Handbrake as a Metaphor

By the time I made it to the train Friday morning, after dropping my son off at school (something I love to do), I was damp, my waterproof shoes were wet, and my umbrella was soaked.

I did not feel like talking to anyone or even looking at anyone–my mood having shifted with the weather. I gave a police officer a half smile as I made it to the platform to try and push the clouds away. He looked bored, leaning against the wall with his hands behind his back. He ignored me. Ahh, the subway.

The F train pulled up within a few moments. I stepped on, umbrella dripping, eyes unfocused and low, and took out my iPhone to watch a video I’d ripped the night before (a long process involving software known as handbrake which I amazingly downloaded correctly and seemed to use in the appropriate manner without a single call to the their support line–no easy feat for this techno-bungler). Don’t get too excited about the video though, it was only an instructional yoga anatomy video–interesting only to a yoga teacher and even then probably not all yoga teachers. Still, I’d been trying to watch it for four months unsuccessfully at home. Family life, children’s videos, and work simply hadn’t allowed it.

The F was crowded, but I had elbow room so it wasn’t packed and there is a big difference between packed and crowded–about 6 inches of personal space. Six inches of very personal, leave-me-alone, space. More than enough to gaze down into yoga-land and pretend I was somewhere else.

With my usual place by the door I was distracted for a moment by the woman sitting to my left. She was using an iPhone also, but thumb-typing a note to herself in Chinese characters. I stared down at her to watch how the letters and numbers from the QWERTY keyboard translated. I still don’t get how that worked–English letters into Chinese characters–but it made me smile.

Then, I put in my earphones and went to my video section–which up to this point in my iPhone’s existence had been empty. Time to disappear inward. Only when I got to the section, I found it … empty. I’d missed a step in syncing somewhere – must have. Choose your own four letter expletive. No movie this morning. I looked down at my foot. My umbrella, hanging down from my arm, had been dripping water onto my toes. It figured. Good thing, though, the shoes were waterproof.

I took out my book–as a veteran traveler of the NYC subway system I was prepared with my backup, Definitive Book of Body Language, by the Pease’s, Alan and Babs. As we traveled beneath the East River, I read on about how to manipulate people and “be a more powerful communicator–without ever having to speak a word.”

–Straphanger Joe

I am fascinated by tattoos because I can’t get one. My wife would divorce me if I did; it’s written into our contract. I once explained this to my son, and he suggested I get a temporary tattoo. Which makes sense. Still, ever since watching Steve McQueen in Papillion, I thought it would be cool to have one. But these days so many people sport tattoos—hell, there are television shows about tattoo parlors—that they’re too damn “in.” So I feel cooler not having one.

Anyway, it’s 8:47 a.m. and I get a seat on the F-train. That’s two days in a row (what are the odds?) and the same seat, too: bottom of the “L.” I sit with my back to the person next to me and my legs in the aisle, my bags between them. It usually annoys people when they try to pass from one section of the car to another. But I get more room that way, and it keeps me from knocking knees with the person perpendicular to me at the base of the “L.” Six of one, half dozen of the other.

I notice a guy across from me in the opposite section. Same seat, mirror image. In cut-off camouflaged shorts and a black T-shirt, he also has two earrings in his left ear, a close yet untrimmed beard, and a shaved head sprouting five days’ worth of stubble. Maybe thirty, he smiles when a woman sits next to him and he has to move his legs to let her by.

The man is also covered in tattoos. They’ve been inked like identical twins on his forearms: a ring of flames begins at each wrist and spreads to his elbows. On the biceps and triceps of his left arm (I can’t see that much of the right) is a large Victorian clock with Roman numerals; the time is stopped at 11:55. AM or PM, I can’t tell.

On the back of his neck is some kind of bar code. What product is the bar code for? Rolling papers or Rice Krispies? Maybe it’s Fruit Loops. My son’s dying to eat Fruit Loops, but my wife and I won’t let him. Maybe this Illustrated Man got the bar code after seeing Angelina Jolie in Wanted. She had a bar code tattooed on her body. Or was it a binary code? Well, it was a code and it was on Angelina Jolie—somewhere. Maybe that inspired this guy.

