The Underground Guide to New York City Subways

By Dave Frattini

The only guide you will ever need to travel around New York City by subway.

From the theater district of trendy Manhattan to the quaint residential neighborhoods of Queens, every single station in the four boroughs has been researched to help you maneuver the system like a pro.

Highly informative and resourceful, highlights from Dave Frattini's The Underground Guide to New York City Subways include:

* Noteworthy stations featuring the best in underground art
* The best nearby restaurants for affordable, informal and ethnic dining
* Insightful historic information on the IND, BMT, and IRT transit lines
* A token rating scale that gives an honest assessment of each station's
- Decor
- Cleanliness
- Safety
- Surrounding neighborhoods
- Nearby points of interest such as museums, theaters, parks and shopping

New York City residents and visitors alike will find this comprehensive handbook indispensable for riding the mass transit rails.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781466872493

Dave Frattini

Dave Frattini received a BA in political science from Santa Clara University. He was born and raised in New York and has been fascinated with the subway system since childhood, culminating in his writing The Underground Guide to New York City Subways.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Introductions

SUBWAY 101: THE ORIENTATION

Welcome to my Avalon. A glorious dimension where the pearly gates are centered by a tarnished turnstile, and St. Peter comes in the form of a gruff token clerk named Maury. A wondrous place where the stairway to heaven is often malfunctioning, and the divine ascent must be taken via grimy-banistered stairwells. A paradise only the slightly twisted could enjoy. But for all of its obvious shortcomings, there is no place so sacred to millions of natives as the hallowed railways that embody the New York City subway system.

Fact is, these metallic elephants serve as flowing arteries twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for a city that never sleeps. Even the complicated maps, with their overflow of colors and curves, resemble a Crayola-configured cardiovascular chart. And to dissect and dispel the mystery, you need a highly qualified surgeon to scope and explore every nook and cranny of the grand and sometimes intimidating system. From the friendly confines of 34th Street-Herald Square to the tumultuous enclaves of Franklin Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, this voyage will uncover it all. A journey so involved and so complex that it is worthy of the ultimate label: extreme. Sure it takes balls to bungee jump, snowboard, or hang glide, but it all seems like child’s play when compared to negotiating the treacherous reaches of a dimly lit subway station in the eerie night of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Now if that’s not worthy of coverage on ESPN’s X-Games, I don’t know what is. So grab your miner’s hat, pop some creatine, and prepare to join me on the most spine-tingling adventure ever attempted since sitting through a full episode of The Jenny McCarthy Show. In the immortal words of New York Jets wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, Gimme the damn ball!

Historical Primer: Just the Facts, Ma’am

Now, before this journey of immense proportions is undertaken, we need to provide a brief yet thorough history of the subject. If you tried to surf the Banzai Pipeline without knowing where the reef lay, you would emerge from the sea with your chest doubling for a big, hairy chunk of Swiss cheese. By the same token (no pun intended), I don’t want to feel responsible for some drooling neophyte staggering through Harlem, penniless and clueless. Unlike the crumpled Walkman pamphlets that implore you to Read prior to use, this section should be digested in the comfort of your easy chair, before you set foot underground. Your life and well-being are hanging in the balance! (Dramatic sigh.)

The Beginnings

October 27, 1904. A day forever etched into the graffiti-marred mind of any transit buff. At approximately 9:00 A.M. on that brisk fall morning, the first subway rolled out of the City Hall station for the inaugural journey up to 145th Street in Harlem. With New York mayor George McClellan at the controls, a new era in rapid transit was born. Sure there were trolleys that had toiled above ground in Brooklyn and Manhattan since the middle of the 1800s, but this was the real deal, the subterranean sandblasters. Trolleys are to subways what San Francisco is to New York. Don’t get me wrong, Frisco is a smashing city in its own right, but the residents’ idea of football tailgate food is crusty sourdough and Pinot Grigio. Need I say more?

Anyhow, if success is measured in swarming crowds and near-riot situations, the initial underground jaunt was a bona fide hit. When service opened to the public later on that night, crowds over 160,000 strong jammed into the IRT to experience the promise of going from City Hall to Harlem in a scant fifteen minutes. If today’s rush-hour cram makes you dizzy, imagine the sight of SWAT-garbed policemen beating away the masses with nightsticks as they broke through the turnstiles with the same vengeance as thousands of angry sledgehammers slamming down the Berlin Wall. Two days later, on October 29, the initial fare was set at five cents a ride. This exorbitant amount did nothing to deter the rail-starved public. Dense conditions continued to be the norm as the underground novelty lasted for months upon months.

Expansion continued, and by the summer of 1905, there were six additional branches of subway in operation. But as the warmer weather approached, one problem begged to be addressed—the Transit Authority’s questionable claim of underground air PURER THAN YOUR OWN HOME. By hiring Columbia University faculty member C. F. Chandler to conduct a fabricated study of the below-street atmosphere, the T.A. assumed that all fears about the oxygen quality would be squelched. However, when the asphalt-coated tunnels heated up to well over one hundred degrees, the demand for proper ventilating systems was screamed loud and clear. In stark contrast to today’s sometimes lead-footed Transit Authority, the IRT engineers acted quickly and efficiently in installing ventilating chambers along the line to allow the stale, arid air to escape while allowing fresh, preozone-era gusts to refresh the perspiring crowds. Facing predictable start-up problems from minor nuisances to major catastrophes such as the air-compressor explosion underneath the East River in 1905, financier August Belmont’s brainchild, the IRT, flourished and continued to develop into what is today’s 7th Avenue Local, made up of the 1, 2, 3, and 9 trains. By 1906, the IRT had expanded into The Bronx, establishing what is known as the 4, 5, and 6 Lines. It wasn’t until 1915 that the section of track going from Grand Central Station to Vernon Avenue in Queens was complete, kicking off service on everybody’s favorite purple-patterned subway line, the good-old 7 Train.

Second Child: The BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit)

While the IRT set the stage with a crude, workmanlike rolling fleet, the BMT aspired to pick up some of the stylish slack left behind. With fancy mint-and-white lighting, red-leather seats, and cars with names like Bluebird and Green Hornet, the BMT seemed to come straight out of a Saturday Morning cartoon. While compiling facts on the history of this line, I detected an air of arrogance and elitism. It turns out that my impulses were correct, for the original purpose of the BMT was to shuttle the rich and privileged to the faraway lap of luxury by the shore. The extravagant resort village of Coney Island. It is quite hard to fathom that Coney Island was once a playground worthy of a Robin Leach visit, but in the early 1900s it was the place to be seen. Today, I’d be hard-pressed to walk around Surf Avenue at night without an M-16 under my coat, but for the sake of history, let’s go back to an earlier time.…

The day is June 22, 1915. The beach-blanket season is in its infancy, and the BRT (later BMT) makes its maiden voyage from the foam-kissed sand of Coney Island to the hustling grind of Chambers Street in Manhattan. This newfangled subway line happens to be an offshoot of the snooty Bath and Coney Island Railway, which kicked off its service in 1867, just after the Civil War. Soon after that memorable June day, service would commence on what is today known as the J, M, and Z Lines throughout Jamaica and Williamsburg en route to downtown. However, for all of the positive advances made by the BRT, it all came crashing down, literally, on November 1, 1918, when the worst subway disaster in the system’s history took place at Malbone Street in Brooklyn. Due to the use of the earlier-mentioned posh subway cars on the heavily traveled lines, the BRT was content to implement rickety old wooden cars on the remainder of the system. This moment of aloofness came full circle when rookie motorman Ed Luciano, oblivious to the unique nature of the line, lost control of his archaic chariot and violently crashed into a waiting car at the foot of the Malbone Street tunnel, killing ninety-seven people. After the crash, New York mayor John Hylan waged a public war against the BRT, refusing to pump money into the line’s budget. The network seemed doomed, until the election of 1924 brought in subway-friendly mayor Jimmy Walker. Not to be confused with the skinny seventies comedian of the same name, the man affectionately known as Gentleman Jim had the subway hierarchy screaming Dyn-O-Mite! when he increased the budget that would enable the BRT to open the hallmark repair yard in Coney Island. This gigantic overhaul center is still in use today and can be clearly seen from the N and R Lines as they begin the Stillwell Avenue descent into Coney Island. From that moment on, the BRT was renamed the BMT and came to be the catalyst for modern subway planning. And they all lived happily ever after.

Today, the BMT Division operates the J, M, and Z Brown Lines, the L Gray Lines, and the N and R Yellow Lines. Many aspects of those early 1900s stations are still evident today, especially the open-cut stations of the N and R Lines, which pierce through the neighborhood backyards of Bensonhurst and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.

Spend, Spend, Spend: The IND (Independent Subway System)

Eight hundred million dollars. To some that may seem like a great deal of wampum, but it will probably be the sum of Shaquille O’Neal’s next basketball contract. Needless to say, when ground was broken on the baby of the three major subway networks in March 1925, eight hundred million dollars was still a helluva lot of money.

Safety is priority number one! That was the tag line of the Walker administration during the foundling years of this budget-busting addition to the already-fabled Gotham City transit cluster. And while the fiscal planners popped Tylenol to alleviate their dubious number-crunching mission, there was a marked decline in the number of fatalities during the construction of the IND. While workers had regularly dropped like flies when plying the IRT and BMT, less than ten people perished while completing the IND handiwork—a fact Mayor Walker proudly gushed whenever publicly questioned on the staggering monetary statistics. Of course, there were also hints and allegations that Kid DynoMite was occasionally dipping his hand in the till for a little side reward, but New York was so smitten with the charismatic politician that it gave him a figurative slap on the ass while whispering, Naughty, naughty into his ear.

On September 10, 1932, the 8th Avenue Line opened amid little fanfare on what is today known as the A Train. Shortly after midnight, sixteen trains arbitrarily positioned somewhere between Chambers Street and 207th Street in Upper Manhattan began the journey, picking up and discharging passengers much as the line does today. No fireworks, barbershop quartets, or gin-laden celebrations to commemorate the historic event, just the dulcet tones of Transit Board chairman John Delaney, who peered at his watch and barked out instructions for the clerks to open up shop. Talk about anticlimactic.

The true test would come approximately six-and-a-half hours later, when the IND would weather the first rush-hour crowds. And to no one’s surprise, the commute went off without a hitch. So efficient was this new service that the first system malfunction didn’t occur until 3 P.M. that afternoon, when a ventilator broke down on 59th Street, causing a ten-minute delay. When weighed against today’s agonizingly long impasses in the middle of nowhere, a ten-minute delay seems like the blink of an eye.

In 1940, service began on what is known as the 6th Avenue Local (B, D, F, and Q Trains), and if the 8th Avenue Line was a monetary drain, the 6th Avenue junction was a greenback sinkhole. Though the line was just under three miles long, the total cost from groundbreaking to straphanging was approximately sixty million dollars. And you thought Ishtar was the world’s biggest bomb. After World War II, however, the IND really took off. Within a few quick years after VJ Day, the 8th Avenue Line extended into the far reaches of Euclid Avenue in Brooklyn, while the 6th Avenue portion extended almost to the dairy farmlands of Nassau County, terminating at 179th Street in Jamaica, Queens. In 1950, Jamaica was about as far east as you could venture without running the risk of actually bumping into farm animals.

Another unique aspect of the IND was the composition of the stations themselves. Abandoning the expensive and time-consuming design that can still be found along sections of the IRT and BMT, the architects decided to unveil a new, easy-to-maintain system of white and colored tiles, which has become the standard for today. However simple the idea may sound, the arrangements still produce breathtakingly beautiful examples of mosaic and bas-relief.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

While a main goal of this book is to spotlight the much-maligned subways for something other than random criminal acts, I have also tried to break each stop down by dividing its characteristics. While waiting for the next train to arrive, pull out your scalpel and settle your stomach, for we are about to sever the skin and get to the blood of guts of our journey.

NOTEWORTHY DECOR: Let me say right off the bat, do not have any aspirations of becoming one. On the other hand, you don’t really need a Ph.D. in Fine Arts to appreciate the diversity of underground art. While some stations seem to have a Michelangelesque level of beauty, others seem to have been designed by Mike Brady after an all-night drinking binge. The beautiful part of it all is, one man’s garbage is another man’s delight. What I have basically done is to describe what I see. If a station has a charming 1920s-style motif but is nauseatingly filthy, the filth is duly noted. At one station, there literally was a pair of dirty skivvies on the walkway. So if you’re looking for an in-depth discussion of whether the 50th Street mosaic is in Elizabethan tact, this is the wrong place.

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Station Art

One of the best features of the subway is the extensive yet varying collection of pièces de résistance that adorn many of the depot walls and windows and in some cases the floors. I am totally convinced that you could travel to the Met, the Louvre, Chicago, Boston, and wherever else there is a so-called major museum and not find the bountiful displays that make this system the most fragmented gallery anywhere. Some of the works are in good taste, while others make you wonder if the artists were stoned on smack when composing their works, but one thing is definite: you can admire the works for as long as you want and in any position you want, and you do not have to deal with dirty looks from elitist dweebs in turtlenecks, as is the norm in any popular New York showing center. Typical museum jibe: Excuse me but your tacky Rollerblades are blocking my vantage point of the Chagall. Refreshing subway response: Yo lady, lose the attitude and chill. You almost certainly would be removed in a gallery. However, underground, presumptuousness is not tolerated. Here is a small sampling of some of the better displays the system has to offer.

60TH STREET-MANHATTAN: With this station’s newly installed white-tile base and beautiful mosaic work featuring the sights and sounds of Central Park (directly across 5th Avenue), you cannot avoid a recurring sensation that can only be described as warm and fuzzy. The colorful depictions of squirrels and other furry friends will surely put a smile on even the biggest grouch’s face.

ASTOR PLACE-MANHATTAN: This stop is high on my list because many a night I have attempted to pick up a girl on the station’s platform. I suppose I can attribute the maddening rush of testosterone to the various beavers tastefully displayed in stone imprints high atop the tiled walls. But for all of my masculinity and bravado, not once have I got lucky from a connection made beneath the hallowed street. Still, the station remains a haven for chicks of all sorts, and those with a better line than my pathetic opening of Come here often? will surely succeed in securing companionship.

90TH STREET/ELMHURST AVENUE-QUEENS: If you ever have the desire to trip out on acid, but can’t afford to score, just take a little excursion to this remnant of a bad 1960s SoHo loft. The decor features bizarre green airport relics coupled with stapled walls of sheet metal and a design of block windows straight from Keith Richards’s worst hallucinations. The arrangement is so cantankerous that even Andy Warhol would be repulsed. Groovy flashback material.

BEST BET FOR GRUB: Oh, what better pleasure in life exists than stuffing something delicious into your hungry, salivating mouth? In BEST BET FOR GRUB, the emphasis isn’t on pricey five-star cuisine. I’m likelier to recommend a good, quick meal or snack that can be easily digested by the time your uptown express screeches into the station. Expect to see take-out joints, delicatessens, and coffee shops. And while occasionally you’ll come across a decent cafe or trattoria, we’re looking to satisfy a craving on a MetroCard budget. In some cases, there were absolutely no places where you would want to grab a bite. Whether because the neighborhood was bad or because it was just a dining desert, these places had slim pickings. In such instances you won’t find any entry under this category—and believe me, it is to your benefit.

Panhandlers, Performers, and Psychos: The Underground Population

Once you swipe that MetroCard and push your gut through the turnstile, you are entering a completely new world that goes by different rules and regulations than those of the daylight realm. Your first encounter will probably come in the form of a belligerent panhandler who hasn’t shaved or showered since the Nixon administration. This is a dilemma that can often confuse and befuddle the uninitiated into forking over multiple greenbacks for fear that the smarmy chap will start shooting. Take solace, most beggars are too poor too afford a gat, but by following these simple rules of thumb, you will save yourself a lot of trouble, anxiety, and later guilt for being painfully cheap.

PANHANDLERS: The golden rule is to avoid them at all costs. Unless they are obliviously so downtrodden and hungry that you won’t be able to sleep without offering them some change, please refrain. Chances are that your pittance of money will be pooled with other bleeding hearts to get one mighty drag off a crack pipe or a few swigs of Cisco. If they are really that starved, there are soup kitchens and churches throughout the city that will gladly give them a hot meal and a place to sleep. And don’t worry about repercussions—most hobos are more used to rejection than Denny Terrio on a 1999 dance floor. Be especially aware of the deaf people who silently place pens on your lap in hopes of a dollar donation. I once fell for the scam and later saw the same mute woman gabbing it up on an uptown train. When I angrily questioned her about her miraculous gift of speech, she fell predictably quiet. A little late, girlfriend.

PERFORMERS: This is where it gets dicey, but my generosity often leads to an assumption that if they have the cojones to tap-dance throughout a busy subway car, then goddamnit, I can pop a dime in their crumpled coffee cup. Some of the shows are actually very entertaining, as I can remember an aging magician who amazed the Q Train with dazzling sleights of hand, illusion, and even pulling a live bunny from a hat! Amid the thunderous applause, I dropped ten bucks into his cap, forgetting the fact that I was en route to meet a lady friend and had a grand total of seventeen bucks in my wallet. Needless to say, the date ended early, but the show was worth it. While later riding home alone, I became flustered when I realized that this guy must have pulled in at least a hundred bucks from that one ten-minute show. One hundred dollars times twenty trains a day equals the conclusion that my college degree is a completely worthless slice of embossed cardboard.

In the same vein, use some discretion. A one-toothed wonder staggering up the car in an intoxicated haze mumbling the chorus of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot isn’t worth more than a dirty nickel. And if you really want to look like a hero, cup the change in your hand and deposit it in his chalice without anybody seeing how much you actually offered. You’ll look like a prince to your fellow riders, and the minstrel will hold you in higher regard than last night’s dumpster behind Carmine’s. That is, until the next guy plops a quarter in his hat.

PSYCHOS: One problem with New York is that when deinstitutionalization occurred in the 1970s, most of the mentally ill had nowhere to go but the parks and subways to seek refuge from the elements. While they seem awfully frightening sitting in a heap of dirty garbage barking at the moon, the truth is that they are probably more scared of you than you are of them. One holiday season, I offered to buy an elderly woman a cup of coffee, and she seemed genuinely appreciative. All was well until she explained to me how she tapped something in her brain and couldn’t stop hearing violent voices that told her to kill. That ended my caffeine charity work and told me to just put my head down and walk. It may seem heartless and cold, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let some Haldol-deprived maniac perceive me as the Anti-Christ and take a chomp out of my neck. Sorry, but I still have nightmares from when my father let me watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the less-than-mature age of nine.

DOUBLETAKE: I believe this is the most fun category of the lot, because when I was compiling features to list in DOUBLETAKE, the only rule was that there were no rules. We all know that the New York City subway system is noted as a place to see some of life’s offbeat characters and I have done my best to capture the qualities of these different souls on paper. In addition to the bizarre, the underground is also home to innumerable charming performers, enchanting musicians, and impromptu vendors. This space is also used to record some of the Transit Authority’s major gaffes, blunders, and extreme cases of care or disregard. Like the heading says, if it makes me turn around twice, it will be heard.

NEARBY: Here, a local attraction deemed worthy of attention will be listed. Again, since many stops are located in small, quiet neighborhoods or in a place where you wouldn’t want to spend five minutes, the choices might be limited in the outer boroughs. Nevertheless, there are plenty of attractions that the subway will bring you to, and I have tried to pick and choose the best (not necessarily the most popular) of the best.

TOKEN RATING: On a scale of 1 to 5, with ½’s factored in, a general rating is given to summarize the above characteristics and overall nature of the station area, with more weight given to the station. So if a particular stop is sparkling from a recent renovation, but the area is under martial law, I took that into consideration. It’s akin to having Ebert traipse through New York, pointing his thumb either up or down in approval or disgust. This section is also handy as a way to weed out the garbage when undertaking your own extreme straphanging tour. Would you rather burn in the inferno of Queens Boulevard or bask in the glow of 5th Avenue? Ultimately, the choice is yours.

A Word on the MetroCard: For years, the undying symbol of the New York City subway system was those round little coins known as tokens. People loved the tokens due to their often unique and sometimes bizarre designs, but the most appealing aspect of the subterranean currency was the fact that it could be hoarded. Frequent fare increases prompted this hamsterlike practice of buying hundreds of tokens and storing them away, thereby avoiding the new surcharge. In fact, one year I decided to surprise my father by gift-wrapping a box of twenty tokens as a Christmas present. While his characteristic look of disgust let me know that I had hardly impressed him, I had done him a wonderful service by saving him two dollars, since the fare was about to jump from ninety cents to a buck (and he had given me twenty bucks to buy him a present anyway). In the mid-1990s, the MTA got wise to the money they had been jobbed of, so they have slowly phased out tokens as the main fare pumped and replaced them with the MetroCard, a plastic, yellow declining balance fare card that must be swiped through the turnstile in order to gain access. On July 4, 1997, the MTA forever endeared themselves to commuters who in the past had to pay $1.50 for a bus and then an additional $1.50 for the subway by introducing the free bus-subway transfer. For people who live in the outer boroughs, this was a godsend, as their traveling expenses were immediately cut in half. The purposes of the plan were to increase ridership and to make more money available for the maintenance of the system. The first goal has been reached, but I’m not so sure about the second. Currently there are four types of cards available, with three of them designed to save the avid train rider a little bit of cash. They are:

• The Standard Pay-Per-Ride Card, at $1.50 a fare. Every ten fares nets the commuter a free fare, meaning that if you bought a $30.00 card, you would have credit for $33.00.

• The $4.00-a-Day FunPass. Ride the trains and buses as many times as you want in one day. The catch here is that you must wait eighteen minutes between swipes, meaning that you and your group of friends won’t be able to pass the card back and forth for entrance.

• The $17.00 Weekly Pass. Same theory as the fun pass, except that you get the card for a full week.

• The $63.00 Monthly Pass. You don’t need me to describe this again, do you?

Anyway, like all things plastic, the card is susceptible to cracks and creases that might cause it not to work. Just be patient with it, and if the turnstile reads, SWIPE AGAIN, never change turnstiles, as you may lose credit for a fare. And even though the MTA advises you to keep refilling the same card, I urge you to get a new card every time, as the elements and usage might wear down the magnetic stripe on the