Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)I visited New York City for the second1 time in November of last year to tour universities and check out the city as part of a three week long trip, most of which I spent in Toronto working. The second half was boring, so I’m going to focus on New York. While there, I shot a bunch of photos and Vallery edited them. This is a collection of those photos, and observations and things I learned while there.
Arival
Image Credit: Unedited iPhone shot, meI came in on a redeye2 and landed at JFK at ~7:30am. The night before, at my gate in SFO, I had finished The Power Broker. I was greeted when I woke up a couple minutes before landing with a nice big “fuck you” from Robert Moses himself. Or at least his Jones Beach parking fields (which are unfathomably large). As we dipped lower, I realized my worries had been for no reason, and it was still East Coast fall. You can see an LIRR Rockaway Branch train in this shot.
I hoped onto the JFK AirTrain, paid my $8 (fuck you, Port Authority!), and then bougtht a $5 CityTicket and took the LIRR to Manhattan’s newest station, Grand Central Madison. Watching the city go by it started to set in that it was real and I was in New York. I’d been excited for this trip for months. Then we dipped below ground after Harold Interlocking, where the Northeast Corridor and LIRR meet (busiest rail junction in the country!), whizzed under the East River and into glorious shiny Grand Central Madison, deep below Park Avenue. I hopped on the (long) escalator up, and took a moment to admire Grand Central Terminal, which I neglected to take a photo of.
I hopped onto the (7) train and then transferred to the (1) train at Times Sq. I got off at 86 St and waited for Jeremy to come meet me for breakfast (thanks for hosting me Jeremy!).
Image Credit: Unedited iPhone shot, meBroadway in the Upper West Side is really pretty. The IRT Broadway line runs under the street from Times Square north, creating a median for ventilation. Jane Jacobs talks about these medians and the benches in them in The Death and Life. Aside from being a beautiful and interesting place to people watch from, these medians also act as a nice pedestrian refuge.
After spending a couple nights in the Upper West Side with Jeremy, I decamped to my hotel in Flushing, Queens.
[The] Flushing [Line]
Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)Nearly everywhere along the Flushing Line, which runs through Queens, offers incredible views of something. It’s a great line to take photos on, because it’s super frequent (every 2 minutes during peak, every ~6 rest of the day), making it easy to jump around a lot. Queens is really diverse (I beliebe it’s the most diverse county in the country), and is full of little ethnic enclaves, so every stop is different.
Image Credit: United iPhone shot, me
Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)The Flushing Line is also amazing if you’re into taking pictures of trains. It’s elevated and windy and straight, and trains are 11 cars long.
Seriously, these trains are looong, and busy.
Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)The end of the line
Flushing is one of New York City’s nine Chinatowns, and the one with the highest perentage of recent immigrants. Flushing may be out on the end of the line, but it was always busy, and even on my 3am walks to get delicious cheap Chinese food, I would see hundreds of people.
Staying at the end of the line is something I’ve never done. In my previous trip to the city, my mom and I stayed in Midtown. To save money (New York hotels are expensive), I stayed in Flushing. I’m glad I did. Being in Flushing meant that I had to ride the (7) at least a couple stops every morning, which meant I got to get into a routine: walk ~10 minutes from hotel to Flushing-Main St, board (7) or <7> Express train, Ride to Queensboro Plaza, grab a bacon egg and cheese (on hard roll), eat, hop back on the train, and head into Manhattan.
Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)Queensboro Plaza is a seriously cool station: it’s a stacked cross platform interchange, or in normal people words, it’s where two subway lines meet for a transfer where riders just have to walk across the platform to catch another train. The upper platform carries trains going east and the lower serves trains west, so if you’re making a same-direction transfer, there are no stairs involved. The (N) and (W) trains run east to Astoria and west toward Broadway in Manhattan, and the (7) runs east to Flushing. To the west, it immediately turns south before diving under the East River and then running under 42 St in Manhattan.
MTA understands how to run a rapid transit system
Image Credit: Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)The least frequent headway anywhere on the NYC subway runs is 20 minutes, and that’s only during the late night. The scale of the subway is unfathomable. It moves 2,4000,000 people per day on 656 miles of (revenue) trackage,3 through 468 stations, over 68 bridges and in 14 underwater tunnels.