seat is across from me, the center seat of three. A middle-aged woman is to one side, reading Oprah-champion Eckhart Tollet, and an older guy is to the other with a book of his own on his lap. The female bookend seems approachable, sit-down-next-to-able. In black slacks and a white shirt—a hard glasses case bulging through the pocket—the male bookend reads a small-print volume with glasses that he squints through and he underlines passages with a blue pen. He’s also holding a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, regular size. I bet there’s three sugars in it. When he takes a break from reading, he turns the cup around, examining the circumference.

The train passes two stops. Nobody takes the empty seat. I don’t get it. There’s nothing on the seat. And the people on either side are not so big that there’s only a smidgen of seat available.

Finally, a man enters in navy slacks, wingtip shoes, white shirt and red tie. This passenger looks Indian, probably in his fifties, and carries a big, black briefcase. He looks at the two people flanking the seat. They look up at him. Eckhart Tollet gets placed on the woman’s lap.

“Excuse me,” says the man in the red tie says, as he turns around and sits. The man with glasses has just enough time to shift out of his way before Red Tie’s butt grazes him. The woman reading Tollet pivots to move over—but her hips are already against the partition. She has nowhere to go.

Red Tie chooses the elbows-forward position, ceding the back of the seat to his neighbors, who, with a joint sigh, rest their elbows back and down. Red Tie hunches forward some. The train pulls out of the station; we all readjust our positions. Eckhart Tollet rises from the woman’s lap. She shifts a little left and right, acquiring a bit of space with the movement. The blue pen resumes underlining.

The excitement over, I close my notebook, lean back and shut my eyes. I’ll rest them for a moment—before 23rd Street arrives, and I depart.

—Joe Lunievicz

It’s not just subway seat hogs that are officially on notice.

Continuing its expose on bad subway behavior, Gothamist reports that those who hog the poles in the subway are being called out as well.

Apparently it’s preferable to simply clutch the pole with your hand, as opposed to wrapping your body around it. Frankly I’m not sure why anyone would care what you do with the pole, though I guess hugging it means less access points for your fellow riders.

Like “mansitting,” polehogging too has its own Catherine Weaver logo.

My first glimpse of the Mamaroneck platform this morning told me something was wrong. There were way too many people standing around looking even less happy than usual.

While I’m used to standing on the ride home, not getting a seat in the morning is not something I can recover from easily so to preserve my professional effectiveness I immediately went into full seat-scrounging mode. With the extra time I obviously had I hiked to the opposite end of the platform from my usual hangout. When a train finally pulled in (5 minutes late for me - probably more than 30 minutes late for many on the platform who had been trying to get on an earlier train) some quick footwork allowed me to score a window seat with full sleeping privileges.

Within a couple of stops the magnitude of my victory was apparent as the train went from merely crowded to officially “packed to the gills” as you can see from the above photo. Probably a minute after that photo was taken I was sound asleep. Gotta enjoy the good times while you can. Next time it’ll be me standing up there.