Now, when you get rings of flames on your arms, you might be trying to say, “Don’t touch me or you’ll get burned.” And the Victorian clock surely has a Gothic look. But what are you trying to say with a bar code? That he works a day job at The Container Store? I stop looking at him. I don’t want him to catch me studying him, and I certainly don’t want to know what the tattoos mean if they’re trying to say, “Don’t piss me off!”

But tattoos are still cool to me. What about a subway car across the back of my neck? My own personal bar code. It would have to be the F-train, with orange and tan seats, and me at the bottom of the “L”, bags between my legs. Maybe all straphangers should get one. But only if their partners approve, of course. Me, I’ll be keeping this particular canvas blank, thank you very much. You’re on your own.

—Joe Lunievicz

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

THE WAVE

It moved through the crowd on the F train like a ripple.

It was 8:44 a.m. and we all wanted to get to work. The train had been slow, stopping between stations repeatedly because of congestion and we were stuck beneath the East River in our approach to Lexington Ave.

We were crowded together in our usual bunches, hip to hip and front to back between the doors and around the poles. I was reading Ghenkis by Connoldon, who wrote The Dangerous Lives of Boys, which I did not read). It was a real rip-snorter historical adventure novel and I was pretty involved, secure in my commuter cocoon, when I noticed the upturned wave of heads approach me from the center of the car.

Something had happened and everyone, like good rubbernecking New Yorkers, wanted to see what it was. So, naturally I looked up and tried to see too.

I heard someone say something like, “He’s hurt,” but it could have been , “He’s Burt,” so I waited a moment to see which it was.

When others around me went back to reading their papers I figured it was the green light to go back to reading my book – Burt or hurt, the show seemed to be over. Onward, Ghenkis, across the frozen plains of Mongolia.

Then a wave of moving heads came my way again. A woman sitting down next to me could see what was going on and she said to the person sitting next to her, “He’s down again. He looks sick.” Some people moved away from the site of the drama, allowing me a view of the unfolding events.

At the same time a woman standing near to the scene said, “Somebody pull the red handle and stop the train. We got a sick man over here.”

The passengers around me looked up at the red handle about five feet from my head then back down at their papers. I wondered if I should pull the red handle when a little voice inside me said, “Wait until you get to the station. If you pull the red handle now you’ll never get to the station and the train will shut down and you’ll be stuck on this slow-moving train for another hour.”

I looked away from the red handle. I told myself I was only postponing a pull on the emergency brake–waiting to see what would happen next.

“Does anybody have some water or something for him to eat?” the woman who told us to pull the handle asked around her. She tried to make eye contact with others nearby but couldn’t find eyes to hold.

She was holding up a young man who seemed to have lost the ability to stand. He took hold of a pole, but he was swaying as if he was ready to go down what I guessed would be a second time. I couldn’t tell if he was drunk, high, sick, or exhausted. They all seemed possible.

A woman sitting beneath him got up and moved away. Everybody seemed to take a small step or two away from him as he swayed a little more. Then, using the pole for leverage, he swung himself around and took the woman’s seat. An orange appeared like magic from over his shoulder. He focused on the brightly colored fruit and took a hold of it, lowering it to his lap. His dazed expression seemed to clear up a little as he pulled off the skin and ate.

We inched into the station at Lexington but the doors didn’t open yet.

“Somebody tell the conductor,” the woman who had been holding him up said again. People looked away. I could tell. Nobody wanted the train stopped so we’d have to offload while we waited for the EMTs to arrive. Besides, h had an orange. He was conscious again. What was the problem?

Finally the doors opened. I hesitated a few moments, shifting from one foot to another, then, making my decision, got off. I walked over to the conductor’s window and told her there was a sick passenger in her car. “You ought to take a look,” I said.

