Bus v. Subway

I've decided that every weekend I'm going to write a "face-off" style blog where I compare two aspects of the city I've observed. In contrasting, I hope we all learn a bit more about our topic, and each other. Just kidding about the last part. Kind of.

As aforementioned in my previous post, I've been riding the bus all week. I learned a new set of mostly unwritten rules. In my opinion it's a bit easier to move through what you do as a new rider on the subway than as a new rider on the bus. On the subway, you have clearly marked stations and announcers tell you where you've stopped (sometimes they yell your location incoherently through the loudspeaker and you're scrambling to figure out where you are). On the bus, the only way you can figure out where you are is if you keep up with what streets you're passing, and that tends to take a lot of work. Of course, to more seasoned riders of both systems, you get to a point where there is a rhythm to where you're going--you know how long to wait and when to get up, like an timer going off when an egg is done boiling.

On the bus the riders are much more in contact with and at the mercy of the driver, even if they never speak to each other. One friend told me recently he was riding the bus and there was an annoying guy on the bus who kept yelling and generally making a ruckus. Eventually people on the bus started complaining, and chanting "Kick him off the bus, kick him off the bus," even the driver! And then when the driver had had enough fun with that, he did, in fact, kick him off. The subway by comparison almost seems like this underground organism that drives itself. You see people in little windows at the front that are supposedly operating the thing, but it mostly runs the same all the time, and lot of the announcements are pre-recorded. The subway operator can't see what's going on inside each car (that's why the people watching is so good!) The bus driver can also decide if he wants to reopen the doors for someone who has just missed the stop, or keep driving. From what I saw, drivers tended to do that more for women, children, and the elderly/handicapped. Another funny thing that bus drivers don't seem to mind is when people can't find their bus tickets. On the subway, if you don't have it, you can't swipe your way through, but on the bus there's more of a "ride now, pay later" sort of attitude. I watched one girl look for her card for about five minutes before she finally swiped it and sat down, and this whole time the bus driver is continuing along his route.

Similarly, passengers on the bus are supposed to "request a stop" by pushing a long piece of tape-covered wire located at various seats (it took me several days to figure out what people were pushing). Then in theory the driver can skip a stop if there is no one waiting and no one has requested to get off. It's very flexible. The subways routes are not flexible, except when they are doing repair work and choose to reroute one line to another. There are express trains in Manhattan that will skip several stops at a time to take you very quickly from one part of town to another, but you have to know which trains they are and where they stop ahead of time.

The bus runs on a schedule. You can see if you've missed one recently and when or if the next one is coming anytime soon. The subway comes whenever it wants. There are a couple of lines that have this nice announcer lady recording that tells you how much longer 'til the train arrives. But mostly you just sit and wait with no idea. Sometimes you feel like you've been waiting for a lifetime. The minutes tick by like hours. You learn to use context clues like how many people are waiting around you, how "regular" the line is and what time of day it is.

The preconceived notions I have about the bus and the subway are very different. Both are an adequate source of public transportation, but while everyone from wall street-ers to artists, blue collar workers and school children ride the subway, there is a narrower class of people riding the bus. I wonder why this is? There was a time in Nashville when I lived pretty close to work and thought about taking the bus. But when I suggested it to people the majority thought it was crazy, downright unsafe, and, I got the feeling, "below me." How did the bus get this sort of reputation but not the subway?

Finally, being underground, the subway is a world all its own. People are momentarily cut off from being able to use cell phones or internet. The temperature is often the opposite of what it is like outside. On the bus people still talk on phones and watch the world go on around them, interacting with pedestrians, cars, and traffic lights. There's nothing like that on the lines of the subway, and they say there are miles of unused tunnels here. You can almost picture this "subway organism" going off and exploring on it's own when all the passengers are home sleeping in their beds at night.

My First Bus Ride/Psychological Adventures with Hasids

So I am babysitting for this super awesome family this week, the mom is a makeup artist to models and the like. They live in Crown Heights, which is not very far geographically from our place in Williamsburg but I found out today is really hard to get to by train. I have not had to take more than two trains to get anywhere, but to get to their place (which is also in Brooklyn)--I had to take the L into Midtown Manhattan, tranfer to the Q which goes over the Manhattan Bridge and back out to Brooklyn, then transfer trains again in Brooklyn to get to their neighborhood. By the time I got there, I was ready for a nap. The dad, who works behind the scenes on Lipstick Jungle, suggested I take the bus back, as he frequently travels through Williamsburg himself for work. "It takes half the time," he insisted and showed me where to wait. It's very humbling to feel like you've got the subway thing down and the cab thing down, and then you get on the bus and there's an entirely different set of rules and you feel like a foreigner. I basically just took the bus north until the guy kicked me off, then tried to navigate my way back with the map I had with me. The last stop happened to be smack dab in the middle of the Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Williamburg.

When you first start walking through their neighborhood, you feel like at any moment they all might burst into song and synchronized dancing in the streets, like Fiddler on the Roof. Literally everyone is dressed the same--the men in long jackets and big black hats, the women in long skirts and scarves around their head, and all men and even little boys have the signature curls down the sides of their face, which they do because it is against the rules of their religion to shave their sideburns. It's refreshing in a way to be a minority--I didn't see anyone else who "looked like me" for probably ten minutes--which is funny because as a white woman, I have never experienced being the only person like me on the street. Although, after the reality sunk in that no one was going to burst into song, I started to feel a bit self-conscious. I was wearing red pants and a fairly modest short sleeved shirt, but I noticed the women all wore long sleeved shirts and long skirts in dark colors (indeed, looking at customs of dress on wikipedia, it says they look down on people who wear red--whoops!) and I began to wonder as I passed groups of women if they were gossiping about me and my uncouth wardrobe choices (Judging from HasidicNews.com--"In general, the Hasidic attitude towards non-Jews is one of contempt and disinterest. Children, especially, are taught how 'bad' and sinful non-Jews" are--I would say they were, although we'll never know for sure since they were speaking Yiddish.) The children playing on the sidewalks were speaking Yiddish too! I saw a baby that was sitting out in some sort of cage-like covering over a 4th story window, with no adults around. It was really super strange.

After doing a little more research I found out the following info. on our Williams-
burg neighbors: "It seems that the Jews of South Williamsburg are a sect known as Satmars. They are Hungarian in origin, and the community began just after WWII, comprised mainly of newly-arrived Holocaust survivors. The sect stresses re-population of their decimated ranks... There are about 200,000 Satmar worldwide, and about a third of that number lives in this little area in South Williamsburg. Due to the high birthrate, this community doubles in size every decade." Every decade? The average family here has 7.9 children. That's a lot of babies!


With those stats, it's no surprise the Satmars also seem to have a strong penchant for minivans. And the women (who marry through arranged marriages)aren't allowed to drive, so you see caravans of minivans scooting down the street all being driven by men with long beards and dark hats. Except for the minivans and the occasional Hasid you see on their cell phone (although apparently they don't watch tv), you really feel like you've stepped through a time warp into the 1880's. How did such an old-fashioned group of folks who won't fraternize with outsiders end up creating this large and self-sustaining community that has lasted for generations in the middle of modern New York City?! I kept wondering what it must be like for them to go to another part of the city and see scantily clad women or other non-hasidic type things. Do they have pets? I didn't see any. Who do they vote for in elections, if they vote? Does anyone ever leave? How have they managed to be so xenophobic while sharing a zip code and subways with the Polish, Puerto Ricans, and well, white girls who wear red pants? I may have to do some more research and get back to you.