is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Jobs, Money, Sanity.
One thing New York brings to one's mind fairly constantly is the urgency of having to have and make money. This is true no matter how much money you have and make. Sure, I may not have a steady paycheck coming my way until September, so this would be on my mind, but even my rather well-off cousin knows that moving to New York means a drop in just how much one's money can buy, and what one's money can stand for, status-wise.
I mean, I'm so very low on the meter bar of monetary gain compared to all my friends, and that is largely fine with me. I know the choices I've made put me on a very different earning track from most. But now I live in a neighborhood where I look like the one without problems. It's an interesting and politically important/problematic thing that is right up in your face all the time in New York.
Related to this money-mania, obliquely, are the kinds of jobs that need to be done in New York, given the ratio of city-size to city-population, not to mention all the constant visitors. Every day I encounter at least one instance of a job I would really, really not like to do. There are the obvious ones that I won't go into. But perhaps I can make a practice of describing some of these jobs. Let's devote today to transit.
Unwanted Job #1. Driver of the Shuttle subway from Prospect Park to Franklin. There is this short shuttle subway that goes from Franklin to Park Place to Botanical Garden to Prospect Park, and back again to Botanical Garden to Park Place to Franklin, over and over again. The Park Place stop is right across the street from my house (and this is magically convenient, and I never even hear the subway either!), such that I call it the Shuttle for Lazy People, since anywhere the shuttle might take you is within ten blocks and thus walkable. However, at Franklin you can transfer to the C train, at Botanical Garden you can transfer to the 2, 3, or 4, and at Prospect Park you can get the B or the Q. This means that if I don't feel like walking four blocks to get the 2/3 or the 5, or five blocks to get the B/Q, I can walk across the street. But man! Think about the driver of that train! He drives three stops. He walks from one end of the train to the other to get to what will now be the front end. He drives three stops. He walks again from one end of the train to the other to get to what will now be the front end. And so on, all day. Add to that the fact that at every stop except Park Place he has to sit there for awhile to wait for approaching trains in case there are any transferring passengers. Back and forth, hurry up and wait. It's like a modern transit-linked version of the labors of Sisyphus, who was damned to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill only to lose his grip and have it roll back down to the bottom just as he was reaching the top, every time, over and over.
That thought occurred to me when I inadvertently linked eyes with the driver when he was pulling into the Park Place stop one day. I saw him when he pulled in going towards Prospect Park. But since I was headed to Franklin I didn't board, and waited outdoors on the platform for the train to come back. The driver's face, upon return, when I saw him again, looked like a cartoon character's expression of not understanding his surroundings to the point of having given up trying.
You may be trying to think of a cartoon character who could manage such an expression. I think Daffy Duck had some rather sublime moments of that kind, after having been infuriated beyond all possibility of retribution by Bugs Bunny and the difference between duck and rabbit seasons. However the facial expression of the driver reminded me of a particular cartoon character, some dim childhood memory that I haven't been able to translate into a name. I think it was a bear or a dog who was always muttering and had a slightly elongated head... incorporating the worldview of Eeyore with the upright stance of the featherless-but-furred cartoonified biped. He may have shared some cartoon time with Snagglepuss, who was always exiting stage right.
Anyway, Gus and I discussed this (the driver, not my musings about Daffy Duck et al.) and came to the conclusion, or at least the hope, that the shifts of driving that line aren't day-long, or at least don't fall to the same person every day. Hopefully the Transit Authority knows enough to preserve the sanity of its drivers.
("Preserving sanity" reminds me of the news clip I heard on NPR this morning about how the military is surprised by all the mental health problems experienced by returning soldiers, and ill-equipped to deal with them. Given that the military has contributed to CAUSING these problems because of the operant conditioning procedures it uses in its bootcamp training, it is not surprising that it is ill-equipped to deal with the fallout. But really, you send a bunch of young men and women to a battle-torn area where they are constantly under threat and hated on all sides, and you think they come back and slip right into their family lives? When did that ever happen? This is how Iraq will resemble Viet Nam, in its aftermath right here at home, if nothing is done to change military and cultural/social attitudes toward the aftermath of violence.)
At the same time, apparently the military is losing all its therapists because of this crisis. Is this irresponsible, like when Tony Soprano's therapist broke up with him, or understandable (like when Tony Soprano's therapist broke up with him) (or both)? Speaking of unwanted jobs!
Unwanted Job #2. Traffic Directing Cop at the intersection in Brooklyn where Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth Avenue meet. Man! It is harrowing to have to drive that thing, let alone stand in the center of it all and expect only the movement of your hands to capable of controlling the angry and impatient people driving their cars! Far easier to be a pedestrian there, and, really most anywhere in New York.
Speaking of which, I do still have a car. Parking in my neighborhood isn't all that difficult, except that on my side of the street there is street cleaning on Monday and Thursday and on the opposite side of the street there is street cleaning on Tuesday and Friday. So there is a fairly constant need to move the car. This might actually move me to get rid of the car. But I'll keep it at least until the end of the summer, I'm thinking, especially now that I've found a reasonable car insurance deal.
I figured that my rates would go up considerably moving from affluent suburban Philadelphia to Brooklyn, NY. But consider this. I've been with a certain insurance company for over 20 years, and I'm an employed woman in her 40s who has never had a major accident and drives a 20-year old car that isn't worth anything. So I'm in the lowest auto insurance-rate bracket known to humanity, I'm guessing. That said, my car insurance, if I had stayed with my original insurance firm, would have risen from the $280 I paid every six months in QB to $840 every six months. A precipitous rise, you might say! So I decided I should at least do that comparison shopping thing at GEICO. And, turns out, (it's so easy a caveman can do it, and) now that I am a government employee, I qualify for some quasi-communistic government employee auto insurance such that my new rate in Brooklyn is $360 every six months. Totally livable.
However, it remains to be seen whether keeping a car in Brooklyn is worth doing. For now it is helpful for getting things from Home Depot, and driving to the wedding tomorrow, and bringing with me out to QB lots of boxes and bubble wrap to give to Gus who is moving on July 1. But soon enough it will probably seem easier and smarter to donate the car to a charity, forego the insurance payments, and take the train to Philly.
I am not Sisyphus!
5:09 p.m. - June 15, 2007
U.R. - 2007-06-16 13:49:43
Jilleth - The way most rail personnel assignments work is thus: those with the most seniority get the better runs. So here in SF, a senior Muni operator would take the 38 Geary above ground, or the L Taraval or M Oceanview if an LRV operator. The short run you describe is probably staffed by a fairly junior set of operators, and they will be pulled off when more senior folk call in sick and assigned to longer runs. Then your train will be run by someone from the extra board, which is staffed by the most junior people and is the equivalent of being on call. Next chapter: split shifts, the gilley room, and why you NEVER want to work in transit.
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Claverack Weekender - 2007-06-19 22:52:13
On one episode of WNET's fabulous "EGG The Arts Show" they profiled people in NYC with strange or interesting jobs. They had a train operator, a person that operates a lift bridge on the Gowanus, a person who peels onions all day at a samosa factory, etc. The onion peeler said he was very grateful for his job and to be living in America.
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