Indeed - many thanks to the "director"! Man, so many memories....
(some of them even good).

Ahh, NYC in the 1980s. Didn't we call it Gritty City?

Boy oh boy, we loved our white pants back in 1986, didn't we, gentlemen?

Ah memories.

Look at how thin everyone is.

I still think that everything looks better maintained, somehow.

You can look forward to plenty more unartistic vandalism as our great leaders continue to defund transit operating assistance. Film was quite good, as it is 16MM film, not video.

In 1992, as I was returning on the #1 from an assignment in Washington Heights to the press room of the Hispanic newspaper where I worked, the train was held just outside the 86th Street station with the doors closed. After a few minutes, we moved forward until the first car was at the platform. Doors opened to admit uniformed cops at each door. Then they closed and we moved forward again. The cops inside wove through the train while some others were outside, pacing with them and looking in the windows.

At some point, further back from where I was, they must have found who they were looking for. All doors opened. I pulled my press credentials (the official ones, issued by NYPD) out from under my jacket so they were visible and made my camera ready for whatever I might see - and stepped out onto the platform.

Two cops had a pair of young men in cuffs and were leading them in my direction, past me to the stairs. So, without using flash (great Nikon shutter and lenses) I snapped off the usual perp walk stuff.

One of the cops told me to stop shooting. I waved my credential back at him. He said, "I don't give a fuck about your credentials. I told you to stop taking pictures."

I reminded him I was in a public place doing a legitimate First Amendment protected job while wearing credentials that confirmed that right. The right of a newsman to take pix in the subway is specifically listed in the appropriate law.

But he gave me a summons, the fool.

Ours was a small weekly and we had just published that morning. So, instead of going back to the office, I called a fellow journo (Ellis Hennigan) who had the only column that covered all things transit.

Ellis' story and my photo appeared on Page Three of NY Newsday the next morning. Before 10am the NYPD sent a lieutenant in plain clothes to my newsroom, apologizing for the stop and squashing the summons. He arrived, bad luck, just as Channel 2, 4, 7 and 9 were setting up in the newsroom to cover the incident. It was a slow news day and so it made both the early and late shows on all channels.

It turned out that the cops were having a bad day all around. While I was being written up, the cops did the same thing to a woman who had been trying to get MTA attention to a highly dangerous set of exposed, insulation-free and electrically hot wires in another station on the same line. After they ignored her she went and took photos which she delivered to the stationmaster - and at that point, he called the cops. She was arrested for the same offense.

About 5 years later, in one of those small world things that happen "only in NYC," I started talking to a man and his wife on a park bench. It turned out he was the other cop, the one who held the prisoners while his partner wrote me up. He told me that after that incident got a letter put into the jacket of the cop who harassed me, the guy kept screwing up and was finally convinced one day to leave the force before they fired him.

So don't assume that the higher-ups condone this stupid stuff. They don't always see what happens but when they do, they do something about it.

Not quite B of the V, but thanks for sharing. :)

Train porn enthusiasts - rejoice!

WOW, what great times and great memories! Free of hipsters!!!!!!!!!

There were still hipsters then. They were just called college kids.

oh how fucking thrilling!!! watching filthy trains pull into the station... It sucked then-and sucks now-only difference was the fare. FUCK THE TA and the MTA

inflation-adjusted, the fare was actually higher then.

Oh BULLSHIT

Inflation adjustment obviously only takes into account how currency has devalued over time of course, it pays no mind to the fact that the average workers' wage has severely depressed compared to any time the subway has been operating in its present form.

But that's a-whole-nother argument of how wealth is steadily concentrating at the top and most folks are apparently quite happy to sit around bashing the tattered remains of the only tools (collective bargaining) that they had to fight it.

also "OH BULLSHIT" isn't really a valid rebuttal.

MTA fares only started rising astronomically since 2003. Wasn't that about when potaki started forcing the MTA to engage in "innovative" finance?

I'll be part of the minority here and say I miss the graffiti.

The trains were so "colorful" back then.

Getting harassed for photographing or filming in the subway station eh? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Don't miss the graffitti or lack of AC, but DEFINITELY miss fellow riders not lost in their cellphones/bberrys/Ipods.

Why did the graffiti go away? I was thinking about it and I haven't seen a car with graffiti (on the outside) in quite a few years. Do they just clean it off now?