Results tagged “qdiamond”

Hello and welcome to New York City. Today I'd like to introduce you to one of our city's crown jewels: the subway. A glorious municipal means of transport the subway and its siblings the bus and the ferry, can take you almost everywhere in Gotham. Literally from the canyons of Wall Street to the beaches of Rockaway all for the low, low price of $2.00 - even lower if you ride enough and purchase an unlimited Metrocard!

As it was suggested last year, the 9 train is leaving the NYC subway system. There's a NY Times story about how signs will be taken down as the 9 train will go to subway heaven on May 31. For instance, the "9" will be taken down from the flashy Times Square subway entrance, and the 9 information are probably black-decaled over on the platforms. The 9 train had served as a way to help get people living uptown to their destinations faster by offering skip-stop service (the 1 would go local). But now that there are more trains overall, and more people living uptown, the 9 is an old-fashioned throwback. Lawrence Reuter, President of NYC Transit, told the Times:

"Skip-stop service on the 1 line is an idea which today doesn't make sense for our operations or our customers. By eliminating skip-stop service, the majority of riders along the 1 line will benefit from shorter travel times and will no longer have to stand on platforms as trains pass them by during rush hour."

Still, the 1 and 9 remain inseparable in our minds. There's good subway ephemera in the article, like how the 8 train was an elevated train along Third Avenue and that skip-stop service is still on the J and Z lines.

Gothamist was talking to Mike from Satan's Laundromat about the matter. He says the police think subway photography is illegal anyway, and Gothamist thinks this is confirmation that the MTA view hipsters, gadget geeks, photobloggers, and tourists as city security threats. At least of Laura Holder's oeuvre is in danger! One critic huffs that if photography is banned, then drawing might be next. Ack - then no cool drawings like these from Danny Gregory.

Gothamist was there for the Death of the Q Diamond Party, celebrating the elimination of the Q Diamond from the NYC subway map. As the last train pulled into the station, it was mayhem at the back of the Union Square platform. Positioning ourselves in back of an attractive photographer from the New York Times, we managed to squeeze into the last car of the train before the doors closed. For the next thirty or forty minutes, we partied like it was 1982. Everyone was smoking weed or drinking 40s or painting on the back the of the subway posters. One guy was peeing between the train cars. There were drums and little ghetto blasters for music, and a number of people were reciting poetry and speeches related to the Q's retirement. By the time the train pulled in to Brighton Beach, the temperature in the car reached about 105 degrees.