"A comedian and his friends are transforming a vacant retail space at the West 4th Street station with freebies, art and puppet shows to make commutes more enjoyable."

I'm reading "A Newsstand That Aims to Delight N.Y.C. Subway Riders" (NYT gift link).

Trading cards that highlight fun facts about retired subway conductors and operators. Key chains with a fake rat’s foot for “good train luck.” A bucket hat with a sliding veil that riders can borrow to cry in private.... The transit-themed newsstand will have no other purpose than to amuse and intrigue New Yorkers....

Nice photos. I like this kind of art installation. Comical. For the people.

Billions of dollars and still no end date.

1. "The Iran war now has a price tag ($25 billion), but still no end date" (NPR).

2. "California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly seven times 2008 estimate" (Fox26News).

"I dreamed I was on a train, the subway kind of train where you face people sitting on the other side, and Trump was right across from me. He started reading The Gettysburg Address…."

That's what I texted Meade just now, so then I pasted the statement in Grok. Didn't ask Grok to do anything with it, certainly not to write it up into a short short story, but that's what it did:

The car rattled along the elevated track, fluorescent lights flickering like a bad motel sign. I was wedged between a guy scrolling TikTok and a woman clutching a bag of oranges. Across from me sat Donald Trump—orange as the fruit, hair defying gravity, suit somehow unwrinkled despite the heat. No Secret Service. No crowd. Just him, me, and the Address. 

"Subway surfing, in which people ride atop or hang off the sides of fast-moving trains, has been around since the transit system’s earliest days more than a century ago."

"But it has grown more deadly in recent years, especially among teenagers inspired by sensational videos of the practice, city officials say.... City and state officials and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have ramped up efforts to dissuade young people from subway surfing. Since 2023, the police have used drones to catch subway surfers in the act. The M.T.A. has been working with social media platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, to remove subway surfing footage...."

From "2 Girls Found Dead Atop a J Train in Suspected Subway Surfing Accident The teenagers, found unconscious on the roof of a train in Brooklyn, appear to be the latest casualties of a popular and deadly game" (NYT).

The New York subway system began in 1904, and I wondered about those early incidents. Here's a report in the NYT from May 16th of that year:

"My last wish will be just one thing/Be smilin' when I die/I wanna be one toke over the line, sweet Jesus...."

I blogged when Brewer died — last December — so I will blog the death of Shipley: 

"Tom Shipley, Whose Ode to Weed Reached the Top 10, Dies at 84/With their 'One Toke Over the Line,' he and Michael Brewer saw a musical in-joke turn into a timeless cultural phenomenon" (NYT).

ADDED: From last December's post: "The singer was 'sitting downtown in a railway station" and "just waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary.' Even if the song originated from an exclamation about smoking marijuana, it seems that the substance of the song is religious. The metaphor of the train is seen in other songs, such as 'People Get Ready (There's a train a-coming....') and 'This Train (Is Bound for Glory).'"

"The idea of high-speed rail has a nearly erotic appeal to progressives, who love communal trains over individualized autos..."

"... and think cars are destroying the planet whereas trains can save it. High-speed rail is to transit what windmills are to energy — an environmentally correct, futuristic technology that will always under-deliver.... The current focus is a line between Merced (pop. 93,000) and Bakersfield (413,000).... The original estimated $33 billion cost is now $35 billion for just the scaled-back line, and more than $100 billion and counting for the whole shebang. There is no reason that the feds should pour good money after bad supporting a preposterous project that doesn’t have any national significance. California governor Gavin Newsom — too embarrassed to admit failure or too drunk on visions of European-style rail — remains fully committed. In a statement, he said Trump’s defunding decision is a 'gift to China,' as if Beijing cares whether people get to Bakersfield by car, plane or high-speed rail...."

Writes Rich Lowry, in "Behind the ‘boondoggle’ of Gavin Newsom’s high-speed rail dream" (NY Post).

