January 31, 2006
What Happens When You Take the A Train
An interesting question from today's mailbag:
Do you have any word on the A train delays this morning?Excessive vandalism? Gothamist imagines that would be more in keeping with broken glass bottles, sticky soda, and more strewn tabloid papers than usual - maybe even some human "nuisance," rather than graffiti (as in the 5 train pictured here) or even scratchitti. Does anyone knew what it might mean?I was on an A train leaving 207th this morning that was packed before leaving the station. We went a few stations and at 175th were stopped and told that due to "excessive vandalism" one of the cars had to be taken out of service. The taking out of service was done quickly and we continued on downtown. The train continued to be packed, with people trying to stuff themselves in...
just wondering what constitutes as "excessive vandalism"? Any ideas?
The MTA's new rules. Of course, this makes us think of Billy Strayhorn, who wrote "Take the A Train." Check out the Billy Strayhorn website, a BBC News story about the song, and David Hajdu's biography of Strayhorn, Lush Life.
Photograph by Joseph Holmes
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The whole Subway seems screwed today. The L 8av to Brooklyn was down due to "Police Incident" and the G was down for some reason around 1pm as well. Combine wasted waiting time of about an hour added to an hour walk home. Yay.
Hey Gothamist, I've been wondering- are they ticketing for violations against the "new rules" yet? Haven't heard anything about it.
My friend was on the train in question, in the car next to the excessively vandalized car. To parse MTA-speak, in this case "excessive vandalism" meant someone took a "2" on the A. I'm a bit fuzzy on the logistics of making a deuce in a crowded subway car, but it apparently can be done. Needless to say, there was a mad, mass exodus out of the, er, soiled car.
Ah yes, the "excessive vandalism" of someone pulling down their pants and popping a squat. Now, I didn't see it with my own eyes, but I heard plenty.
I was the one who wrote in and that was what we had suspected had happened... I'd figured anything else would have made the train unable to move from the start.
Rainy days are the worst on the "A".
The combined humidity and the bums make for an excellent combo. Opps, excuse me, the sleeping passengers.
I recall taking the last car on Grand Street shuttle and it was full of "bums", One "bum" shouted "sleeping car" as I stepped in.
I rode an A today that had one of the cars locked down. That might have been the one. The only other time I've seen it was on another A and the conductor said it was because someone had thrown up in it.
More than likely, it was a missing glass on one of the end (storm) doors. That's the main reason a subway car gets "isolated".
I took the A this morning too, and when we got to 168th there were several announcements made that the 1 was "back in service". I had no idea it had gone out of service, but that would certainly explain the fifty people trying to get through two turngates at 207th Street.
"scratchiti" is what the MTA calls it when people "tag" the windows & plastic surfaces with gouged letters.
Technically, "graffiti" means "little scratches" and thus includes these practices.