The middle-aged couple strolling hand-in-hand down the ramp to Track 108 yesterday.

It was 5:45 and the 5:46 was itching to head to points north.

The ramp was jammed, trains on both Track 107 and 108 receiving passengers.

At the front of the jam were you too, walking lovey-doveily down the ramp, your hands linked, your arms an impenetrable wall for all the commuters hustling to catch trains behind you.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. I’m glad to see you’re so deeply in love. Especially at…let’s just say it…your advanced age. It’s encouraging. It’s good to see.

But there’s a place for holding hands: Walks on Caribbean beaches come to mind, as do Cialis commercials.

But not on the ramp heading down to a train in Grand Central!

First off all, it’s the second least romantic spot in the world, ahead of only a ramp heading down to a track in Penn Station.

Second of all, you’ve got people behind you, lovebirds. Break your grasp, and make your way down the ramp in as little time as possible, occupying as little ramp real estate as possible, just like the rest of us.

You’ve got the whole next 45 minutes or an hour to hold hands, sit on each other’s laps, coo sweet nothings, and feed each other nearly over-ripe strawberries in the relative comfort of a Metro-North train.

Save the public displays of affection for when you get on board.

Just no smooching in front of me, please.  

Frustratedly,

Trainjotting

[image: kcantinmft.com]

Wing Man.

I’ve written about you before.

And before that.

Typically, you board the train at Grand Central in your gym clothes, dinner from Zaro’s in hand. Typically, it is buffalo wings. Sauce-bathed, messy-ass wings with get-all-over-everything blue cheese. You leave the sticky carnage in the bag, on the seat, for the “help” to pick up when you exit at Hawthorne.

I’ve seen you do this a half-dozen times.

I boarded the 5:46 yesterday uncharacteristically with about four minutes to spare–a product of my workplace moving two block–and thus, two minutes–closer to Grand Central. It makes a difference.

I headed toward the back of the train, which had been the front of the train only hours ago. It’s where the seats are.

Owing to my early arrival, I saw a handful of decent seats as soon as I boarded. There was a perfect option–aisle seat, near the door–until I saw you were across the aisle. You were on the window in a five-seater, your smorgasbord spread out on the seat in front of you.

Today it was salad, though it was smothered in your beloved blue cheese dressing, and didn’t look all that healthy, despite its leafy green base.

I declined the seat across the aisle from you, because it makes me angry to see you leave your landfill on the seat, and I’m fearful of speaking out about it one of these days, and one should not speak out against people who use the same station stop as you. (To paraphrase a popular expression, I don’t sit where you eat.)

I opted for another seat that was far less optimum–folding seat in the caboose, in fact.

But as we approached Hawthorne and I hustled toward the middle of the train, I noticed your filthy mess was not sitting upon the seat.

And as we stepped upon the platform, I saw you, Wing Man. As usual, you sported the latest in ’70s gymwear. As usual, you discussed your fantasy sports team loudly on your cellphone. A regular Brian Clashman.

You deposited your trash in the blue receptacle on the platform, Sir.

Clearly you’ve turned over a new leaf. You had salad for dinner. You actually discussed fantasy football–I heard something about a receiver who caught a lot of passes despite his small size…I thought Wayne Chrebet retired?–instead of your usual fantasy baseball.

And, most notably, you threw your trash away.

Glad to see my dirty looks made an impression.

More warmly than before,

Trainjotting

[image: billivorylarson.com]

The M1 bus.

I take you, M1 bus, every once in a while, when the mankind morass assembled at the 4-5-6 train escalators in Grand Central seems too foreboding, or these tired legs just don’t have the requisite spring to catapult me down toward lower Park Ave. South.

Frankly, M1, you’re not very prompt, and it’s usually faster to walk than to wait for you. And your driver that rides the horn every block or so–she should chill out a bit. Maybe do some yoga.

Maybe you’re so slow because you stop too much. I mean, you stop on Park Avenue South between 27th and 28th, M1. No problem there–28th is a nexus, with a subway stop, and a Mickey D’s and Duane Reade to boot.

But then you stop between 26th and 27th, M1. That’s a block later!