Why don't people who care about the environment simply stop traveling? Even if the line did connect L.A. to San Francisco, as it was originally sold, what is the need to go back and forth between these 2 cities... or any 2 cities in America? The high-tech solution is not high-speed rail. It's virtual connection. The amorphous interest in appearing somewhere in the flesh does not deserve a taxpayer subsidy. 

"The 'rawdogging' phenomenon has apparently gone underground, with young subway-riding professionals... star[ing] at their fellow commuters instead of a book or their phone..."

"... an alleged form of rebellion against return-to-office policies. Curiously dubbed 'barebacking,' the NSFW-sounding practice involves forgoing all tech and either gazing into space or — even worse — making repeated, awkward eye contact with other passengers ...."

The NY Post reports, with a link to a TikTok video that seems to be the wrong link. It goes to something on a completely different subject.

I think the Post is getting pranked here, but it is funny to think of protesting in that manner. The person who just wants to be able to stay at home is not the kind of person who invites conflict on the subway. Upping the slang confusion is another tell.

How to dress to work in the garden... if you are a goddess.

I got that image from the front page as it looks right now. It's sandwiched between "Tesla Sales Are Slumping, Even in the Most E.V.-Friendly Place" and "After a Slow Start, High-Speed Rail Might Finally Arrive in America."

Those 3 things in a row... oh, New York Times... must you?

IN THE COMMENTS: Aggie said, "Well, at least they got a good picture in that place away from the cameras."

"The train that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project I think I've ever seen."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump slams California's over-budget, behind schedule high-speed rail project as 'worst managed project' he's ever seen" (Post Millennial).

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "The train that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project that I think I've ever seen... Hundreds of billions of dollars over budget... We're going to start an investigation of that." pic.twitter.com/CPEgTdv16w

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 4, 2025

I blogged this issue a lot 10 or so years ago. For example, in 2012: "What a disaster! Remember a year and a half ago, when Wisconsin elected a new governor who said he'd kill the high-speed rail deal? I was a single-issue voter for Scott Walker then, and that was my issue." And I wrote this in 2011:

"More than 400 passengers were on board a high-speed train near Paris on Christmas Eve when the driver opened his door and apparently jumped off..."

"... leaving the passengers to speed away at 186mph. But within half a minute, the train’s controls averted disaster: they detected the driver’s absence and brought it to a halt 1.5 miles down the track by Melun, 25 miles south of the capital.... As trains up and down the line were slowed and halted, no contact could be made with the driver, who had been alone, locked in his cabin.... 'We really couldn’t understand what had happened'.... After 15 minutes a ticket inspector walked up the track, forced open the driver’s door from the outside and found the cabin empty. For more than two hours, emergency service personnel searched the dark line with torches. The driver’s body was spotted eventually by a fire service infra-red drone.... Suicides are common in the Christmas period but it was the first time in the SNCF’s history that a driver had jumped to his death from a speeding train...."

From "Hundreds of passengers saved after driver jumps from 186mph trainAutomatic stop technology halted the TGV from Paris to Saint-Étienne after the driver apparently took his own life" (London Times).

The transport minister gave credit to the driver for committing suicide by jumping out of the train rather than by derailing it.

"You would have to hike for days to catch the same views they saw travelling through.... She likens a moving train to 'the ultimate dolly'..."

"... the wheeled cart that allows a film camera to capture travelling, panoramic shots. It was 'bonkers' to discover how close the tracks ran to the rivers; on the west coast they were so close to the sea they were practically in it. There’s a snobbery, too, about certain states, which is both political and aesthetic. The central states are often dismissed as the 'flyover states' — miles and miles of cornfields worth seeing only from 35,000ft. But, Edwards says, the 'middle of nowhere' often gave her the most exciting shots. 'You could just see such a long way.... And when you did see something significant, it made it almost more unbelievable that it might be able to exist so far from all other activities.' The emptiness sometimes made her feel anxious.... 'Have I got enough shots? Is this interesting enough? Where is everybody? Where are all the animals?'"

