As a native New Yorker I'm trained to look over my shoulder. Be super aware of anything and everything. Watch people's eyes and feet and listen. Take an immediate temperature and quickly assess a situation. Give people space (as best I can). Know when to engage and when to avoid. How to appear tough and/or friendly. Know when to help and HOW to help. More importantly, I try to be open and communal because all we have is each other. Empathy = humanity.

However...

I've ridden the NYC rails all my life and navigated a lot of humanity. The subway system is important and essential. I could write a book of personal stories riding the trains. But during this pandemic -- the amount of people rebelling, smoking, not wearing masks, camping, snoozing, jerking off, pissing, shitting, vomiting, drinking alcohol, cursing, screaming, threatening, fighting and (understandably) having nervous breakdowns and psychotic freak-outs ALMOST EVERYTIME I GET ON THE TRAIN (which isn't often), on top of the fact that half the time I use the subway it skips stops and/or gets re-routed (calling you out F-train!), has made traveling underground untenable and dangerous. And there's hardly ever a police officer to be seen.

The pandemic made a lot of things much more difficult and expensive, exposing so much economic strife and disparity but I can no longer recommend riding the NYC subway system. It's old and broken and -- I hate to admit this -- scary and dangerous. I'm tired of bracing myself and scanning the platforms and cars as I pay my fare and enter the subway fray.

I don't have any smart thoughts or answers of how to make it better. Just felt compelled to express myself after a horrific shooting incident last week inside a Brooklyn subway that got ten innocent people shot and a lot more than that hurt. It launched a citywide manhunt and I was on my way to the Russian-Turkish Bathhouse in the lower-east side of Manhattan when citizens spotted the gunman and cops captured him right around the corner.