True… — Photo by Diego Cupolo

Standing in the middle of a rumbling J train, my shoulders weighed down by the 30-pound bag on my back, I made sure to get one last look at the tar-glazed, graffiti-covered rooftops rolling by the window on my way to Grand Central.

To my right, a Hispanic couple sweet-talked into each other’s ears, giggling after every exchange. To my left, a young Polish woman smiled as she watched a mother entertain her restless newborn. Behind me, a Middle Eastern businessman exhaled in frustration as my overstuffed backpack repeatedly bumped into his arm.

Though the scenario was far from extraordinary, it was perfect. Every time I travel, even if only for a few days, I have these moments, these reflections of how much I truly enjoy living in the organized neuroticism that is New York City, the international sample platter that is Brooklyn and, most of all, the unpredictable sphere of Latin flavor and creative energy that is my neighborhood — our neighborhood.

I hadn’t even crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and I was already missing everything from my long-winded neighbors, to the super-cheap bars that always play the right music and those late night rehabilitation binges at La Isla Cuchifritos. While my time away would be limited and with good company, I began thinking about my return to the only place I’ve ever comfortably called home … Bushwick.

Enjoy the holidays everybody.

The Z will be gone. The J will have no more express service. The M will see service halved; you’ll have to switch trains to get to South Brooklyn. The brown lines that serve Bushwick are getting the brunt of the MTA’s cutbacks on subway service. Get ready for more crowded trains and platforms. Thanks to the City’s own financial crisis, we can expect to pay more and get less — at least in government services. Stay tuned.

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?