From "Why I spent 180 hours on a train across America (with my dad)/Katie Edwards travelled 10,000 miles on Amtrak, taking 20,000 photographs on the way. She tells Laura Freeman what she saw out of the window" (London Times).

Edwards grew up in the Lake District in England, which makes me think of William Wordsworth and his dedication to walking. Walking, you can always stop and look at whatever you want. It's easy to take photographs (or, if you must, write a poem in your head, stomping out the meter). But I like Edwards's train photography project. It was easy to catch sight of many more things, but difficult to get the shots at the right time (and to deal with reflections in the window glass). 

I like seeing the outsider's view of America:

"Riders on the subway deserve to have a ride where they don’t feel threatened. And the mentally ill deserve to have the treatment and the protection..."

"... that would allow them to work out their struggles in the protected space. We can’t have a subway system that’s both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are incompatible goals."

 Said Gregory Umbach, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, quoted in "After homeless man choked on subway, NYC grapples with treatment of mentally ill" (WaPo).

The incident makes me think of Bernhard Goetz, and reading on, I see he's briefly mentioned in the article:

One of the most famous incidents occurred in 1984, when Bernhard Goetz, a White man, shot four Black teenagers he said he believed were going to rob him. Goetz became a folk hero in a city dealing with sky-high crime. The media called him the “Subway Vigilante.”... 

It would be good to say more about why he became a folk hero. It is, I think, evidence of how oppressed ordinary people felt about what they had been forced to endure on the subway — or felt forced to endure. Goetz represented the idea of somehow fighting for your right to be left alone in this public space. 

But the Goetz case was different. The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter. 

"'Horror.' That’s how one train operator recently described the scenes he sees daily."

"He declined to use his name because he was not authorized to talk to the media. Earlier that day, as he drove the Red Line subway, he saw a man masturbating in his seat and several people whom he refers to as 'sleepers,' people who get high and nod off on the train. 'We don’t even see any businesspeople anymore. We don’t see anybody going to Universal. It’s just people who have no other choice [than] to ride the system, homeless people and drug users.'"

From "L.A. riders bail on Metro trains amid ‘horror’ of deadly drug overdoses, crime" (L.A. Times).

"Publicly and privately, signs are growing that the Transportation secretary’s usual Eagle Scout patience is giving way to frustration."

It says here in Politico, in "Buttigieg world frustrated at GOP attacks over train wreck/'Pete Buttigieg has taken a lot of bullets for the president on this,' one senior Democrat said."

I think Politico means this to be taken for serious analysis. 

"I continue to be concerned about the impacts of the Feb 3 train derailment near East Palestine, OH, and the effects on families in the ten days since their lives were upended through no fault of their own."

Tweeted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, after experiencing some criticism from Republicans for his lack of visibility after the disaster. 

I'm reading  "Drink bottled water, officials tell Ohio town hit by toxic train crash/The derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, released more hazardous substances than first reported, adding to the distrust and fear of nearby residents" (WaPo)

"Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, [Conan] O’Brien developed two lifelong obsessions. The first was The Music Man...."

"After O’Brien heard [Robert] Preston’s showstopping song 'Ya Got Trouble' for the first time, it wormed its way into his brain. 'I always wanted to play the Robert Preston part and do the "Trouble" song,' he says. 'I just love the "Trouble" song.' O’Brien’s other fixation was the work of filmmaker Irwin Allen, who produced disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. They all stuck to a specific formula, and they were all entertaining as hell. 'The beginning is always great promise,' O’Brien says. '"We built this wonderful skyscraper!" There’s a lot of talk about the skyscraper, and then there’s always a dire warning: "You should worry about the electrical system and the smoke alarms." Don’t you worry about that! Then, there always comes the moment where all the celebrities are being brought in for the big grand opening.' Then, it all goes to shit. 'Somehow, all those things are swimming around in my head,' O’Brien says. It just took a space-age train to bring them together. 'It unfolds really naturally because once you have the idea of a Music Man selling you a monorail, you know Homer’s for it, the town’s for it. … Well, who’s going to be against it? It’s either Marge or Lisa, because they’re sensible. For me, it was Marge. She’ll be the voice of reason who senses this isn’t wise. The first part is Music Man. The second act is an Irwin Allen disaster movie.'"