She nodded, concern on her face and got up to see. I watched from the platform as she found, then checked in with the young man, kneeling by his side. I couldn’t hear the questions or the answers, but he seemed visibly better–more color in his cheeks.

I didn’t get back on the car. If the folks inside found out it was me who told the conductor and stopped the train from running, I figured I might not make it out alive.

I waited outside. The conductor called a halt to the train with the dreaded announcement: “We’ve got a passenger in need of medical assistance. We’ll be moving as soon as he’s been taken care of.” I could hear the collective groan of a sea of passengers while I walked across the platform to the other track, trying to look nonchalant.

I took the first train that pulled in to the station. Just as I got on board, the other train’s doors closed and the train pulled out of the station–ahead of mine. I guessed the guy was all right after all.

I ended up late to work anyway. Go figure.

–Joe Lunievicz

Holding Doors for Osho

I’m about to enter Roosevelt Station at 74th Street just as a woman is about to exit.

I open the door before she even puts her hands up to push against it. I pull hard on the handle then hold the heavy frame while she exits.

She doesn’t look at me. She walks through, not even attempting to hold the door or even pretend to push it open further. She walks by me and dissolves into the crowd surrounding the taco stand.

I take a step forward but two more people run to the exit and I step back to let them out, still holding the door. Now there’s a line of five or six commuters rushing towards me and, trapped in place I hold the door for all of them, one after the other.

Two look at me and nod. The rest pretend I’m a doorman and exit. Finally the last person leaves and I’m about to take a step forward to enter the station. I swing the door open again and a woman tries to pass me on the inside track. The street light changed on 74th and Roosevelt and I can see a crowd of commuters swarming across the street behind her. I say, “Excuse me,” and enter, placing my left side in front of her – without body contact - but I keep the door open with a final push as I go by so she won’t get hit by it as she follows me.

As I push the door open I can see her face, an annoyed look imprinted there. A short “huh,” sound emerges from her open mouth.

This is not the first time this has happened to me and probably won’t be the last. I am amazed at the way people assume you will hold a door for them and just go through it, without even an attempt at holding it themselves — no acknowledgment, no nothing.

Now Osho (philosopher and spiritual leader, TJ, in case you were wondering) would say, do good things for others because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want to be thanked for it (ie: for the glory).

“Osho, Osho, Osho,” I would say. “You haven’t ridden on the New York subway. It’s about respect, not acknowledgement. I simply needed someone to stop and let me enter so I didn’t have to cut someone else off to get inside.”

What this leads me to believe is that it’s better not to hold the door for anyone. Either that or I need to bring a tin cup with me and ask for money while I’m holding it.

–Joe Lunievicz

It was a crowded F-train this morning, 8:43 am. The doors closed on the 74th Street and Roosevelt stop. Two last-minute straphangers pushed me away from my door position. I wasn’t annoyed, because I still had a pole to hold on to and I wasn’t reaching far or through people to get to it. Osho’s autobiography [Editor’s Note: Some Indian philosopher] was open in my hand.

I heard a disturbance behind me and I closed the book, using my finger as a bookmark to see what was happening.

Voices got louder and I could make out what they were saying.

By the center door an old man, maybe in his seventies, maybe Latino, was having words with a young, smartly dressed Latino.

“Do you want the seat?” the old man asked.

“Get out of my way,” the young man replied.

“I asked if you wanted to sit?” the old man said again.

“Nigger, what are you trying to do?” Another young, tall African American man with an oversized baseball hat a few feet away chimed in.

“Don’t push me,” the old man said, his voice taking on a sharper tone.

I couldn’t tell if any pushing was going on. The doors had closed but we weren’t moving yet.

“Fuck you,” the young man replied. “Get out of my face. I don’t want your fucking seat.”

“He could be a grandfather, you nigger,” the tall baseball-capped black man said. “Let him have the seat. He’s a grandfather. He could be your grandfather.”

