The Best Damn Commuter Town Period title stays in Westchester, as Larchmont was selected by Trainjotting readers as the best mix of relatively easy transit to the city, low-ish a**hole ratio, lively downtown, parks, taxes, and other quality of life issues involving the tri-state area.

Pleasantville won the prize the first/last time we held the Best Damn Commuter Town Period poll, in 2008.

New Jersey was very well represented in the voting, especially among towns starting with the letter ‘M’: (Montclair, Maplewood, Metuchen, Millburn, Westfield, Summit, New Providence). Long Island got a token mention (Mineola). In the 914, there were nominations for Tarrytown. Connecticut, meanwhile, was altogether snubbed.

But Larchmont, pushed over the top by a swell of nominations from its blog community, won in a relative landslide–most nominators citing walkability and easy access to Manhattan via Metro-North.

Writes “Sean”:

The neighborhoods are beautiful and established, with great architecture (virtually no teardowns and/or McMansions). Most of it is walkable to the train and the two ‘downtowns’ with a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and bars - and many of us can walk to the schools as well.

We also have a 29 minute express train to NYC, and it’s just over a half hour to drive to Manhattan in off hours - which helps add up to a feeling that we’re very ‘connected’ to the city.

Adds “Jeff”:

Very close to the city, walkable and less pretentious then some of its neighbors despite its affluent population.

So enticing is Larchmont to commuters that new Met Jason Bay announced recently that he’d bucked the trend of MLB ballers living in the wilds of Greenwich and scored a place smack in the middle of Yankee country in the 10538. Like so many voters in the Best Damn Commuter Town poll, he cited the commute.

“We actually have a place in the burbs, out in Westchester County,” Bay told MLB.com. “In Larchmont. Larchmont was about as far as we wanted to go from the ballpark. Everybody was like, ‘Greenwich, Greenwich, Greenwich.’ But Greenwich is like 45 minutes without traffic. New York, an hour commute is like 15 minutes for everybody else … 20 minutes, tops. I don’t want to drive forever — especially with traffic.”

To celebrate Bay’s arrival, Larchmont mayor Elizabeth Feld will rename the piece of the Long Island Sound that marks Larchmont’s southern border “Long Island Bay” on the Mets’ home opener April 5.

Congrats to all residents of Larchmont–or, as they’re known locally, “Larchmartians.”

[image: panoramio]

While we complain about Metro-North–oh, do we complain about Metro-North–we Harlem Liners do realize we have it pretty good, with Metro-North’s best on-time percentage of the three lines, and some creature comforts that New Haven Liners can only dream abou–at least until mid 2010.

One New Haven Line vet actually gave the Harlem Line a ride yesterday for a visit to Mt. Kisco, and shared her findings on the Larchmont/Mamaroneck community site The Loop.

Writes Loop-y editrix Polly Kreisman:

Now I know how the other half lives.

The train was almost spotless, the seats big and contoured and comfy. The middle seat actually fit the dimensions of an average adult. No pew style here with the sticky floor.

The a/c was working. The lights stayed on the entire trip. And it was eerily quiet. No conductors on the loud speakers yelling to each other;  the trip from Larchmont many mornings feels like communal  eavesdropping.

I never once had to stand up clutching my computer, jacket, blackberry and purse  to let someone “slip” into the middle seat.

And we sat. Really sat. No one had to stand. It was all very civilized. A sort of Eurail by way of Hawthorne.

Some smartass has penned an essay on walking to the train in Mount Pleasant. “I Walk Alone” appears on the southern Westchester community site GetinLoop.com.

I’ve seen suburbs where walking is part of people’s routines. Our Mamaroneck friends walk to the train station, Miller’s Toys and, more recently Molly Spillane’s. Pleasantville types have an art house theater, upscale restaurants and pubs within walking distance. Typically towns such as these were established before the almighty automobile took over, where sidewalks link neighborhoods to a train station and shops. Likely many of the residents are former city denizens, well versed in the ways of the pedestrian.

