New blood is hitting the keyboards at the paper whose motto is "All the News That is Fit to Print." This is evident when you can find the transportation reporter on Twitter, @Emmagf, along with a photo of a smiling young woman who represents the best kind of New Yorker: the kind that wasn't born here.
Along with youth, the new reporters bring Twitter feeds, emails and digital links to other media to enhance their stories. There are not many people whose Twitter sites I go to, But Emma's is one of them. I check her Twitter feed daily.
Emma has shared with her followers all things MTA, along with the name she gave her newborn son: Hudson. She is clearly adopting her new city. Naming your firstborn after a topographical site in the Metropolitan area sets a great precedence for subsequent offspring. Names like Brooklyn, Harlem, SoHo and Tribeca can be chosen from. Dumbo is not recommended. Nor is Kosciuszko, inasmuch as no one can agree on how it is spelled. The famous brand of brown of mustard uses a spelling of Kosciusko. There are extra points if you can identify who that person was. They spelled it as it is spelled on the bridge. Verrazzano, with two Zs is however settled, even if all the signs haven't yet been changed.
Apparently, subway service and all other forms of mass transit are in the toilet if I read the reports every day correctly. It's not a complete breakdown, but there are needs to be addressed. Fare evasion has become routine, ever since it was decriminalized from arrest. Police can still give a summons for it which carries a $100 fine. An estimated 4% of the riders are non-payers.
@BenWeiserNYT: "So many people had entered through the emergency exit that one woman trying to leave was blocked by three entering commuters in a row." @emmagf, @edjsandoval report on rampant fare evasion in NY's subways.
I can tell you it is infuriating to watch those who either jump the turnstile or walk through the exit gate while you've just paid. In some cases, the exit gate is being held open by those who just want to announce it's now okay to evade. Throngs walk through at certain stations, sometimes even under the eyes of the police on duty.
Being retired, I no longer go into the city every workday. And even when I did, I was able to walk to my last job from Penn Station, eliminating any need to go underground. Prior employment required me to go to the Trade Center, and eventually Brooklyn after Manhattan became an airport on 9/11.
Thus, I've been somewhat insulated from the current problems of the subway. Emma has shared with us her F train stories when she apparently came to New York and lived in Brooklyn. Lots of transplants have gravitated to Brooklyn. Nearly all my daughter's upstate college classmates are now in Brooklyn.
Apparently, the F train drove her and her Bloomberg News husband to look elsewhere in the city for a place to live. They settled somewhere uptown in Manhattan in an area serviced by the A train, in the hopes that service would be a bit more dependable.
From recent Twitter postings this hasn't produced on time results. Emma's A train, the longest line in the system, has been delayed by swing bridges getting stuck in the Rockaways. Boats headed for the harbor. Captains and tides are not interested in Emma's ride.
Emma is not one to follow when she and her husband look for a place to live. Via Twitter, I have offered my own advice. Get close enough to work to walk. Even if it's a mile or more.
Emma shares stories, and along with other Times colleagues, even created a site where the public could post their own horror stories. The new medium of visualization affords photos to be added to this site. Nothing these days is complete without photo or video.
A photo-of-the-year award should go to Lauren Albergo who posted a photo of a cup filled with a mysterious liquid (likely urine) that someone had tucked in a corner on a station platform. The submitter apparently kept their eye on the pissy vessel for a period of time, and reported that the station must never get cleaned because the cup of fluid has not budged, and it was now December 6. It takes a special kind of deputized investigative member of the public to photograph a plastic cup of subway urine. Shaming the MTA might work. Kudos to them.
From all I'm reading, subway service, and passenger behavior has gotten odd, and just plain inconsiderate, and even gross. Even dangerous, when cell phone video emerges of a fight breaking out between two women and someone actually makes a "citizen's arrest."
On Sunday @bklynbckstreth posted a Tweet from @nyctsubway, with her reply, "I don't even want to know."
Southbound 1 trains are delayed while our crews isolate a car for an unsanitary condition at 28 St."
Here's another Tweet found on Emma's feed from @jdavidgoodman:
The good thing about everyone staring at their phones on the subway is that no one seemed to notice the woman on the E train who just woke up, took a piss between moving train cars, returned to her seat and fell back asleep.
The other good thing is that no one took her vacated seat while she vacated her bladder.
Emma posted a series of Tweets that created a chain of replies.
Well, here’s a subway first. The guy sitting next to me just took off his shirt (he was completely bare chested for 20 seconds) and changed into a polo shirt (for work?). That’s gotta be against the etiquette rules, right?
"Against the etiquette rules..." Emma is so wholesome. The rhetorical question garnered a reply.
@Naparstek replies:
I believe you're allowed to unbuckle your belt and unbutton your pants to tuck in a shirt while riding the train but you're not actually allowed to take off any clothing unless you're participating in the No Pants Subway Ride.
Huh? Where did you read that? Like the No Pants Subway Ride is a good thing too?
My own reply to Emma's discomfort at seeing her seatmate turn his space into the changing room at WalMart went along the lines:
Some women have that affect on men.
Did the polo shirt have an S on it? You know there are no more phone booths, right? Any identifying tattoos? You're making commuting sound like fun again.
Emma is still skeeved out. Replies to @nicolegelinas:
Unclear. Didn’t notice him until he took his clothes off.
Another reply. to: @davecolon:
Why?? Couldn’t he change his clothes anywhere else? Even subway platform or on the street would be better when you’re not in a confined space with other humans?
How quaint. Emma thinks when you're on the subway you're still a human. She is new.
I never met Emma. We traded some emails and phone conversations when she replied to an email of mine when the 2nd Avenue subway was getting ready to open up and my family's connection to 2nd Avenue.. She has already lost whatever accent would identify her as coming from Texas.
I know nothing of her family, but with the holidays looming I wouldn't doubt that a trip back home with the new baby will be in order, if not already underway.
William Sydney Porter (O Henry) and Damon Runyon, Gay Talese, and Joseph Mitchell became the best kind of New Yorkers as well. They were born elsewhere.
The stories Emma has for the folks back home.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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