Don’t you realize, M1, that this is why people make fun of you and your bus brethren? You’re playing right into your stereotype: too many stops, too many folks who are advanced in age, weight or, typically, both, climbing on and off. Those minutes add up!

With all the proposed cuts in the MTA beckoning–entire subway and bus routes wiped off the map, token clerks banished to unemployment–can we really justify stopping between 27th and 28th, and again between 26th and 27th?

I think not.

By the way, I work right on 26th, so thank you for stopping right in front of my office. Some days the legs just don’t feel like walking all the way from 27th.

Ambivalently,

Trainjotting

The man on the Hawthorne platform who is “Never Cold.”

Sir. I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s 75 and sunny these days–a far cry from the brutal winter we just escaped from. People are barbecuing, hiking, playing ball.

But you, you probably don’t notice the 50 degree hike in the temperature. It can be the coldiest, blusteriest, Noreasteryesque of days, yet there you are, on the train platform, wearing a dress shirt and unbuttoned sport jacket.

You say hello to your friends on the platform, who inevitably ask you if you’re not freezing your ass off.

“I’m never cold,” you say with a smug smile, then explain how you only have to walk from the parking lot to the train, then a short hike from Grand Central to your office. “I don’t need a coat.”

You remind me, Never Cold, of a guy I sort of knew in college. His name was Stefan and he did some Grateful Dead show on the campus radio station. Everyone knew Stefan by his nickname, simply “Shorts,” because he wore nothing else but shorts throughout the New England winter. His legs were nothing to write home about–not that anyone at URHigh did much writing home anyway.

Perhaps you and Shorts are related; cut from the same warm weather, breathable cloth.

I haven’t seen you, Never Cold, since it got way warm. Maybe you’re the opposite of a Snowbird (a Sunbird?), flying north to Albany, to Toronto, to the Yukon Territory, to extend winter a few more weeks. If you’re comfortable in just a sport jacket in the dead of a Westchester winter, do you strip down to a mere dress shirt in early spring? Just a t-shirt with your slacks by Memorial Day? Bare-chested for the summer?

Time will tell, and we shall see.

Curiously,

Trainjotting

[image: fashionation.wordpress.com]

Google.

Hi Google. Sorry to hear the broadband-in-China thing didn’t fly, and sorry to bother you as you attempt to take over the world in other ways.

But I’ve noticed the Google Adsense revenue I get from those ads you serve up at the top of Trainjotting has slowed to a trickle. Mind you, it was never much to speak of; calling it “revenue” may be a bit flattering. But it was enough to cover a Sam Adams on the train every now and then, and maybe a cup of java for the likes of humble correspondents JerseyJim and Straphanger Joe.

But the past few weeks, Google, it’s been like a penny a day. Literally a penny a day. Why? Because you’ve been running an ad for your Nexus One smartphone every day, and no one clicks on it! People click on those random mom-and-pop banners that tell you where to go when you need a good DWI lawyer or a “doctor” to fix your ailing back. Those things grab you. They don’t click on your self-serving ads as you elbow your way into the cellphone market.

Google, your stock is like 540 bucks. You’ll someday digitize the world’s books and you already know more about our personal lives than our loved ones. I’m sure your Nexus One will be the next iPhone, China will eventually kneel down before you, and someday we’ll all be commuting across Planet Google to work for our local Google branch office.

In the meantime, can I please get my mom-and-pop ads–and resultant beer money–back?

Respectfully,

Trainjotting

The woman who “flashed” her MetroCard at the 28th Street station this morning.

We were getting off the downtown-bound 6, and were making our way to the emergency exit door that leads to the way out at 26th Street.

You were flying into the station, desperate to get on board that train. You were blonde and about 40, with an expression that brought to mind grave seriousness, though we can’t say for sure if the unique circumstances in which we encountered you contributed to such a mask. Perhaps you sport a different face on weekends, peering over the Sunday Times in slippers made to look like rabbits.

But today, it was Game Face.

As is often the case, there’s really no way to effectively swim upstream when you’re trying to get past a teeming mass of humanity flooding the turnstiles in the opposite direction. Let’s face it, you’re on the next train, important meeting or not.

So what did you do? I mean, you had to be on that train. At 9:10, the next one might not arrive for, oh, another four minutes or so.

