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| Re: The subway during the 1970's, how bad did it really get? (56100) | |||
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Re: The subway during the 1970's, how bad did it really get? |
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Posted by ntrainride on Sat Feb 26 01:34:48 2005, in response to Re: The subway during the 1970's, how bad did it really get?, posted by Chris R16/R2730 on Tue Feb 22 19:03:38 2005. I remember once riding a J train from Jamaica into Williamsburg aroung 1974 or 1975. At around the Van Siclin Avenue station a bunch of people came running into our car from the next car. Some dudes had started breaking all of the windows in that car. I could hear all the glass breaking and remember thinking that I was gonna hold my ground come hell or high water if they came into our car too.But still, I spent alot of time all over the city in the 70s and I never had a problem on the trains. Never got messed with, held up or harrassed. And I'm not a big guy. (Oh wait...once, when I was walking out of the Woolworths at Marcy Avene I felt something fall on my head as a train rumbled by on the Broadway el. Freaked for a second; thought somebody had tossed a coke bottle out. But it was just a light bulb they must have unscrewed from the ceiling.) Used to walk over the Willy B often. Even went to the Pitt Street pool that way with my girlfriend once. Hah. I have to laugh at how I introduced my Dominicana novia to getting around the city by the buses and trains by herself. Me, a Long Island boy showing the Brooklyn chick how to get to Kings Plaza and Staten Island! She was 16, I was 20 and she had really never spent much time out of the neighborhood. I was a transit freak from the get go so as a rule, any girlfriend of mine will catch a bit of my "infection". And back then, I used the E.N.Y. stations of the subway and the LIRR frequently. Sometimes I'd take the J to Eastern Parkway and catch the LIRR there; other times I'd ride the el out to Suphtin Blvd. Even rode a bike from Suffolk into Brooklyn a few times. Not only that, and you'll think I was nuts, but once in a while I use to leave my girlfriends family apartment in the Taylor-Wythe Houses on Sunday night, sometimes around midnight and walk up to the Washington Plaza bus station. I'd catch a B39 to Allen Street, use my paper transfer to catch a First Avenue bus up to 34th Street. Wherupon I'd walk over to the Midtown Tunnel area, stick out my thumb and give it a shot! Got a ride every time too. (I was unemployed so I wouldn't mind if it took a long time to get back home. On warm summer nights...it was a trip in itself.) In fact, I hitchiked back and forth between L.I. and the city hundreds of times throughout the mid-seventies to early eighties. It got to be like taking a bus or something... All in all, what I'm saying is while the graffiti was rampant, the city itself was still a dynamic, livable, enjoyable place to be. As always, you had to be on your toes. What else is new? |
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