SUBWAY MUSEUM

Took a trek with Cara over to Brooklyn to meet her friend Jenny and visit the MTA’s Transit Museum. I’m smitten with the subways and even more so with how the goddamn things were built. I for one don’t take any of the engineering that went into these things for granted. If I had any sort of mechanical inclination I would have probably ended up doing these sorts of projects. It’s the scope of the thing that gets me.

The museum is huge and the exhibits and graphics are brilliant. The museum itself is an old station for a short line that was decommissioned long ago for lack of use. That old Walter Mattheau subway-hijack film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, was filmed there. First floor is all exhibits on how the tunnels and bridges were built, as well as more information on tokens and token-taking machines that any one human could possibly need. It’s the second floor—the actual subway platform—that’s so amazing. Here restored cars from every era line the each side of the platform for half a block, all in immaculate and gorgeous condition. The place has this eerie feel to it, as if you can sense all the people who have rode these cars before. That sense of history that makes you feel like a small part in the bigger picture. My biggest regret was getting there late and having a short time to see everything. Then again there was a perfect moment when they started closing down the museum and the lights shut off in blocks, the platform getting darker and darker and the cars spookier and spookier… until finally we had to leave.

• • •

Also ate White Castle Burgers for the first time that day. They were delicious but the restaurant was almost the saddest fucking place I’ve even eaten. Filled with more obesity than humanly possible. Just sad fat is what it was. And the bathroom was filthier than the average Honeybucket. We made up for it by chasing down some hole-in-the wall place in Chinatown that night that made hand-pulled noodles. I ordered fish balls and almost gagged, but the food was cheap and the dumplings and noodles in peanut sauce were tasty. Watching the cook beat the shit out of the dough until it separated into strands of noodles was nothing short of surreal, and to add to it, the music was this bizarre mix of disco and impossible-to-categorize pop music that made the whole meal a trip to bizarre.