This is what you did. Seeing a slight break in traffic flooding past the iron emergency exit door, you made your break. Of course, there was the small matter of actually paying for your fare–not an option when you go through the emergency door, unless there’s a token clerk there to ring you up, and there hasn’t been a clerk in that spot since Ford told the city to drop dead.

Nonetheless, you, Woman With Grave Expression, At Least This Morning, flashed your MetroCard through the air, like Detective Sipowicz showing his “shield” at a crime scene (”Uh, sorry for your loss, ma’am. Whadda we got, boys?”), as if some invisible magnetic laser would extend from the turnstile to your card and charge you the required $2.25.

It was as if you were saying, I’m willing to pay, I even have my card out! I just don’t have time to pay the fare. No, not me. Places to go, people to see. Hard work to do before the rabbit slippers this weekend.

I wasn’t able to tell if you got on that train, Ma’am. I can only hope a member of law enforcement mimicked your motion and flashed you something with more juice than a MetroCard.

The Buffalo Wing Eating Slob on the 5:46.

Sir. This is your second appearance on An Open Letter to, and that’s two too many.

Just 2 1/2 months ago, I chastised you for consuming your chicken wings with blue cheese sauce on a packed evening train in a manner that suggested it was your own private dining car.

I wrote:

You sat in a four-seater along the window. The two aisle seats in the four-bagger were taken, and the (otherwise) empty seat across from you held your dinner.

You greedily shoveled the wings into your mouth, dripping with blue cheese sauce, like you’d just been booted off Survivor. Your seatmates looked at you dubiously, wishing they’d selected any other seat on the train–even the stenchbench. You were impervious to their sidelong glances as you gnawed what little meat remained on the bones.

Don’t your read your mail? Don’t you see yourself in the letter?

Well, Wingman, you took it one step further yesterday.

I was sprinting to the 5:46 and jumped on just before curtains. I walked to the rear for seats–actually, seat would do–and my eyes went wide with the good fortune in front of me: a five-seater with just one seat taken, which meant I could grab an aisle seat and not have anyone in front of me.

But wait. You were the occupier of that one seat, while your stankin’ buffalo wings and blue cheese (and baseball newspaper…always with the baseball newspaper) occupied the seat across from you. Hey–I like wings and blue cheese as much as the next guy, but I tend to enjoy them in a bar, with a pitcher of beer, friends, a bag of wipes, and a bar full of people who do not notice my greedy consumption. Not on a packed commuter train.

But I’ve already pilloried you in this space for those offenses.

I trekked onward, looking for a favorable seat as the train headed through the tunnel.

I foune a suitable one and all seemed to be well. I slipped on the earbuds, tossed open the Times, and forgot about your shoddy behavior.

Jump ahead 40 minutes, and the 5:46 is wheezing its way toward Hawthorne. I started walking toward the front of the train to end up closer to the station stairwell. You’d vacated your seat–you too disembark in Hawthorne. But you indeed left your mark–the detritus from your buffalo wing bacchanal that now looked like a scaled down version of a town dump, there on the train seat. Left behind were a mass of soiled napkins, plastic bags holding bloody bones, the filthy plastic clamshell case that you couldn’t even be bothered to close, much less actually carry off with you and dispose of in a garbage can.

Yes, Sir, the entire world is there for you to make a giant mess on and leave for others to clean up.

An appropriate punishment? You should clean train cars for a week, Wingman, then be made to foot the bill for the MTA’s latest revenue shortfall.

[Even more] Disgustedly,

Trainjotting

The a capella quartet on the downtown R train yesterday.

I was heading back to work after a long midtown lunch. I was out of my routine (lunch/NY Times Sports at desk) and therefore off my game a bit.

You guys–a golden-throated, if grubby bunch in your 40s and 50s–boarded the train at 34th and went straight into your musical act. There was a brief introductory Christmas number and some general pleasantries for the two dozen riders on board, then you launched into a version of Sam Cooke’s Only Sixteen in sublime four-part harmony.

It sounded fantastic, and even pulled some hardened New York noses out of newspapers and smartphones.

