The Metrocards holding unuseable amounts were starting to fill up my wallet, so I ducked into the 6 station at 33rd to run the cards through the reader. Alas, the reader could read none of my three existing Metrocards, which means it’s not much of a “reader” at all.

Resigned to hauling $1 Metrocards around for the next decade, I turned to leave when I was stopped by a young woman.

She was brunette, about 30, English, not too bad teeth and, curiously, a sling on her left arm.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Should I take the subway to Grand Central, or can I walk?”

I told her it was only about 10 minutes on foot, that she should be able to walk no problem. She didn’t seem convinced, seemingly quite sure Grand Central was further away.

We climbed the stairs and I pointed to Grand Central off on the horizon. She squinted toward the end of Park Avenue South.

“See the Met Life Building?” I said.

“Yes.”

“See the ornate statue on the limestone building beneath it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s Grand Central.”

“Oh, I can walk that,” she said with a laugh. “That won’t take ten minutes.”

I joked about Wizard of Oz and the big poppy field, how it was further than it looked.

Because sometimes it’s fun to talk to tourists, especially when they speak English, I asked her if she was catching a train at Grand Central.

“No,” she said in the thick lower-England accent. “I’m going to visit the nooyyyce food shops.”

Those merry pranksters of Improv Everywhere, the architects of the performance piece “Frozen Railroad,” which saw everyone stand still in Grand Central for several minutes, have again chosen mass transit to stage one of their oddball exhibitions.

“Human Mirror” sees ten sets of twins in matching outfits board the 6 train, take their position across from each other, and mirror the other’s actions (or inactions, in the case of the sleeping twins.)

Grand Central is now offering wireless Internet in its Station Master’s office waiting area near Track 36. “Long an oasis with spacious benches, restrooms and an eye-pleasing floral mural,” says Metro-North, the waiting area ”is now a ‘hot spot’ for free wireless internet access. MTA Metro-North Railroad customers can now turn on their laptops and surf the net or check email while waiting for the train.”

Of course, commuters won’t get much use out of this, as the true seasoned rail-riders have their routines down the the point where they’re boarding trains with just a minute or so to spare–not sitting in some waiting room like an out of town rube.

Fun piece in today’s NY Times about musicians auditioning to be part of the Music Under New York program that sees performers jam on the subway platforms.

The 70 who were invited to audition yesterday included a cellist, violinist, a variety of guitar heroes, and one guy playing the kora–described as “a 21-string instrument fashioned from a large gourd wrapped in cowhide, with a wooden neck and handles.”

About 20 will be chosen to join the 100 currently permitted to jam underground with Music Under New York. They were judged on “quality, variety, and appropriateness for the mass transit environment.”

Each musician got five minutes on the upper level in the main concourse, across from the New Haven Departures board. One after the other, they pulled their battery-powered amplifiers up on wheelies and tried to impress the judges. Periodically, a transit police officer walked through with a bomb-sniffing dog.

It being Earth Week and all, Metro-North does its part by switching from incandescent light bulbs in Grand Central to the compact fluorescent variety favored by green types everywhere. Installing more than 1,700 of them in the public areas of Grand Central, Metro-North figures on saving more than $100,000 a year on utility bills.

“While we may be talking about improvements to Grand Central, there is nothing ‘grand’ about day-to-day efforts we, as individuals, can make to improve the environment,” said Metro-North President Peter A. Cannito. “Whether it’s switching to fluorescent bulbs at work or at home, or simply by riding the train instead of driving, we can all play a part in making the world a better place.”  

You know what would truly make the world a better place? If Metro-North took that $100,000 in Con Ed savings and knocked a few bucks off our monthly passes. Or spring for some extermination on the New Haven Line. Or bought us a Sam Adams every Thursday evening in April, it being Alcohol Awareness Month and all.

Just a thought.

Amidst the reportage on yesterday’s building collapse and Metro-North tie-up was this quote in the New York Times.

“First they said service was temporarily discontinued, and then they said about 10 minutes later that service was going to resume on a limited basis,” said Sarah English of Chappaqua, who was on a business trip to Manhattan.

Let me repeat part of that:

…said Sarah English of Chappaqua, who was on a business trip to Manhattan…

I like that. I no longer commute from Westchester to the city every day. I’m simply on a business trip to Manhattan.

Sounds much more important.

By the way, the Times had a terrific photo of frustrated commuters waiting for their trains in GCT.

[photo: Hiroko Masuike]

Grand Central’s regal Vanderbilt Hall, she of the “faux Caen stone walls, the Tennessee Pink Marble floors, the white Bottocino marble wainscoting,” according to Metro-North, will close tomorrow for seven months as it undergoes a thorough scrubbing.

(Vanderbilt Hall is the big square room you see when you enter GCT from 42nd; depending on the time of year, it may be hosting a squash tournament, a Christmas fair, or giant Scots tossing logs for Tartan Week.)

“Metro-North is committed to the good stewardship of one of New York City’s most revered buildings.  It is a responsibility Metro-North does not take lightly and we will not allow Grand Central to slip into the disrepair of the past,” said Metro-North President Peter Cannito of the $3.6 million job. 

Commuters’ routines should not be affected over the course of the next seven months. According to Metro-North, “a painted, fireproofed plywood tunnel will be built across the room from the doors on 42^nd Street” to the Main Concourse.

From Bottocino marble wainscoting to painted plywood. Ouch.

And you think the downtown 6 is slow.

Back in, oh, 1858, trains going south of 42nd Street were decoupled and then hooked up to horses–yes, horses–to take them to a terminal at 26th Street.

Source: Grand Central Terminal: Gateway to New York, by Ed Stanley

Here’s a hysterical YouTube video where 207 people simply freeze in place in the middle of Grand Central for several minutes. One guy is in the process of tying his shoe, another is drinking a bottle of water, another is scooping up some papers he’s dropped, when all of them simply stop moving, much to the curiosity/delight of the others in Grand Central. (The freezers are obviously trained in this stuff.)

The best part is the mustachioed garbage cart driver who’s unamused as he’s stuck behind a frozen body or two. “I can’t move my cahwt,” he tells the walkie talkie in the finest Queens English spoken since Joey Ramone passed.

Thanks to Derailed for digging it up.

Finally got around to checking out the Grand Central documentary on PBS from the other night. It’s terrific, offering a painstakingly detailed look at the railroad’s transformation from steam to electric, Grand Central’s rivalry with that Joisey-accented west side upstart, Penn Station, and the sad tale of William Wilgus, the civil engineer who designed the transit system we know and love today.

There’s no shortage of tragedy in the tale, including the horrific crash of 1902, as the White Plains express blew through red lights and horns and hammered an idling train from New Rochelle in the Grand Central tunnel, killing 15. Photos of the old New Rochelle train station, looking something like a country farmhouse, are pretty cool.

Not long after the system was switched to electric–1907 or so–a train headed for White Plains jumped the track at Woodlawn, killing 20.

The doc also explains Wilgus’s concept of “taking wealth from the air” and selling the air rights above Grand Central to finance the project, the first documented case of selling air rights.

Sadly, Wilgus gets thrown under the bus by railroad brass after the Woodlawn incident. He was deemed “culpably negligent” because the crippling weight of the train’s engines caused the rails to widen; later designs better distributed the weight.

A variety of talking heads, from architects to historians to the esteemed writer Susan Eddy, who happens to be the Missus’s old boss, offer intriguing perspective. But I couldn’t help but wonder–how did they not have our own Engine Bob sharing Grand Central stuff that no one else knows?