From "Throw Up Your Hands and Raise Your Voice! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Thirty years later, Conan O’Brien reflects on the making and legacy of 'Marge vs. the Monorail,' one of the best ‘Simpsons’—and sitcom—episodes of all time" (The Ringer).

Is Elon Musk a screwup?

1. "Elon Musk’s ‘Hyperloop Prototype’ Was Always a Gimmick" (NY Magazine)("The so-called hyperloop is a theoretical pneumatic-tube transportation system that promises supersonic, emissions-free ground transportation, and people have been talking about it since the 19th century... [Musk] started tweeting about it... which led to many breathless profiles, which led to many people believing that Musk not only invented the concept of the hyperloop but was on the verge of building it").

2. "Elon Musk Is Bad at This/The Musk era of Twitter has so far been defined by unhinged tweets, fleeing advertisers, and botched layoffs" (The Atlantic)("Musk’s fans see the billionaire as a visionary, but it’s worth noting that many casual observers—people whose only real understanding of Musk is as the guy who put the fancy electric cars on their streets—have also internalized the heuristic that he is Good at Business and the type of man who spends his waking moments dreaming of how to save humanity from its existential problems. But what the past two weeks demonstrate is that Musk is, at best, a mediocre executive—and undoubtedly a terrible, distracted manager").

3. "Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall/So far Twitter Blue is a mess and might even lose money" (The Verge)("Managers agonized over the [firing] decisions and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them").

4. Neuralink? "Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater/Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep" (MIT Technology)(“In a lot of ways,” Musk said, “It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires").

5. There will never be colonies of human beings living on Mars! Some people just love this fantasy, but come on!

6. I saw a Tesla driving in my neighborhood yesterday and I said out loud: "I'll bet a lot of Tesla owners are mad that the thing they thought made them look cool now seems right wing."

"I was totally naïve when I took the job. I spent my time and didn’t succeed. I realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn’t smart enough. I don’t know how they can build it now."

Said Michael Tennenbaum, "a former Wall Street investment banker who was the first chairman of the rail authority 20 years ago," quoted in "How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned" (NYT).

In which I curate TikTok so you don't have to scroll. Tell me which of today's 10 filmlets delight you.

1. In the 90s, you had to wear a thong.

2. Asking Irish people to do an American accent.

3. Present day celebrities who look uncannily like somebody in a photo from the distant past.

4. Things he's apologized to his wife for.

5. An actor and scholar of acting explains what's so wrong about Amber Heard's testimony.

6. A clear aerial view of Rich Strike's impossible Derby win.

7. The alien welcomes you to space.

8. A man in his 20s with "the social life of a pensioner."

9. Trainspotting in Miami.

10. The insufferable vocal fry of indie films.

"Witnesses to the shooting described the gunman as a short, dark-skinned man with a heavy build wearing a green construction vest and gray sweatshirt."

"The van was spotted in front of an apartment building on West 3rd Street just off the Kings Highway shopping strip in the Gravesend neighborhood, the senior law enforcement official said. The official also said that a gun had been found inside the subway station. The authorities have not released a suspect’s name, nor a motive for the attack. But another high-ranking police official said that the attack appeared to have been planned and showed no signs of having stemmed from something spontaneous like a dispute on the train. As the shooting unfolded and the doors of the N train opened, sending smoke billowing through the station, fearful riders fled, many of them hurrying onto an R train sitting across the platform. Subway seats and cars were streaked with blood as people called for help."

The NYT reports.