Very superstitious writing on the wall.

Icons and Signs

"Like the allusions to a portentous sign in the old African American spiritual "Handwriting on the wall", the graffiti that began to cover virtually everything in New York in the late 1970s prohesied a sociological shift in this urban landscape, from an environment of suppressed disorder, to an atmosphere of virtual chaos and decline. But rather than being emblematic merely of society's ills, these ink, marker scrawls and spray paint "tags"-Produced mostly by Latino and African American youth-transmitted information, such as neighborhood boundaries, social ranlings, artistic nom de plumes, and even creativity itself."

ride or die, subway stories 2

"He crossed Broadway and kept walking, thinking that he might even try to figure out which subway could take him uptown. Bunting had only taken the subway only once, shortly after his arrival in New York, and on the hot,crowded train,he felt in mortal danger. Every inch of the walls had been filled with lunatic scribbling, every other male on the subway had looked like a mugger. But, Frank Herko took the subway in from Brooklyn everyday. According to the newspapers, all the subway graffiti had been removed. Bunting had lived in New York for a decade without ever getting mugged,he walked alone down dark alleys and streets, the subway could not possibly seem so threatening to him now. And it was much faster than the stinking bus."


--from Peter Straub, The Buffalo Hunter

Brooksy

aint no half steppin', subway stories 1

"...We enter the Broadway-Lafayette subway station, pass through the turnstiles, and walk down several flghts of stairs to the lowest platform. We carefully jump off the platform to the tracks, carefully crossing the third rail. There is no space , absolutely none for a person to stand between the wall and a passing train without being struck..."



"Don't step on the third rail," Seargent Steve K. warns me. "I hate to see that happen. Sparks fly everywhere, but the worst part is that the electricity blows off the extremeties...Hands, head, whatever,they explode. It's disgusting.

--from Jennifer Toth's book, THE MOLE PEOPLE: Life in the Tunnel Beneath New York City

Brookstein