Not out by us. Hills are foreboding, sidewalks are almost non-existent, and so revered is the automobile that it’s not uncommon to see one parked in the middle of a front lawn, like a giant chrome bird feeder. To be sure, I do see dog-walkers and, in those narrow windows of flawless weather in fall and spring, people walking for the sake of walking—most of whom I’m fairly certain are being mandated to do so by their doctors. But, as we approach three years in Westchester, I can’t say I’ve seen another person from my neighborhood embark upon that mile schlep to the train.

You can read the whole of it here.

According to mildly amusing essay in the Westchester Review, “Earth Shakers” ride the 6:19 and 6:44 out of Larchmont, barristers board the 7:34, and slackers such as yourself ride the 10:22 “Ghost Train.”

When careers have fizzled and youthful vigor has given way to hopeless decrepitude, many riders are  ready for the increasingly popular GHOST. It runs Monday—Friday, carrying faded relics of previously successful businessmen looking for that one last gasp before well-deserved myocardial infarction. Most cars on the GHOST are designated quiet “despair” coaches, stocked with yesterday’s Times and Journal, both complimentary, of course. The head end car is reserved for wheezing, and making frantic but unsuccessful calls to former colleagues who can’t seem to place the callers’ names. Look out for old friends—many passengers have formerly ridden the 5:43 a.m.

Wayne Chrebet, whose Jets jersey is still being worn by 5′ 6″ white males in the tri-state area four years after Ol’ #80 retired, will be signing autographs at Larchmont station tomorrow to help promote the new rail service from Westchester to the football games at the Meadowlands.

Lil Wayne joins Metro-North prez Howard Permut at 9:30 tomorrow. He’ll sign autographs, then board the 10:18 headed for Jersey.

Come fall, Metro-North will experiment with a train that goes from Westchester to Giants Stadium in time for Jets and Giants games.

Metro-North and New Jersey Transit are calling it “direct service,” according to Journal News, but boy, is it a circuitous route. The football trains stop in Rye and Larchmont, then venture through the Bronx, down the Hell Gate Bridge into Queens, and west into Penn Station. From there, NJ Transit takes over, guiding the trains to Secaucus, where another train provides a 10-minute hop to Giants Stadium.

The round-trip looks to be about $22.25.

Metro-North will try the football trains for the handful of 1 p.m. Jets and Giants home kickoffs. The railroad calls it a “huge experiment.” It doesn’t say how long the trip will take, but hopefully it’ll be less than the 1 hour, 45 minute drive we experienced from Hawthorne to Citi Field Friday night, all of 24 miles away.

[image: NY Daily News]

As I’ve lamented in these cyber-pages, we no longer have the Sunday NY Times “Westchester” section–or similar sections in Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, or even the city, for that matter–to offer up hyperlocal news, and often transit-related stories.

I also miss contributing to the section, which I got to do fairly frequently. “Westchester” had bought an essay from me on what it’s like to walk in a place where nobody walks, but the piece will not run due to the section being eliminated. The Times gave me what’s known in the biz as a “kill fee” (newspapers do love blood), which means I get a fraction of the agreed-upon amount, and the essay becomes a free agent.

I’m currently exploring the numerous publications that would absolutely die for an essay about walking in Westchester (uh, Sarcasm Alert). In the meantime, here’s a snippet of the essay. At no charge, dear readers!

Walking Tall in the Land of the SUV

I was well familiar with the adage about how nobody walks in the suburbs when I arrived in them 2 ½ years ago. As much as I’d like to say my experience has been different since we departed the concrete jungle for the land of lawns, leaves and giant Hummers, the old axiom certainly seems airtight.

The first house we looked at when planning to move was a sagging split-level in Larchmont within spitting distance of I-95—all we could afford in the trendy village. I asked the owner, an earnest middle-aged man with wistful tales about raising his now-grown children in the house, about access to the train station. “Believe it or not I walk it,” he said. “It’s a mile.”

At the time I couldn’t comprehend why the fellow felt he needed to convince me that he walked a whole mile to and from the train every day. In the city, we wouldn’t think twice about embarking on a 20-block walk to try a new restaurant or hit a theater with a slightly better start time for a film we wanted to see. In fact walking frequently was the entertainment—a chance to do some peripatetic people-watching, a way to exercise without shelling out big bucks for the gym, or just an opportunity to get out of the claustrophobic confines of one’s apartment. Each evening after work, I’d take our (then) infant son out in his stroller, pointing out the beautiful town houses of Gramercy Park, the colorful characters of the East Village, the pubs were Daddy used to hang out prior to his arrival.

