Stranger in a Strange Land

David Freddoso has a Brainwash column on the differences between New York and D.C. I think it’s probably one of those, “Oh shit, I have a column to write, what do I do?” columns that, let’s face it, everyone who has ever even thought about having a column—or any sort of regular writing, really—has written, and that bloggers writer almost exclusively, but it’s really quite good anyway. (Sometimes that happens. Things you write that you think will be TEH AWESUM end up sort of mediocre, and half-assed ideas that you throw together in panic at 1:30am the night before and finish editing three minutes after your deadline end up being surprisingly good. A teacher once told me that most writers only like 30% of what they like. Anyway.)

Freddoso writes:

I’ve been back all of three times since I left in 2001. But The City has a way of seeping into one’s bowels and staying there for years. That’s my excuse, anyway, for telling off that kid yesterday who was panhandling in Union Square, wearing nicer clothes than I own. It’s why I step in front of people at street-corners, keep my eyes straight ahead, and walk as though there’s a tribe of screaming cannibals on the block behind me.

It’s why I could not resist looking at the Subway map for five minutes to figure out how the new (as of 2002, I think) train lines would have affected my old daily commute from Midtown to Bay Ridge.

Just a few friendly hints about the Subway for Washingtonians: Don’t expect to understand a word the conductor says -- it’s actually against the law for them to speak English or any other recognizable language over the train loudspeaker. Don’t refer to the trains by colors, don’t stand back to let people off the train, and DO NOT call it “Metro.” Most importantly, don’t smile or act like you’re happy about life while riding the Subway, or else everyone will know you’re from out of town and you’ll definitely lose your wallet.

Let’s see…the 6 to Bleecker Street, the B to Pacific St., the N to 59th Street, the R to 86th Street -- ah, I’d have one less step in my commute if I still lived here. That is, unless there’s a track fire, or my train derails, or some idiot pulls the emergency brake and costs me 30 minutes on my ride home.

It’s true that when you live in a city like this, at least when living on less than six figures, you become obsessed with public transportation, partly because you spend so much time on it, because the way it works and doesn’t work, its schedules and failures and quirks and unspoken rules, become integral to your way of life. The New Yorker had a great piece on “extreme commuting,” which sounds like a new event at the X games that will eventually become an Olympic sport (sponsored, perhaps, by various coffee companies? The Starbucks Open? The Folgers Annual?), a few weeks back, about how fixated people become on the tiniest details of their commutes:

People who feel they have smooth, manageable commutes tend to evangelize. Those who hate the commute think of it as a core affliction, like a chronic illness. Once you raise the subject, the testimonies pour out, and, if your ears are tuned to it, you begin overhearing commute talk everywhere: mode of transport, time spent on train/interstate/treadmill/homework help, crossword-puzzle aptitude—limitless variations on a stock tale. People who are normally circumspect may, when describing their commutes, be unexpectedly candid in divulging the intimate details of their lives. They have it all worked out, down to the number of minutes it takes them to shave or get stuck at a particular light.

I grew up in what one of my New York-born friends calls “car country,” and the whole concept of public transportation was, for most of my life, as foreign to me as tea time or universal health care, so it was a strange feeling to be lured in and consumed, Sarlac-pit-monster like, by the maze of tunnels and rails that hums constantly under and above the city. I can sometimes even feel the quakes and shimmers of the F train as it passes by under the road near my apartment.

The subway system is one of those things that defines New York, like Central Park, because most everyone uses it, even though everyone knows the city is neurotic about its trains, I get the impression that most residents, especially the lifers, don’t find this all that strange. They’ve been staring at Subway maps since they could walk. But even though I’ve been sucked into it myself, I can’t help but think how odd it is, how mentally-consuming it can be, how in the vast majority of the country, if someone wants to go somewhere, he or she just gets in the car and goes, and they park right out front and that’s that.

But this is New York, and the normal rules don’t apply, and things don’t quite work the way you expect or want, and some people, possibly myself, just don’t and won’t ever get it, while others are lifers, creatures of the city no matter where they are, foreigners anywhere outside the city’s borders. It’s not just those who grew up here; you can move in and find yourself snapping into the city’s structure like a Lego, going native and living the City life. I’ve tried, I think, but it hasn’t happened yet to me. And thus, though I live and work in New York, and love my neighborhood, and know where to get a mate latte in Park Slope and where to get a good sandwich in Murray Hill and am no longer actively annoyed by having to walk two blocks to switch to the 6 train from the F at Bleecker St., I am not now and, I suspect, never will be, a New Yorker.