New York on Strike: Memoirs of a Straphanger, or Dang It’s Cold Outside!

New York on Strike: Memoirs of a Straphanger, or Dang It’s Cold Outside!

Sleepless in Greenpoint

So, the commute home took over three hours, which meant that I arrived in my palatial one bedroom apartment at about 9:30PM. And I was lucky! Grand Central was a mob scene, with thousands of people staring up at the boards to see if there really were any trains on the tracks. No one was talking, which is always creepy in a city normally up to its eyeballs in non-stop talkers and phone yackers and wise crackers. They were all thinking the same thing: I have to pee and the police won’t let me downstairs to the lower level, home of Manhattan’s only decent bathrooms.

No Pee For You!

The reasons for blocking off every doorway and stairway in Grand Central were never elucidated, but I got the feeling from the four National Guardsmen and the four uniformed officers guarding the top of the stairs that they were waiting for the worst. Not since I was shuffled from an airplane in Split, Croatia and manhandled by the local Storm Troopershave have I felt such unease. I really thought that if I made a dash for the bathroom (I really did need to pee in the worst way) that someone would shoot me for it. But it wasn’t just me.
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An elderly woman who clearly could not see the boards and who needed a little humanity thrown her way approached an officer:

“Are there any trains leaving from the lower level?” she asked, bent over from the weight of her 80 some odd years.

“I don’t know, lady,” he snapped, “I’ve been up here all day.”

She mumbled something as she tried to find a friendly face, and he turned his back to her and began chatting with one of the National Guardsmen. It was one of the rudest things I have ever seen in the city.

Meanwhile, my bladder was expanding to record capacity. In desperation I approached an officer who was strolling through the middle of the main hall, and he told me that I had to go all the way to the other end of the station to find the single down escalator that allowed commuters onto the lower level.

Relief at Last

Trying not to worry too much about the elderly lady and her cane, I watched as the crowd outside Grand Central swelled, the lines (just to get in) wrapping around the block like a fat python. I was out of there, but there were plenty of folks who were looking at another two or three hours to get home.

A group of well-chilled commuters who had been waiting on line for about an hour were trying to keep their moods in check:

“I am definitely asking for battery operated socks,” one man in a Yankees cap says.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll short out?” his friend asks.

“Hey, at this point, that’s all the excitement I’m getting’ this Christmas. I’m spending all my mad money just getting’ to work.”

“Here,” his friend says. “Let me take a picture with my camera phone. It’ll be great on next year’s Christmas card.”

Meanwhile back in Brooklyn, the friendly folks in my neighborhood were picking up and dropping off anyone who was thumbing it. The local Hess station on McGuiness and Greenpoint Avenues is a sort of rendezvous point. Lots of delivery vans and trucks were driving people towards the local bridges, shaving an hour or so off the walk.

(Many Greenpoint residents come from the former communist block, so for them this is not such a shocking event. They don’t like it and don’t understand it, but it’s not horrifying. However, some of them suspect that it is a sign of things to come, of harsher days and grimmer times. Nevertheless, they remain friendly.)

Tomorrow’s Another Morning

Up at 4AM: So my work day has now increased by three or four hours - 4AM to 9PM. 17 hours – not bad. What's 17 hours spent commuting and sitting on my ass in a cushy office? I deserve to work this hard. But I can handle it. I am strong. I don’t mind at all suffering for the sake of the TWU. I am happy to see them get what they want, and to retire on a nice pension at 55. I wish I could – but of course, I will retire at 65 with minimal benefits, like the majority of working class and middle income Americans. But that is totally my problem, and I won’t press my needs on the TWU. They have enough to worry about.

In the meantime, it’s back to Hess station to catch a ride into town. Congrats to everyone with wheels who picked up the frozen masses who were thumbing it this morning; good karma will be coming your way!

Tags:   grand central, pension, sitting on my ass, transit, twu, union

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Posted on 12/21/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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