“I don’t want the seat,” the young man replied, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I never sit on the train.”

“Then stop pushing me,” the old man said, standing his ground by the pole but not taking the empty seat yet. “Are you going to sit or not?”

“Fuck you, you stupid old man. I’m not sitting down.”

The old man turned in front of the young man and sat, looking up and staring at him. The young man lowered his gaze down to a book he’d taken out.

“He could be your grandfather, nigger. You better let him have that seat.”

The old man wore a porkpie hat. He pulled it down lower onto his head and sat up tall.

The train started and the rest of us went back to our private straphanger worlds–grateful there hadn’t been a physical contest and, at least for me, grateful to the young man in the baseball cap who knew what was right and helped make it happen.

–Joe Lunievicz 

 “Be kind to your behind.” 

It’s cottonelle’s new tag line and it’s covering the wall space at the stairs heading to the Grand Central subways and everyone’s talking about it. Whether it’s the poop reporter whose motto is “Your #1 Source for Your #2 Business” or Cassandra Jupiter  who is anti-wiping and pro-washing–or Jon Stewart on the Daily Show–the butt is the talk of the underground.

Now this is the kind of conversation that commuters need to have more of. Butts. Poop. TP.

It got me to thinking about other campaign slogans and how they might fit on the wall of fame heading down to the underground. Maybe the Cottonelle team will use one. 

Big beautiful butts build bridges, just like the Peace Corps. Let Cottonelle help.

 Harsh is for hands. Cheeky is for lip. Underneath just let it rip. Nice to know Cottonelle will catch you.

Not on the seat. Not on the cheek. Look underneath and take a peak. The perfect place for poop. (My son liked this one the best.)

 Buttwipers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your cheek.

Why use newspaper when you can use Cottonelle?

 Itchy heiny? Don’t use what’s harsh, thick or shiny. Think baby wipe without the lotion and soon you’ll be back in locomotion. (Especially appropriate for Grand Central.)

Which would you rather use, the bear or the Cottonelle? The bear’s vote doesn’t count.

TV ad: Camera pans in to a cocktail party, zooms in to hip level and focuses on a jeans-covered butt, dancing to a groovy beat. Another butt comes close with a tail of toilet paper hanging out from the back. Voice over: “This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.”

Heiny on fire? Douse the flames with Cottonelle, the fire extinquisher.

Come on. Everybody uses it. You use it. I use it. They use it. Don’t keep it a secret. Bear all. Cottonelle. 

Got one you think would work? Think about your heiny as you ride the rail and let me know.

–Joe Lunievicz

Three-Way Comparison

After a closer examination of the 7 train and the 6, today’s study in subway demographics looks at the F-train, 8:43am, Roosevelt Station.

It was a cold walk from my son’s school after dropping him off. I was chilled but glad to be below ground where the wind couldn’t get to me.

After the 6 on the Upper East Side and the 7 train from Flushing it was good to be back on the old familiar orange bomber. The doors opened and I wedged my way in. I lost my position near the door as others pushed me further inward just as the doors closed.

“Sorry,” I repeated to two or three people I pushed into. I couldn’t reach the poles to front or back so I had to go with the overhead ceiling grip – never a good choice on the F – but sometimes you just gotta hold where you can.

Here’s what surrounded me.

There were 92 people in the car with me. I may have missed the exact number by ten one way or the other. There were 35 people in my third of the car. That I’m pretty sure of. I had my notebook and pen handy and scribbled fast at each of the stops.

Six people were reading papers: Two the Metro, two the New York Post, and two I couldn’t tell because my armpit blocked the view. There was one hardcover book, title unknown, and two small black-covered bibles – pretty sure they were in English.

With the cold there were some wool coats, mostly navy and a few black and white herringbone. Two had their creases pressed and I saw cat or dog hair on one woman’s coat next to me. Otherwise the car was filled with parkas, jackets, sweat jackets, some hoodies and puffy down vests. We were exploding in muted winter colors.

