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@fantaghiro 2016-06-27T09:56:47.000000Z 字数 18532 阅读 17376

B1U3T1 Letter from America: Notes from the Underground

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One of the biggest surprises of my life in America is the New York City subway. I've actually come to enjoy it. When I firt moved here in 1989, well-meaning friends warned me away from the already 80-year-old underground railroad, notorious among both residents and visitors as the least pleasant and most dangerous means of getting around this City That Never Sleeps. Yet it was also the fastest and the most economical means of doing so.

I've actually come to enjoy it.

When I first moved here in 1989, well-meaning friends warned me away from the already 80-year-old underground railroad, notorious among both residents and visitors as the least pleasant and most dangerous means of getting around this City That Never Sleeps.

Yet it was also the fastest and the most economical means of doing so.

With that dilemma, I began my life as a New Yorker -- and I've remained ambivalent ever since. The subway is the thing we love to hate. Schedules are unreliable. Trains come when they come, or not at all. Breakdowns are so frequent that women have been known to give birth, stuck in some tunnel. Staff are few and their announcements incomprehensible. The infrastructure is ancient and crumbling. From time to time, burst water pipes flood stations, paralyzing traffic. The city's homeless live on the platforms, sleeping on benches (or in the trains themselves) and heightening passengers' insecurity. Every few months the papers report the familiar horror of yet another innocent randomly pushed under the wheels of an oncoming train. Muggings, rape and murders are not common, but they happen. Add to this the often dirty cars and graffiti-scrawled stations, the hellish heat in summer and the arctic freeze of winter, and you have quite an indictment. A writer at The Washington Post called the New York subway "a near-unworkable mixture of the ancient, the old, the outmoded and the inefficient." and he was being sympathetic.

With that dilemma, I began my life as a New Yorker -- and I've remained ambivalent ever since.

The subway is the thing we love to hate.

Schedules are unreliable.

Trains come when they come, or not at all.

Breakdowns are so frequent that women have been known to give birth, stuck in some tunnel.

Staff are few and their announcements incomprehensible.

The infrastructure is ancient and crumbling.

From time to time, burst water pipes flood stations, paralyzing traffic.

The city's homeless live on the platforms, sleeping on benches (or in the trains themselves) and heightening passengers' insecurity.

Every few months the papers report the familiar horror of yet another innocent randomly pushed under the wheels of an oncoming train.

Muggings, rape and murders are not common, but they happen.

Add to this the often dirty cars and graffiti-scrawled stations, the hellish heat in summer and the arctic freeze of winter, and you have quite an indictment.

A writer at The Washington Post called the New York subway "a near-unworkable mixture of the ancient, the old, the outmoded and the inefficient." and he was being sympathetic.

Why, then, do New Yorkers swear by it? One reason is economic: $1.50 to travel any distance, anywhere in the city. Compare that with a $12 cab fare from, say, the United Nations to Columbia University, on the other side of Manhattan. Traveling to New York's so-called outer boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx -- anything entailing a bridge from Manhattan -- can easily cost three times as much. The subway is also fast. A ride from midtown Manhattan to Flushing Meadows, the site of the US Open tennis tournament, can take as little as 25 minutes: the same trip is upwards of an hour by car, and then you still have to find parking. Small wonder that even millionaires (which is to say, anyone who owns a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan) carry a Metrocard. And considering just how much moving and hauling the subway does each day, you can't help but be impressed. For the subway is an enduring marvel of mass-transit engineering: trains make 6,800 trips each day over 731 miles of rail, carrying 3.7 million people.

Why, then, do New Yorkers swear by it?

One reason is economic: $1.50 to travel any distance, anywhere in the city.

Compare that with a $12 cab fare from, say, the United Nations to Columbia University, on the other side of Manhattan.

Traveling to New York's so-called outer boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx -- anything entailing a bridge from Manhattan -- can easily cost three times as much.

A ride from midtown Manhattan to Flushing Meadows, the site of the US Open tennis tournament, can take as little as 25 minutes: the same trip is upwards of an hour by car, and then you still have to find parking.

Small wonder that even millionaires (which is to say, anyone who owns a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan) carry a Metrocard.

And considering just how much moving and hauling the subway does each day, you can't help but be impressed.

For the subway is an enduring marvel of mass-transit engineering: trans make 6,800 trips each day over 731 miles of rail, carrying 3.7 million people.

The subway, I find, is also oddly liberating. It takes you not only to your destination, but along the way to another world. As you wait for your train, you can listen to (sometimes) talented musicians from around the globe, some merely pounding on drums, others trying out their best tunes for whatever patrons will put into their hats. Your fellow riders are a jostling microcosm of a teeming cosmopolis: men, women and children from every stratum of society, of every imaginable color, sporting all kinds of dress (or undress) and chattering in most of the languages of the planet. Romances among subway riders are not unknown; marriages have been reported betwen people who met as straphangers.

The subway, I find, is also oddly liberating.

It takes you not only to your destination, but along the way to another world.

As you wait for your train, you can listen to (sometimes) talented musicians from around the globe, some merely pounding on drums, others trying out their best tunes for whatever patrons will put into their hats.

Your fellow riders are a jostling microcosm of a teeming cosmopolis: men, women and children from every stratum of society, of every imaginable color, sporting all kinds of dress (or undress) and chattering in most of the languages of the planet.

Romances among subway riders are not unknown; marriages have been reported betwen people who met as straphangers.

Of course, there is no first class. On one trip recently, I noted a Wall Street banker heading home in his business suit next to a dreadlocked Rastafarian in torn blue jeans, as a Bangladeshi waiter disapprovingly eyed a miniskirted Hispanic secretary across from him struggling with her lipstick. Above them, a public-service ad in Spanish showed cartoon characters learning the importance of AIDS prevention. If the United Nations is where the world shakes hands, the New York subway is where the world rubs shoulders.

Of course, there is no first class.

On one trip recently, I noted a Wall Street banker heading home in his business suit next to a dreadlocked Rastafarian in torn blue jeans, as a Bangladeshi waiter disapprovingly eyed a miniskirted Hispanic secretary across from him struggling with her lipstick.

Above them, a public-service ad in Spanish showed cartoon characters learning the importance of AIDS prevention.

If the United Nations is where the world shakes hands, the New York subway is where the world rubs shoulders.

Ambivalent I may still be. But I've come to believe something else about the subway -- that it epitomizes, as nothing else can, the city's soul. New York journalist Jim Dwyer captures something of this urban spirit in his book "Subway Lives." "The subways have become the great public commons of the city," he writes. "Only in the dim warrens of the subway, cursed accomplice of daily existence, can the full spectrum of city life -- with all the bewildering diversity of its pathologies and its glories -- be glimpsed, felt, and at times even understood."

Ambivalent I may still be.

But I've come to believe something else about the subway -- that it epitomizes, as nothing else can, the city's soul.

New York journalist Jim Dwyer captures something of this urban spirit in his book "Subway Lives."

The subways have become the great public commons of the city

Only in the dim warrens of the subway, cursed accomplice of daily existence, can the full spectrum of city life -- with all the bewildering diversity of its pathologies and its glories -- be glimpsed, felt, and at times even understood.

I'm not quite so poetic, but I do know that the subway is as essential to the character of New York, to its soul and sense of itself, as the Empire State Building or Central Park. That's something many well-heeled tourists don't realize. You haven't been to New York if you've never taken the subway.

I'm not quite so poetic, but I do know that the subway is as essential to the character of New York, to its soul and sense of itself, as the Empire State Building or Central Park.

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