Turnstile II
Low ceilings, that’s all that attracted me. This is at the Times Square station (6th Avenue). Sometimes when I discover a new station, I’ll just stand around and daydream about what it must have been like to plan a station like this. How they feel like they were pulled from a German expressionist film like Metropolis or Modern Times. The technology gets newer - the cards get swiped faster - and yet the surroundings with their Modern efficiencies somehow make us less human; or if not less human, more machine like. You feed the machine; you become the machine. Too much? You feed the machine, you must at least dance with the machine. Oh these are the ramblings of the things aren’t like they used to be.
What is the change that we’re all supposed to be embracing now? Can things be changed in four years by one guy? Maybe. But aren’t we supposed to be afraid of change? We’re afraid of change, but we’re also afraid of the present course. Got to change the course. Not to something more modern, but to something more soothing. Something we’re comfortable with.
Let’s start by doing away with those cards you slide through the stile. After all, what is a more fitting symbol of change, of going back to the way things were, than an actual token? I can see the candidate in New York holding up the coin-shaped token and proclaiming that on his first day in the president’s office, he’ll bring back the subway token. This will give employment to token clerks again, and to the men and women who made tokens; who counted tokens; and who sometimes stole tokens.
Comments
Comment from Lester
Time: March 2, 2008, 10:44 pm
You don’t want to go back to tokens, Dave. I worked a year and a half for the Transit Authority at the Jay Street headquarters counting tokens. They would come in huge dirty canvas bags and we’d pour them into counting machines which would whip the metallic dust into the air and into our lungs. We were given work gloves but no surgical masks and I soon developed an allergic reaction and had to quit.
Metrocards are probably no better, since they are not biodegradable and probably last ten thousand years in a landfill. So maybe the moral is not to bother changing anything because in the end it realy doesn’t matter. Kill a few token counters now or kill a few sea turtles in ten thousand years.
Comment from dave
Time: March 2, 2008, 11:50 pm
Lester - I hope you don’t mind - but I’ve been thinking that my next book should be called, If You See Something: Say Something.
Photographs by Dave Beckerman
Words by Lester
I’ll share the profit with you - 50 / 50 (50 cents for you. 50 cents for me).
Comment from Lester
Time: March 3, 2008, 6:29 am
Sorry, Dave. Can’t collaborate right now. Too many projects in the pipeline. Working with blogger Pixelle-PicSell on her new book: Lester et Moi. Involves heavy travel to Paris. Besides, she offered me a 75/75 percent share in her profits. Gotta feed the baby, bro.
Comment from Big Mike
Time: March 3, 2008, 5:32 pm
Except for two incidents during the last year when the turnstile “ate” my metrocard fare, they new cards work a lot better than the old tokens. I don’t want to go back. No thanks.
Comment from Lester
Time: March 2, 2008, 10:02 pm
MTA security slogan: “If you see something, say something.” I hope you called this in, Dave.