Found this awesome photo of elevated tracks on flickr, but I can’t figure out exactly where it might be. Most of the storefronts are obscured by the track’s pillars and contrasted out, and where in Bushwick under the M or JMZ does the road curve like that? Any ideas?

After 80-some years, the original Morgan L platform column signs have crumbled to such an extent that the MTA has commissioned artists to make brand-new ones. They seem to have had some old ones in storage (which I sort of accused an innocent person of poaching), but I guess those ran out. I appreciate the love for our subway facilities, but maybe the money spent on cosmetic things could be better used to make the trains run more frequently (since that seems to require rocket science and NASA-sized budgets to bring about). And whoever it is dousing the station in bleach so that it feels like waiting for a train at Auschwitz needs to learn how to dilute.

I found a set of lost keys on the J train on Friday around 9:15pm. I saw them when I got on at Marcy, headed east. What to do? Leaving them seemed pointless. Their owner has virtually no chance of finding this same train again. Maybe by some long and odd stroke of luck, weeks from now, the owner might happen onto the train and see them. The key ring could spend weeks sliding back and forth on the seat and floor. But at any time, I reasoned, someone could kick them from the train down to the street. Or someone could just pick them up and keep them as a memento or make some art from their lonely uselessness. I decided to give them to the conductor. He just laughed and put them in his pocket.

Sometimes I feel like the keys.

One of the first times I took the J train out to the Halsey station, one of the many reasons I felt like I had stepped off the map was the station itself. All the stations prior to it (and after it if you get to Broadway Junction) have decorative colored glass panels adorning the platforms. Halsey had no such thing, favoring beige-painted solid walls, interrupted only by a small section of chain-link fencing at one end (and there’s probably some code thing that insists on this). Because of this disparity, Halsey seemed especially forlorn, like the MTA just didn’t care enough about our little stop.

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Whoa. Did this girl remove one of the column mosaics from the Morgan Avenue ‘L’ station — and post the carefully arranged evidence to an online, public photo album? I mean, it’s not exactly a Kanakaria mosaic but it’s still some pretty significant vandalism of a historic facility. …though it would be cool to have subway sign mosaics as a kitchen backsplash. Hmmm…

CORRECTION AND APOLOGY: It turns out that no, the photographer did NOT take this mosaic, but merely took a photo of a worker replacing an old one. In my rush to put up interesting content, I slandered an innocent person. I’m sorry.

Photo of Knickerbocker M Station sign by spreetaper, from the BushwickBK flickr pool

If like me, you push subway turnstiles with your forearm instead of your palm, you’ll enjoy this news. The nasty M line stations in Bushwick and Ridgewood are earmarked for some fix-up funds. The MTA plans to spend $3.7 BILLION on renovations in various Brooklyn subway stations over the next 4 years. The L stations have already received some much-needed attention — ever think you’d see fresh grout in an NYC subway?

Of course it has to be said that if slightly more than a modicum of maintenance had been afforded these pitiful stations over the years, they would not need massive redos now. Only OUR government could let a system crumble like this one has, failing to see the propaganda value of a showcase mass transit system. I say let’s Draft the Donald!

It’s almost 2008, and the JMZ line is still sending Bushwickers into Manhattan on rickety, smelly old trains from 1969. This may be about to change: Mike reports that this past Monday they ran those shiny new trains with the digital displays for the J and Z.

“Imagine my surprise Monday morning when this pulled in to Myrtle Ave. Finally! A J train that doesn’t leak when it rains.” Well said.
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One of my housemates, whom I bumped into on the train today, told me that last night cops were handing out these flyers at the Morgan Avenue L station. “Remember to close and lock your doors and windows when leaving your residence” — Are people moving into this neighborhood really that oblivious? “Put things out of sight before parking your vehicle” — I would do that in the Upper East Side, forget Bushwick.

These bits of wisdom are brought to you by the 90th Precinct.

Thoughts?

Luis took this picture on his way in to work last week, saying this wasn’t even the Morgan L station’s most crowded point that morning.

This city is so third world sometimes. If it’s not asbestos-caked steam pipes exploding in Midtown, shutting down a housemate’s office building for weeks, it’s a little rain putting almost the entire subway system out of service. The same housemate walked to the Morgan L stop this morning, saw it wasn’t working, then walked to the J, which was “packed like the L.” So he took a cab to Bedford to meet up with coworkers there, and they all took the L, which was working at that point, to Union Square. Since the 4 was also not running, they walked to Midtown.

My partner Luis didn’t get housemate Yury’s call this morning to warn him about the train, and ended up waiting in the humid heat for the shuttle. It took him an hour and a half to get to 22nd and 6th this morning. BushwickBK’s own Matt L, who works on the Upper West Side, took the intermittent J to Essex. Because the buses were crammed with people, and the taxi cartel was booked, he walked to 23rd and 8th, and then took the A — running local since the C and E were out — uptown. A three hour commute.

As for me, my printer might have gotten fried, and Cablevision’s phone system seems to be down right now, but it sure is nice to be in the a/c at home, not having to worry about snaking my way through a clogged, broken city. Good luck with that, suckers!

Any other Bushwickers got any good transit horror stories? Share them in the forum!