The empty-nester gent’s gambol to the train took him past a picturesque pond, under an attractive stone entranceway that used to front an estate, and into Larchmont’s charming village. How the heck else would one get to a train station a mile away–a Segway? A jet-pack?

We didn’t buy that house, but did end up with another that’s a mile from a different Metro-North train station. My first morning in our new Mount Pleasant digs, a crisp and perfect October day pushing above the horizon, I set out for the train expecting to walk amidst an army of so-called Dashing Dan’s en route to our jobs in the city. I didn’t see a soul on the first block, the next block, or the block after that. I briefly wondered if it was, in fact, a Saturday; perhaps the madness of moving had messed with my mind.

When I got home that evening, my wife was distraught. Like me, she was adamant that she could retain her walking ways in the land of the SUV. She’d tried to navigate the baby stroller down narrow, sidewalk-less streets, past perilous highway entrances to a playground about a half-mile away—scoring disapproving looks from motorists all the while.

“There’s nowhere to walk around here!” she cried. (It wasn’t completely true. There is an elementary school, a church and, if you’re really brave, a gas station that sells snacks, smokes and other sundries within walking distance. But I got her point.)

…

As we’ve detailed on these cyber-pages, Metro-North has been the inspiration for at least one popular troubadour–Larchmont songster Michael Nappi even put the ol’ railroad on the cover of his album, and named a song after the 7:26 morning train to the city.

Well, surfer lame-o Jack Johnson has tapped the train as a muse as well, with a ditty called “Breakdown” that perhaps was inspired by the beleaguered New Haven Line.

A little lyric, please:

I need this here
Old train to breakdown
Oh please just
Let me please breakdown
I need this here
Old train to breakdown
Oh please just
Let me please breakdown
I wanna break on down
But I cant stop now
Let me break on down

[image: askmen.com]

Westchester singer-songwriter Michael Nappi features a Metro-North train on the cover of his new CD, “Here We Go Again.”

Nappi is described by the Journal News as a cross between James Taylor and John Mayer, who actually rank #s 1,334 and 4,398, respectively, in terms of my favorite artists.

Nappi’s big radio song is called 7:26. The JOurnal News article is a bit confusing as to why the song is titled that: It may be the July date when it was recorded, or it may be a reference to the train on the cover–there is, in fact, a 7:26 a.m. train that gets you (or Michael Nappi and his guitar) into Grand Central at 8:01.

Here are the lyrics (and the song itself, for that matter) to 7:26 on Nappi’s Website. It doesn’t seem to be about trains but about a girl and a guy that aren’t quite seeing eye to eye–which seems to happen a lot in pop music. A snippet:

7:26
I was on the radio
Talking ’bout our lives
To people that I didn’t know
‘Cause every drop of rain
Has got a story to be told
Before it hits the ground
Giving up and letting go

Speaking of John Mayer, he was up at Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla today for their annual Christmas concert. I doubt he took Metro-North. I’m guessing his mode of transport was more likely track #9 on Nappi’s album. “Limousine” features this chorus:

You know it’s big and black
A circus in the back
Equipped with everything
Will make you feel just like a king

From this week’s edition of Octagenarian Ladies Who Say “Isn’t New York Wonderful”…I mean, the NY Times’ “Metropolitan Diary.”

Dear Diary:

It’s 7:45 a.m. on a hot, sultry July morning. I’m standing on the platform at the Larchmont station waiting for the train to Grand Central.

I notice a girl about 17 or 18 years old wearing a sundress with a bright floral print. She looks out of place in a scene that is populated by grim-looking commuters, thumbs already moving in vigorous unison on their BlackBerries.

She’s talking to a boy of a similar age, who is wearing an ill-fitting suit. I imagine she has just finished high school and is working a summer job in the city.

As the train enters the station I catch the tail end of her conversation with the boy:

“Do people really do this for their whole lives?”

John Hull