Then one of you–I don’t recall which spot you occupied on the voice register/barbershop quartet totem pole–went around with the cup. First off, I give you high marks for what, at least on paper, sounds like an insuperable task: requesting money while singing a song that extols the virtues of hitting on underage girls [She was only sixteen, only sixteen/I loved her so…]

You approached me for some change. I normally don’t give, but it sounded really good, and it’s the holidays, and anyone carrying on the legend of Sam Cooke is cool in my book (Uh, “Some Change is Gonna Come,” anyone?). I reached into my pocket and figured I’d give whatever was in there. You lingered, never breaking from Only Sixteen.

I was about to hand over my fistful when I realized one of the coins was a dollar–the gold coin with the Native American lady on it, a baby in a papoose on her back. [Editor’s Note: First time we’ve ever used the word “papoose” on this site.] I don’t remember where I got it (post office? parking garage?), but I do remember it happening in the last few weeks, and The Missus saying something to the effect of, good luck getting rid of that.

You guys sounded good, sir, but not that good–I wasn’t passing along a dollar. Nothing personal–I probably would not have have coughed up the buck to Bono and The Edge slumming it in the underground. There was some awkwardness as you eyed the coin like Gollum ogling his beloved bling. I pulled it back and gave you everything else just as you crooned something about doing the little things/That made my heart glow.

Sir, I should’ve done that little thing that may have made your heart glow, and certainly would’ve thawed my own ticker a bit. It’s just a buck, and I’ll venture to guess–my Westchester mortgage and Little G’s pre-school tuition in Priusville notwithstanding–you need it more than me. 

Next time, I’m giving you a fiver. What a wonderful world that would be.

Regretfully,

Trainjotting

The guy holding up the line on the stairs at Hawthorne station because he was playing Connect Four on his smartphone.

Sir.

It was the end of the long workday, and we all just wanted to get down the stairs at Hawthorne station, climb into our cars (or, in the case of three people in the whole of Hawthorne, climb onto our bikes), and head home for dinner and a Don Draper digestif.

You, Sir, were in no such rush. No, you took your own sweet time heading down the stairs. You were, in fact, engrossed in a game of Connect Four on your Blackberry.

Yes, when I finally had the slim opening to pass you, I saw the bright glow of your PDA screen, with the Connect Four board shining in the dark mid-Westchester November night.

Connect Four! That mid-’70s Milton Bradley creation, a barely entertaining mash-up of checkers and tic tac toe (frankly, neither of its forefathers was all that entertaining either, so it’s no surprise the offspring ended up dull).

In fact, the most lasting legacy of Connect Four would have to be the commercial: a bowl-cutted lad outfoxed by his sister, if memory serves, offering up a defeated “Pretty sneaky, Sis!” with equal parts dejection and respect.

That’s what occupied your mind, fellow traveler, and that’s what held up the masses behind you.

What’s next for you, Sir, a Hungry Hippos app?

Frustratedly,

Trainjotting

The guy chowing the stankin’ buffalo wings on the 5:46 yesterday.

I boarded right before we left and went from car to car looking for a seat.

I smelled you even before I entered the car, the odoriferousness of your buffalo wings in the plastic clamshell spilling out of your train car, fighting past the stale air of a Grand Central tunnel, and weaseling its way into the next car down the line like a curly white cartoon wisp of stink.

You sat in a four-seater along the window. The two aisle seats in the four-bagger were taken, and the (otherwise) empty seat across from you held your dinner.

You greedily shoveled the wings into your mouth, dripping with blue cheese sauce, like you’d just been booted off Survivor. Your seatmates looked at you dubiously, wishing they’d selected any other seat on the train–even the stenchbench. You were impervious to their sidelong glances as you gnawed what little meat remained on the bones.

It was 5:46, Buffalo Bob. I just can’t imagine that you were that hungry. You were going to be home in, oh, 50 minutes–you’re at my stop and it’s only 42 minutes away. Home. In your house. At the dinner table.

Even if you were truly starving, why not grab something that doesn’t stink up the whole car–and even the car next to it? Turkey with brie on rye, thin sheen of mustard? A salad? Cold can of Chef Boy Ardee?

But no, you saw fit to consume the messy victuals while in close contact with a few hundred of your closest commuter friends.

And while we’re on the topic, who the heck eats buffalo wings without a beer and a flat-panel TV showing football, anyway?

Disgustedly,

Trainjotting