Photo of the Day: Subway Flute Quartet, NYC

I had two quite different experiences with musicians underground this past Saturday afternoon.

Early in the afternoon, at the Columbus Circle subway station, a drummer played so loudly that it felt like noise pollution to me. Though I was trying to transfer to another train, the assault on my ears was so insistent and protracted that I fled the station.

But later in the afternoon, at a different station, not far away, I was lucky to hear the ladies from Flute Swept. You can see them, in this photo I took at the time, but I wish you could have heard them. I hate to use the words “smooth” or “sweet,” but their music sure went a long time from removing much of the bile from my spirit that had been building up all week.

Photo of the Day: Columbus Circle Subway Station, NYC

I’ve been passing through the Columbus Circle subway station for 40 years, back to when I attended Schafer Music Festival concerts in Central Park. I had gotten, I thought, immune to the general banality and dinginess of its interior. Then, a week ago, I was surprised—and glad to see—the dash of color on the mural I photographed on my way down to catch the subway.

Quote of the Day (Comic Dan Wilbur, Speaking Like a True NY Commuter)

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 684 times, you're the G train.” — Stand-up comic Dan Wilbur, tweet of May 4, 2013

Photo of the Day: Second Avenue Mess

Christopher Gray’s “Streetscapes” column in today’s New York Times Real Estate section discussed photographers’ massive attempt to document the enormous change that occurred in New York a century ago when the city’s first subway was built. Reading the piece made me resolve to do my small part in the next logical chapter in this visual history: to illustrate the upheaval caused by the long-delayed building of the Second Avenue subway line.

A few weekends back, I happened to be around Lexington Avenue in the Eighties, a neighborhood I don’t think I had visited in nearly 30 years, and I was only doing so now because 1) I would be seeing a relative who would be out of the area for the next several years, and 2) I had gotten a ride in. Considering what I saw and heard—the drone of construction equipment, traffic clogging the surrounding streets, the ugly outcropping from the bowels of the earth (as in this photo I took)—I don’t think I’ll go back soon.

Sure, something like this is also happening in Lower Manhattan. But at least below Chambers Street, you can already see the outlines of a small city taking shape—the culmination of New York’s attempt to rebound, bigger and better than ever, from 9/11.

It’s hard to see what’s taking shape below ground, uptown on the East Side. Heck, it’s hard to see when they’ll make an end of things above ground, which is what we can actually observe right now.

This being New York, I’m always doubtful that any construction deadline can be met. I’m especially skeptical after reading a post on the Web site The Launchbox, devoted to the progress of the new line, indicating that the Metropolitan Transit Authority could miss its deadline by three months, at least.

Stay tuned…

Photo of the Day: Welcome Whimsy While Subway Waiting

The 50^th Street Station, one of the stops for the No. 1 line in Manhattan, is not one of the newest, cleanest, brightest subway stops in New York City’s labyrinthine system.  Nor am I going to argue that this tile mosaic in the station’s waiting area, which I photographed this weekend, is one of the world’s great works of art. Still, it’s representational and, more to the point for tired, beleaguered commuters, cheerful. One more, admittedly small, thing to be thankful for this week.