Subways are for sleeping: NYC Transit survival thread

I rode it Saturday night, to get to the gay bar in Wmsburg after the Mets game. Not bad at that hour.

Sometimes I take the A train at the same time a baseball game has gotten out and people are going home, and then I curse the parents that bore me.

So many ways to be annoyed on the subway, so little time.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bedbugs-found-3-n-line-subway-trains-article-1.1893220

where is baseball affecting the A train?

http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/96700509489/how-memorizing-19-05-can-help-you-outsmart-the-mta

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/23/new-york-subway-homesick-london-underground-mta-map

lolololol it seems fairly clear that she was living on the ACE.

if she was confused about which train was the local vs. express that resulted in 3 extra stops before reaching hoyt schermerhon, then she was getting on at nostrand, where the express and local are *on different floors*

and the train letter and number is on the side of every car at least once, except for me today since I was on a train with some dead electronics: no signboards and no air conditioning, the latter giving me a nice taste of the london underground.

her complaints: air conditioned cars, express trains, color coding by manhattan trunk lines, and too many fonts (?? should just be helvetica aside from some odd ancient signs)

her legit complaints: dilapidated stations, cluttered map, no countdown clocks

I am a willing victim of any and all nyc subway trolling. I'm ashamed.

otm

the map isn't needlessly complex, it needs to be complex, because there are just a lot of weird things going on in the system

legit complains: 'I ask the unimpressed, triumphantly unhelpful MTA staff.'

I can't believe she's complaining about AC, it's almost like there were zero typical NYC summer days this summer.

NB I have come close to passing out on the F platform at Herald Sq before.

not that it doesn't have its problems too, but I like something closer to the map on the right, just for clarity (and for separating local and express lines):
http://www.kickmap.com/images/7_wholemap_comparison.jpg

a movable icy tundra

this is the best part!

YES. cv, where is that map hosted?? I used to have a bookmark on something hosted by Columbia but it went down years ago and I never replaced it. I want to look at that one.

I miss the affordability of the days when NYC was as dilapidated as the worst stations. Redilapidate promptly!

that map still has the W and V trains
xp

Thought revive would be about E train slowdown this morning.

that map is this: http://www.kickmap.com
it only exists in full as an app, but it's the one I tend to use.

http://www.kickmap.com/about.html

xxxp Well it is from 2007. I can't blow it up anymore on my tiny screen so I can't see the station details.

did you pay for the full thing or just get the free ap?
xp

With all the non-subway information that the current MTA map does show - like the location of all the heliports in the city - it doesn't offer this simple but important piece of subway information indicating what station stop to get off to turn around in case you miss your stop.

Delightful!!!! I want this!

Yeah, separating the express and locals as distinct visual lines makes a LOT of sense. Sometimes I feel like the mapping is caught between practical-mindedness and hardcore transit blogger types who resist any change that would further obscure the physical geometry of the tunnels and their roots in the "IHT Nth Avenue Line" or whatever. I don't care, I basically want a network of warp zones where I can glance at the map, pretty quickly, and see what gets me where, with the fewest stops. I dunno if the Kickmap is nailing that 100% but it's better, and wayyyyyy less ugly. NYC is this viper's nest of graphic designers, it must be miserable for them to see the thing every day.

Weirdest thing about the Kickmap: it purges commuter trains! I guess that doesn't matter most of the time, but it's an important route option on weekends. Taking the subway to, say, Flushing Meadows is a real drag but for $1.50 more you can get there from Penn Station in like twenty peaceful minutes.

I think most transit nerds prefer the simplified map, to be honest! I mean, we've always got nycsubway.org if we want to look up track and yard maps or whatever.
kickmap does a some things that annoy me in a few places: there's a really dumb curve shown the G train between Fulton, Clinton, and Classon for instance, and the display of a lot of the streets is sort of nonsensical and might be better omitted a lot of the time. I have the pay version fyi... I like the neighborhood breakdowns (more to argue about)

Neighborhood breakdowns also just make it more fun to stare at the map while killing time at the platform IMO. They could make it a fundraising thing - pay a buck to suggest a change to your neighborhood's boundary, other people are paying to try and push it back or delete the made-up neighborhood entirely.

NB I have come close to passing out on the F platform at Herald Sq before.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, September 24, 2014 10:02 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Waiting for the F at West 4th once half an hour delay I got off the subway 20 pounds lighter from water loss

I am convinced that the downtown F is 2x-3x as frequent as the uptown and my friend disagrees

not at PM rush, it doesn't seem

and for weekend interborough travel i always forget to ADD AN HOUR

if you have not been at the west 4th station at 1am on a Friday night you are missing out

Every time I catch a train at 1 AM there the train stops in between stations to let off MTA workers

that stop is a serious melting pot crowded full of hipsters, homeless, businesspeople, dates, meatheads, tourists, kids, MTA workers and buskers round that time

It's mostly been NYU fratbros and their dates when I've been

i may be getting there a bit later than 1 to be fair
but there's always rasta guitar player and sometimes tap dancer and dulcimer player and always always some dude with a full fucking drum kit
and a lotta full-on fabulous queens and cranky old men and a churro cart lady and the dude who really should've taken an uber and is realizing that now

hey, some of these subway movies def worth seeing on the big screen (Pelham 123, obviously)... i've never even seen Style Wars or The Incident, among others.

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/retro-metro

http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-09-24/film/bam-retro-metro-review/

style wars is super great

I'll be seeing Pelham for surr

I've never seen a churro cart lady day or night at w 4 and that was my stop for a year

Minnelli's The Clock is really great.

dayo i'm back of the F train; i see churro carts out there about mid platform.
The Clock is A+, yes

i have never bought a ny street churro, can anyone confirm deny that i am missing out?

The Clock is splendid, but i believe it is alone in that series in being shot entirely in Hollywood USA.

6th ave L platform is where I always used to see the churro cart

got em a couple times and they were always super greasy and tasty

i used to work until 2am-3am in chelsea four days a week, which led to routine waits of up to 30 minutes at west 4th and/or jay street. pretty unpleasant, especially in summer. rat-sized cockroaches, dog-sized rats, etc

the people are interesting, but i didn't really want to have conversations with them, let alone stave off the paranoia of the fucked up ones

"and the train letter and number is on the side of every car at least once"

this is lies