Devoid of ideas this evening, so here's a nearly empty N train.
I believe these are called weepers. I don't know why I know that. They are passive vents that let humidity escape outside so that moisture doesn't collect on the station walls. Yes, I don't have much to say today.
Uhh...
The downtown express line track bed is being replaced near 59th St. so there's heavy equipment on the downtown line and lots of construction crap on the uptown express line.
Oooh, my first YouTube video. The video screen at Bleecker St. was either malfunctioning, or a brilliant piece of abstract video art this afternoon. The video looks especially good when looped over and over. If I can figure out how to do that I'll put it up on YouTube as well.
Good news for all us weekend 2/3 train riders! The express trains have been running local, so work could be done on the express tracks, since last winter. It seems like much longer than that. If the MTA is to be believed (ha ha ha, sometimes I crack myself up!) there are only five more weekends of disrupted service. While going local only adds a few minutes to a trip, all the starting and stopping makes that trip drag on seemingly forever.
One thing I'll miss when service returns to normal are the seemingly regular subway-riding New Yorkers who haven't quite caught on that there has been a service change. I see this all the time at 96th Street. The downtown 2/3 pulls into the station, someone starts toward the train but stops when they see it is not the 1 (for non-New Yorkers reading this, when the 2/3 runs local it stops at all the stations the 1 stops at so there's no sense in waiting for a 1 train). I'll also miss the panicked dash out of the uptown 2/3 at 96th when riders realize the train isn't going up Broadway.
C train
N/R/Q/W platform, 14th St/Union Square
Maybe I'm being overly picky but a hand-scrawled phone number on a subway poster doesn't seem like the best way to find a vacation rental.
Subway personals - better than craigslist!
Photographed on 21 Jan 2006
Photographed on 4 Feb 2006
Same stairway on the downtown N/R/Q/W platform at Times Square. This stairway was originally supposed to be done in December. Then it was postponed to April, and within the past two weeks the completion date has been pushed back to the end of May. The plywood surrounding the stairs has shrunk since I took the top picture. New tile that has been laid out but not cemented in place is visible. There is still bare cement around much of the stairs, however. Peeking through the plywood reveals the old stairs in rough shape, perhaps being prepared for refurbishment.
I don't know much about stairway construction but should it really take four months to repair a flight of stairs (on top of the year plus the stairs have been closed)? Seriously, I'd like to know why this has taken so long.
Unrelated: Homeland Security - very concerned about the vegan menace.
Brief Restaurant Review: Tiny's Giant Sandwich Shop (Rivington at Norfolk) - anything with the chipotle mayo is delicious. Vegetarian and carnivore friendly. Interestingly, like at Sparky's a few weeks ago, Pavement was on the stereo. This time it was Terror Twilight.
Remember the passage way in Times Square that I mentioned a few days ago? The one that had been rescheduled to open in late-January? This one? Well, it was open on Saturday morning. One wall had yet to be tiled but you could pass through. I wonder if it was re-opened to handle the New Year's Eve crowd above the station?
Times Square passage way near the 1/2/3 lines (by Jack Beal's "The Return of Spring/The Onset of Winter" mosaics.)
Times Square passage way near the N/R/Q/W line
Then again, it hasn't been much of a passage way for a year or two. Walking through the Times Square subway station yesterday morning I almost stopped to take a picture of the sign in the bottom photo when it read "Dec 29, 2005" figuring it would change. Little did I know that the date would be pushed back by later that afternoon. The original re-opening date was July 2005, then September, then November, then December 19th, then December 29th, now January 28th or 29th.
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