Four people that I could see were sleeping. One had his mouth wide open.

Most of the folks on the train were black, Latino, Indian or and Asian. There were two Caucasians – one of which was me.

Nobody had coffee. Maybe it was just too crowded. One woman ate a jelly and toast sandwich.

I saw one briefcase and lots of backpacks.

At Lexington a quarter of the passengers got off. A woman dropped her scarf and a man, watching from his post by the door, leaned forward to help her. You could tell he wasn’t sure what to do because he hesitated a moment before he decided to help, and when he leaned forward he watched to see if she would wave him off. She did.

“I’ve got it,” she said, and he straightened up. She smiled at him and he smiled back. I was impressed. Then he got off at the next stop.

Most of those passengers still riding by 23rd Street, got off there with me. We herded ourselves through the turnstiles and up to 6th Avenue. The wind met us heading up the Northeast stairs. Funny, but nobody goes up the Northwest stairs - nobody. We’re always packed on the Northeast stairs, heads down, bumper to bumper, cursing anybody coming down against the current.

I wonder why.

Flushing Line

I took the 7 train. Not my usual run, but this morning I found myself during rush hour, 8:42, mixing with the straphangers on the above-ground line.

I was on my way to the South Bronx for work. Here’s what I noticed compared to the Lexington line from the week before.

§         It was packed with about 50 people in the car.

§         I counted 12 seated passengers who were asleep, or at least with their eyes closed and seemingly asleep.

§         There were easily 15 people reading papers. Three read the Daily News and the other 12 read Chinese or Korean papers, their characters alien script to me. A man read a paperback book – I couldn’t see the title.

§         There were three people on cell phones–the beauty of the elevated train is you can still stay in touch electronically [Editor’s Note: Beauty?]. Two people were holding phones and seemed to be; by the way they stared, reading messages.

§         There were four visible pairs of white ear buds for iPods and two old-style CD players.

§         Winter parkas abounded. Women wore thick coats with the hoods lined around the edge with faux fur. Men wore sport coats without ties. A couple of guys wore hoodies. I saw two briefcases and lots of backpacks. At least half of the people in the car wore sneakers.

§         One woman had a coffee with her. She didn’t drink it. She just held it and seemed to stare past it. It wasn’t from Espresso 77 – I could tell because the brown heat-shield wasn’t stamped with its red logo.

§         The advertisement that covered the wall above me was for “the mother of all vodkas from the motherland of vodkas – Stolichnaya.” There was no mention of pie or pi.

§         I dropped a bookmark and a man across from me said, “Hey–you dropped something.” It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me and that I had dropped something. I said thanks, impressed with the kindness.

To cross the East River we went underground and the world closed in around us. My ears popped.

At Grand Central the car emptied almost completely. I transferred to the 5 going to the Bronx. The train was packed up until 86^th Street, then cleared out. By the time I got to 149^th Street/3^rd Avenue stop I was one of half a dozen left.

Up on the surface, the South Bronx spread out before me and I moved from one world to the next.

–Joe Lunievicz

Some eagle-eyed readers of Trainjotting have noticed the new ads adorning the top of our pages. Indeed, Trainjotting has partnered with with Google to feature ads that aim to have something to do with the content on the page, which results in the reader clicking on them to buy stuff, and Google’s stock climbing north of $600 a share.

Trainjotting gets paid for each “AdSense” click. Some clicks are literally worth pennies, and some are actually worth a decent chunk of change–which means we mayl be able to buy a Starbucks card (or Espresso 77 t-shirt) for Straphanger Joe, maybe a pint of Pale Ale for G. Francis, perhaps a miniature 7 train whose wheels don’t stick for Little G.

If the program takes off, Little G may even have options other than Westchester Community College when he’s 18.

Hopefully us whoring ourselves out to Google won’t detract from your Trainjotting experience. And let’s face it–we’ll all be partnering with Google in some way or other somewhere down the road.