Reply With QuoteInteresting thought. We might get a Fulton St. crosstown out of that.
Maybe the city subway system should be transferred to the PA.
Interesting thought. We might get a Fulton St. crosstown out of that.
Bad enough we have a state agency running the city subways.
It's Now Legal to Tour the City's Prettiest Subway Station (That's Not Covered in Graffiti)
By Matt Chaban
While it's still illegal to check out the Underbelly Project, the unfinished Brooklyn subway station that a bunch of street artists recently turned into a gallery, New Yorkers need no longer sneak around to see another underground gem.
There is a station hidden beneath City Hall Park, the former terminus of the original IRT subway. Because of its choice location and pioneering significance, the IRT made City Hall Station its most sumptuous stop, a loop of tiled ceilings and wrought-iron columns. It closed, however, in 1945, after longer trains were added and the station could not accomodate them.
The MTA continued to use the station as a turnaround for the 6 train, and daring subway nerds would duck down for a glimpse as the Lex departed the Brooklyn Bridge stop.
All that has changed, however, as Jalopnik points out that riders are now welcome to to take a trip around the City Hall loop. The Observer checked with an MTA spokesman who confirmed that this is indeed now legal.
http://www.observer.com/2010/real-es...vered-graffiti
All they would have to do is paint the trains baseboards so you know what ones would be able to exit at the station......
Don't they already do that on the...9?
The skip-stop #9 was discontinued 5 years ago. They did something like that on the #1 until the new South Ferry station opened. For several stops before South Ferry, the conductor would announce that "only the first 5 cars would open at South Ferry. Passengers wishing to exit at South Ferry have to be in the cars in front of the conductor."
So the last car was populated by me getting off at Rector St, and confused tourists heading for a ride on the SI ferry.
It isn't the best, but if there are only a few places that do this, it is easier to notify them on the trains that do it.
If you had to be in the front 5 for here, or the middle 5 for there on dozens of stops, it could get quite confusing.
Seeing how there is only one left, maybe this needs to be a special tourist stop..... Is it useful? Would it be better just to leave it closed and seal the tunnel so people could walk the tracks as well?
They still use the tracks to turn around the # 6 train.
They should make it an annex of the NYC Transit Museum, which occupies a Brooklyn subway station.Originally Posted by Ninjahedge
Post 754 says there are 'security concerns'.
they don't want people getting too close to city hallPost 754 says there are 'security concerns'.
Love that station. The pics in Merry's link to Jalopnik suggests that people are allowed to get off there, but the age of that subway car suggests differently, as if it's a paid tour with limited roaming privileges. Hope they open it up more, just put on a couple more City Hall security people, though right now they may not want to spend the money. A treasure like this won't stay bypassed for long.
Watching "City Hall" right now. In one of the first scenes, they have a mid-range shot of the building from one of the opposite corners, & what looks like an old railing around something, but couldn't tell what it was. Maybe it was a cameo shot of the subway entrance.
In the City’s Subway, Literary Placards Will Soon Be Mere Echoes in the Memory
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
First, poetry disappeared from the subway. Now prose is on the way out, too.
Train of Thought, the program that placed literary quotations from the likes of Kafka and Schopenhauer in the unlikely locale of a packed New York City subway car, is being removed, two years after it assumed the mantle of subterranean high culture from Poetry in Motion. In its stead is a new promotional campaign by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that is intended to highlight recent improvements to the transit system. A spokesman for the authority said there was not enough space for both.
The loss of the literary placards, which have offered a reprieve from the usual advertising array of laser acne treatments and injury lawyers, marks the first time in 18 years that the subways will not feature a pinch of erudition. Poetry in Motion, the original verse-only series that spawned popular books and copycats in other cities, ran from 1992 to 2008, before being succeeded by the current program.
But Train of Thought, which broadened the author pool from poets to historians, philosophers and scientists, apparently did not achieve the canonical status of its predecessor. The authority chose not to renew a contract with the program’s sponsor, the quiz show “Jeopardy!,” and the series is not likely to return, according to an authority spokesman.
This is a city where comebacks can never be ruled out: witness Williamsburg, the Second Avenue subway and Andrew M. Cuomo, the governor-elect. Indeed, transit officials say there may still be a place in the future for poetry in the subway, but those discussions have not yet occurred.
For Jane Tylus, however, the writing — as it were — was on the wall. Dr. Tylus, a professor of Italian at New York University, is in charge of picking the quotes for the Train of Thought series, and she said her recent conversations with the transportation authority had not boded well.
“We gave them another round of quotes in late October,” Dr. Tylus said, but so far she has not seen them on the subway. (Among the missing selections are excerpts from Rilke, T. S. Eliot and the second-century Greek philosopher Epictetus.) “I am concerned this may well be the last round, if it goes up at all,” she said in a telephone interview.
Officials at the authority said that, for now, they needed the space to showcase their newly redesigned customer service ads. The new campaign replaces the “Going Your Way” and “Sub Talk” mottos with a new slogan, “Improving, Nonstop,” and showcases digital countdown clocks and the installation of new security cameras, among other initiatives.
Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority, said the agency wanted a cleaner, more consistent way to let riders know about its revitalization efforts. “A decision was made to move ahead with this campaign, which is focused on communicating with our customers with the space we have to do that,” he said.
Asked about the future of the program, Mr. Soffin said, “What follows is yet to be determined.”
Still, the agency’s own prose is not quite, well, poetry. “If it’s broke, fix it,” proclaims one placard promoting a pragmatic approach to station maintenance. Compare that to one of Dr. Tylus’s picks, still unseen, from T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
Gene Russianoff, an advocate for riders, said he preferred the more artistic option.
“I don’t begrudge them wanting to put their best foot forward,” he said. “But if it comes at the price of permanently kiboshing the poetry, I think that’s a mistake.”
The original Poetry in Motion campaign began in 1992, inspired by a similar program on the London Underground. Appearing in a grittier time for the subway system, the poems were an immediate smash, earning segments on NPR as well as CNN, where the project was dubbed “verse in the most adverse of conditions.”
Today, remnants of Poetry in Motion still exist, thanks to bus advertisements purchased by the Poetry Society of America, which has raised money to keep the moniker alive in New York and other transit markets.
One recent selection by the group seemed particularly timely: “Death-bed of a Financier,” by Stevie Smith, which begins, “Deal not with me God as I have dealt with Man / In the prosperity which thou hast given me.”
“It was such a bulwark, such an anchor in our day,” said Alice Quinn, the group’s executive director and a former poetry editor at The New Yorker.
Still, the consumption of literature is often a silent, contemplative activity, so support for the program can be difficult to gauge. “I can’t say I’ve gotten tons of e-mails thanking us for doing this,” Dr. Tylus said.
“The subway is not the kind of place you go to have your spirit uplifted,” she added. “But I know, in at least a few cases, that is what happened.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/ny...1&ref=nyregion
Too bad...I'd rather read the poetry than an ad about what the MTA has been up to.
Just another small example of our state of less.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks