10-Mile Run

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Running!  The act of putting one foot in front of the other, and propelling oneself forward, at speed.  Once upon a time, I couldn’t stand doing it.  It was boring, it was painful, it made me nauseous, and it was something my dad was obsessed with, and God knows, I didn’t want anything to do with his interests back then.  But one thing I’ve always had an excess of was energy.  Insane amounts of energy, actually.  I had always been a walker, walking distances other, car-bound mortals found preposterous, even in the pedestrian purgatory of suburban Pittsburgh during high school and college.  Running and I were clearly on a collision course with destiny, and it was just a matter of when it would finally become an obsession for me, not if.  The extreme effort required of me to recover from a particularly nasty accident I suffered in my early 20s was the foundation for this obsession, and then moving back home to the walker’s paradise of New York City became the catalyst.

Not long after finally completely moving back to New York in 2010, I began running regularly, first managing regular 3-mile, 30-minute runs, then graduating to 4 and 5-mile runs.  But it wasn’t until I took on the only slightly psychotic challenge of running a full marathon, like my father many times before me, that I fell head-over-heels for it.  Training for the 2013 Pittsburgh Marathon sent me on 8, 10, and 12-mile runs, culminating in a complete marathon.  Once that was done, I was officially hooked, and now, I easily run a total of 25 to 35 miles every week.  I cannot go a week without running anymore.  It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 degrees and there’s a blinding snowstorm outside, I will go running if I feel that I need to.

People really don’t understand this.  Running, to people who don’t do it regularly, is the exclusive property of the insane.  Running for more than 20 minutes, much less for 120, without stopping, is utter madness to most.  There are times when I’m describing a particularly long run to someone, and I feel as if I’m describing a visit to the Planet Zarkon in the 8th Dimension to them.  I might as well be speaking Klingon, they really just don’t get it.  “How do you not get bored?”  “How do you keep going?”  “What does it feel like?”  “What do you do to pass the time?”

With all of this in mind, as I ran a particularly intense 10 miles from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn to Astoria, Queens last Saturday, I made  a point of paying attention to what I was thinking, feeling and seeing as I went, so that I would be able to share with you, gentle non-running readers, just what it’s like to run this seemingly magical distance.  Running on the street in New York is always interesting, to say the least, so there was a lot to make a note of.  But it won’t be as deep or informative as you might be expecting…

Here was my route…

I was in Brooklyn to look at an apartment for my upcoming move at the end of April, and decided to go in my running clothes so I could take off right afterwards.  I rode the 2 Train from Fulton Street in Manhattan, saw the apartment, then took off.

 

START: NEVINS STREET, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Beautiful day, beautiful weather, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt while running for the first time in ages, here we go!  Let’s go south first.  Maybe I can run through Park Slope, or all the way to Coney Island, or something.  I’ve always wanted to run that way.  Yeah, I’m gonna run that way!

.5 MILE: WARREN STREET, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Yeah, screw it, I don’t want to go to Coney Island.  It’s all flat from here to the ocean, and that means dodging strollers in Park Slope.  Let’s go north, instead!  Maybe I’ll run over one of the bridges into Manhattan, eventually.

1 MILE: ATLANTIC AVENUE, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Oh, hey, a group of slightly-scary looking old guys of some variety.  Hello, gentlemen, please don’t look at me.  I wonder if the fact that I’m all in black, including my socks, makes me more intimidating?  Wait, why am I going east?  I’m going away from Manhattan.  …Huh.  North.  I was going north.  What’s a good avenue to go north on?  Bedford goes all the way to Greenpoint, and right through the middle of Williamsburg…  And it’s Saturday, so there won’t be 800 Hasidim looking at me like I’m an alien as I run through South Williamsburg.  Yeah, okay, Bedford.

2 MILES: LAFAYETTE AVENUE, CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN

Clinton Hill is really pretty.  The brownstones are ridiculous.  My God, what a beautiful day!  This winter has been freaking horrible.  I really want to run in this kind of weather all of the time.  Clearly, I need to move to San Francisco.  GAH!  STROLLERS!  Okay, now I’m in the middle of the street, squeezed between parked cars and driving cars, because FREAKING STROLLERS.  Damn strollers.

3 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN

Holy crap, this area has gentrified.  But still, it’s kind of depressing that trash pickup clearly becomes less of a concern the moment you cross east of Classon.  It’s like the city doesn’t even care.  Oh, hey, some scary looking guys.  Hello, scary looking guys!  Please ignore my sensitive nature, and focus entirely on my 6’2″ height.  …I’m getting sick of listing to “Vale Decem“.  Why do I keep listening to “Vale Decem”?  It’s basically a funeral dirge.  What does that say about me?

4 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN

Okay, I clearly miscalculated on the “no Hasidim glowering at me” thing.  Wow, that was a stare.  It can’t be me and my hairy legs scandalizing that guy, it must be that I’m like some kind of omen, like a reminder of scandalously dressed attractive female runners.  “BEWARE!  SHIKSA FOLLOW IN MY GENTILE WAKE!!”  Under the bridge, and here comes hipster Williamsburg.  HOLY CRAP!  WHERE THE HECK DID ALL OF THESE PEOPLE COME FROM???  Whoa, whoa, whoa!  People, stop walking your damn bikes on the sidewalk!  Oh, God, all the boxes of records inexplicably being sold on the curb!  …Did I just see a 20-year-old guy with a full-blown prospector beard dressed like Captain Jack Harkness?

5 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN

Okay, then, legs hurting a bit now.  Hipsters and their bikes…  Dodging all of that didn’t help my ankles.  And wow, I’m still hurting from that demented SoulCycle class on Thursday…  Wait.  Wasn’t I going to go back into Manhattan?  Queensboro!  Let’s run over the Queensboro Bridge, I haven’t done that in ages.  So, I need to find McGuinness, so I can go into Queens over the Pulaski Bridge.  …How long have I been running, anyway?  …I seriously need to get off of this Doctor Who kick.  I’ve listened to “The Long Song” way too many times now.  Again with the ominous singing…

6 MILES: MCGUINNESS BOULEVARD, GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN

Why am I smelling poop right now?  Seriously, that is one hell of a poop smell.  Like I’m smelling a gigantic pile of alien poop.  …That’s underneath the Pulaski Bridge for some reason.  …Oh, great, climbing now.  Okay, this hurts.  A lot.  No, no!  Sing along, damn it!  “Waaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuuuuup…   Waaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuuuuup…  And let the clooooooooak of liiiiiiiiiiife…”  Oh, I love this view of Midtown.

7 MILES: 11TH STREET, LONG ISLAND CITY (HUNTERS POINT), QUEENS

Probably should have gone up Jackson Avenue.  This is one seriously abandoned street.  Well, there’s the bridge.  Hmm…  I feel like the climb up the ramp will kill me…  You know what I’ve never done?  Run across the Triborough Bridge!  That can’t be that far away, right?  And it gives me an excuse to run into Astoria.  I’m not hurting that much, I can make it.  Let’s go!  But first: no more Doctor Who music.

8 MILES: QUEENS PLAZA NORTH, LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS

“Arm yourself, because no one else here will save yooooooooou!  And the odds will betraaaaaaaaaay yooooooooou!  And I will replace yooooooooou!”

9 MILES: 31ST STREET, ASTORIA, QUEENS

Good GOD, that N Train is loud up there.  I wonder how much further I could go?  Could I run all the way into Harlem, across both bridge spans?  That would be awesome.  I’m definitely going to give that a try.  Oh, hey, is that girl high fiving me?  She totally is!  BAM, high five!  Whoo!  I am a runner, damn it!

10 MILES: HOYT AVENUE NORTH, ASTORIA, QUEENS

Cute, kid.  Try to spot check me with a basketball.  I’m older than you and I have more insurance.  Where the heck is the entrance to the bridge?  Oh, there it is.  Wait.  Wait, is that-

FINISH: ROBERT F. KENNEDY BRIDGE (TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE-EAST RIVER SUSPENSION BRIDGE SEGMENT), WARDS ISLAND, MANHATTAN

Damn it, damn it, damn it, that staircase did me in.  Why is there a staircase instead of a ramp?!  I can’t run up that without destroying myself!  Oh, to hell with it.  I’ll just walk into Harlem.  90 minutes of running isn’t bad, Christian.  …There are a lot of homeless people’s abandoned blankets on here.  I sense this isn’t a frequently used bridge walkway.

*Walks onto Wards Island, realizes toes are bleeding, decides to just get on the M35 bus back into Manhattan, then takes a 5 Train from 125th Street back down to Bowling Green.  Caffeine and a night of dancing followed.*

 

March 26, 2014
New York, NY

Subway Medicine Man

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/ / CC BY 2.0

 

I’m a native of New York City (which, my friends will tell you, I never stop talking about).  This gives me unique and special powers.  No, seriously.  This city is amazingly idiosyncratic in many, many ways, offering situations that no other city in North America can muster.  The longer that you live here, the more of a mutant urban creature you become, as new, specialized skills that are completely useless everywhere else begin to become burned into your brain.  One ingrained skill, in particular, that stands out as being something truly miraculous to people not from here, is the instinctive, Jedi-like ability to navigate New York’s immense Subway system at will.  I’ve heard a stand-up comedian call this effect becoming a “Subway Native American,” who can sense the approach of a D Train by scent.  …That’s actually not far off, alarmingly, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Why is my fair city’s most prominent mass transit system so ungodly difficult to navigate that it requires being an X-Man named “Subway-o” in order to understand it?

New York, and Manhattan in particular, is blessed by incredibly dense rock.  Specifically, Manhattan schist.  The schist is the reason you can see distinct interruptions in the agglomerations of tall skyscrapers on the island.  Early skyscrapers needed solid bedrock to be anchored in, so initial skyscraper development paralleled the dips and falls of the schist.  Another thing that defined the position of the tallest early skyscrapers was history.  Buildings were clustered in Lower Manhattan since that was the oldest part of the city, dating back to the original 1624 New Amsterdam settlement below Wall Street, and the later 17th and 18th century developments between Wall and Houston Streets.  The densest development occurred in areas that were already developed, while Uptown Manhattan and the Outer Boroughs (read: Manhattan) were almost entirely dominated by low-rise residential buildings.  So, when the first Subway line was opened in 1904, it was designed with that in mind: getting people from where they lived Uptown to where they worked Downtown.  The first line ran from Harlem’s West Side, through what is now the Upper West Side, past Times Square, to Grand Central, and then down the East Side to City Hall.  So, simple, right?  Lines go up and down.  Well…

Look at New York City on a map.  The city is built on an archipelago.  In fact, the only part of the city on the North American mainland is The Bronx.  Train lines had to accommodate the odd, elongated Swedish Fish-like shape of Manhattan, and then also had to make allowances for huge parts of the city being off in odd directions from the economic core of Lower Manhattan, rather than just being arrayed radially away from the city center like most large cities (see: London).  So now you have lines coming in from some unusual directions, forcing them into Manhattan in odd places.  But still, what’s the problem?  Everything is going into Lower Manhattan, right?  Well, there were two different companies building lines at the time, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), building competing lines, both trying to get people into Lower Manhattan.  So now you effectively had two systems, twisted into pretzels by New York’s geography and by trying to avoid each other’s tunnels, both vying to bring people into the same neighborhood.  Stations from the two systems ended up just one or two blocks from each other in some places, with no connections between them, since that would be like having an entrance to a McDonald’s inside a Burger King next door.

But wait, there’s more!  Later, Midtown Manhattan became just as much of an economic powerhouse as Lower Manhattan, driving the THIRD Subway company, the government-owned and operated Independent Subway Company (IND), more towards that area of Manhattan.  The important thing here is that the three companies eventually were consolidated into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) unified Subway operations, which leaves us with the tangled mess we have today.  Geography, the problems inherent in smooshing three different company’s systems together, and the spaghetti-like nature of the system, make maps almost incomprehensible gobbledygook, being navigated by an utterly insane 5 and a half million riders per day, most of them in an insane rush.

This veritable urban Serengeti creates the train-going predators most New Yorkers evolve into to survive.  We begin to instinctively know where to stand on a platform in order to board a train in the optimal position to transfer to a different train at some future station.  We can sense the approach of a train in the direction we’re going by the displacement of air from a tunnel.  We hang our heads out over the tracks, peeking into the tunnel, attempting to catch a glimpse of the distant lights we know signifies an oncoming train.  We memorize changes in service, and learn to hop across platforms like kangaroos between Express and Local trains, or vice-versa.  We know a…  Interesting Subway rider when we see or hear one, and know to stand far, far away from them while waiting for our train.  We know whether to head for the nearer 6 Train station, or the more distant F Train station depending on what time of day it is, and where, precisely, we’re going.  We are mutants.  I can even identify the train before it arrives in the station based on the way it sounds: high-pitched whine, it’s a newer train, an R142, probably, and it has to be a 2 Train since the 1 and 3 still use the older R62s.  This is what New York does to you.  And it is awesome.  You feel like freaking Commander Data, guiding out-of-towners through the system with a torrent of Subway themed technobabble and magic they couldn’t possibly understand.  It’s one of the things I love about having guests here.

But perhaps you don’t have someone to be your guide to the wonders of the filthy, filthy subterranean world underneath New York, and will need to figure out the madness on your own?  A few days here won’t transform you fast enough, but a few quick pointers and tips can go a long way towards keeping you from ending up confused and alone in the South Bronx!

 

UPTOWN AND DOWNTOWN ARE DIRECTIONS

They’re places, too, but not in the specific sense they are in most other cities.  When you say “Downtown” here, it’s like saying “The South.” We have three directions here, Uptown, Downtown and Crosstown.  And most platforms don’t have crossovers once you’ve entered, so you need to know where you’re going first.  Generally speaking, The Bronx and Queens will be Uptown, while Brooklyn will be “Downtown.”  Staten Island isn’t directly connected to the system, and don’t go there, ever.

LOOK FOR THE SMEARS

You should watch what you’re stepping in, of course, but I’m talking about the smears of black on the edge of the platforms at regular intervals.  That’s where the doors of the train open, and everyone’s filthy, filthy feet created those smears of dirt over the days and weeks since the last time the station was hosed down.  If you stand right in front of them, you’ll be well positioned to get on the train as soon as the doors open without 800 people pushing past you, first.  …Seriously, though, watch where you’re stepping in general.  If it looks like poop, it’s probably poop.

LET PEOPLE OFF THE TRAIN FIRST

Seriously, let people off the train before you get on board, or I will destroy you.  It’s one of the biggest subway faux pas around.  I don’t care how much other people are doing it, it’s like peeing in the middle of the street because the drunk hobo across the block is doing it, too.  DO NOT DO THIS.  And while we’re on the subject of things to not do…

DO NOT STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF STAIRWAYS BLOCKING THEM, YOU BASTARD

GRAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHH – GET OUT OF THE WAY!!  Look at your phone or your map to the side, not in the middle of the stairwell leading out of the stinking hot Subway and into the fresh air, for the love of all that is holy, you miserable asshats, I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE SOUL!!

PAY ATTENTION TO SIGNAGE AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

With 24 lines and over 400 station complexes operating 24/7/365, things can get intense in a hurry.  Construction and cleaning is always going on somewhere in the system, and snow, extreme heat, and track fires can create problems in a flash.  Services will change, and that local train you’re on will go express without warning, so pay attention to what those garbled voices are saying over the intercom, lest you wonder how the heck you ended up in the wrong Borough.  Don’t just count the number of stations to your destination, actually look out the window at what stations you’re at!

DOWNLOAD GOOD TRANSIT APPS

Odds are you have a smartphone, and with schedules and services constantly changing, a paper map will be functionally useless a lot of the time.  My personal favorite is Embark NYC.  On a related note…

THE SYSTEM MAPS ARE ONLY ACCURATE ON WEEKDAYS

Is it nighttime?  Is it the weekend?  Is it anytime other than between 5AM and 11PM on a non-holiday Monday through Friday?  Congratulations, all of those already nearly unreadable maps are totally useless.  Overnight service between 11PM and 5AM, and service on weekends and holidays, are completely different.  Again, announcements and signage are your friends (as is the Weekender)!  And on yet another related note…

EVERY STATION BUT ONE IS OPEN 24/7/365, BARRING CONSTRUCTION

Even if you entered on the wrong side, or entered a platform where the regular service isn’t running, don’t despair.  Every station but one will have some sort of train stopping at it, or connect to one that does, 24/7/365.  Even if you head the wrong way, many stations have crossovers where you can go back down the other direction (most commonly express stations).  And if there’s something totally wrong in the station, and it’s actually closed, it will be roped off with red tape.  The only station that regularly totally closes is Broad Street on the J and Z Trains in Lower Manhattan.

DON’T EAT SMELLY FOOD ON THE TRAIN

Unlike on the Washington Metrorail, eating is allowed on the NYC Subway.  But be at least a little considerate, and don’t eat some steaming pile of unholy Chinatown takeout in a crowded train, m’kay?  If you’re hungry, just have a bag of chips, or something.  You will start an argument with someone if you keep doing this.

DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH ANYONE

Yes, “Missed Connections” might have given you the impression that the Subway is a smoldering cauldron of passion, but in reality, even in the safe, squeaky clean modern New York, making prolonged eye contact on the Subway is the best way to get a random person to start screaming at you about Xenu, or, on the flipside, to make some poor young intern from Omaha really, really scared of you.  Don’t stare!

BE CAUTIOUS WITH PANHANDLERS

I’m not going to tell you to just ignore everyone who needs help, but keep in mind that A, some panhandlers may be in need of more than just monetary help, and B, some of them are scam artists.  If you want to be a good Samaritan while you’re underground, keep some extra change in a different pocket than the one your wallet is in.  Do not open your wallet or purse on the Subway, or flash money and credit cards.  Just drop the coins in the cup and go back to what you were doing.  Alternatively, donate to orgs that specifically help the homeless, and know how to get your money to where it can genuinely do good.

SWIPE YOUR METROCARD GOLDILOCKS-STYLE

Don’t swipe too fast, don’t swipe too slow, and listen for the solid click of the turnstile unlocking.  Don’t just slam your card into the slot while charging forward, you will end up knocking the wind out of yourself on the turnstile bar!

USE THE BOARDING AREAS

If it’s late at night in a quiet station, wait for your train near the area marked as the “Boarding Area” or “Off-Hours Waiting Area.”  That area is specifically chosen as the place where there are cameras and manned station agent booths within eyesight, and can add an extra layer of safety to your late night trip.

IF YOU NEED HELP, ASK

New Yorkers have an unfortunate reputation as mean, unrepentant assholes.  This is only partly true.  We are unrepentant assholes.  But we aren’t mean, just really, really busy and harried.  If you ask one of us for directions or help, if at all possible, we will help you.  So don’t be afraid to ask.  We don’t bite, promise!

 

New York, NY
March 18, 2014