Customer Reviews

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York

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Randy Kennedy's "Tunnel Vision" column was the highlight of my New York Times subscription for nearly three years. It would be hokey to say that I learned more from the Times in Tuesday's Metro section than I did from every other article, op-ed and feature throughout the rest of the week. But it's also true.

I love New York City, and I love the subway. It wasn't always that way -- I voluntarily fled the tri-state area at age 17 to go to college in points south, and later in points midwest. I came running back to the city eight years later, a victim of the fact that Toledo's bus system stops running at 5 PM and on Sundays, and am never leaving again. The subway is now the backbone of my NYC experience. For $70 a month I can take unlimited rides from the southernmost corners of Brooklyn, all the way to Union Square or the Upper East Side. Without having to save 15% or more on car insurance from GEICO.

Every weekly "Tunnel Vision" column, several of which are reprinted for this book (sadly without the original photography) is either educational or, more importantly, hilarious. The most memorable columns discuss those who opt to spend their lives in the subway: as employees, performers, or, sometimes, residents. Several columns are also devoted to the rats and pigeons (if there is a difference between the two) who are an integral part of the city's 468 stations -- even more so than the vanishing token booth clerk.

No contemporary book about the city would be complete without a collection of columns about 9/11. Kennedy interview the motorman who drove under the towers as the first plane struck. He inspects the damage done to the tunnels after the buildings fell. He even found the man whose job it was to update the official subway map as each line reopened.

Everyone has a subway story and, of course, not all of them could be covered in this book. I've love to know more, for example, about the group of men on the Broadway line who burst into cars and announce "Do you know what time it is? It's doo-wop time!". I would like to know why, while riding uptown on the Lexington Avenue line after seeing the final "Lord of the Rings" picture, one of my traveling companions was assaulted by a man dressed as a horse, who proceeded to gallop away down the car. I would even, heavens preserve us, like to know more about the most hated man in New York City: the guy who recorded the 200-decibel "Stand clear of the closing doors, please!" announcement that plagues the newest cars on the IRT lines and the L train. Does he ever ride the train, cover his ears at every station stop, and mourn, "What have I done? What have I done?"

Randy Kennedy's book is a wonderful compilation of the weekly articles he wrote in his "Tunnel Vision" column, which appeared in the New York Times. Randy's perception of the people of New York does not suffer from a narrow "tunnel vision". He comes from a farm town in Texas, population 1400, and yearned to see people he didn't know. Well he got his wish and has carefully observed the strangers who bring life to the New York City subway. I must admit to a bias, as I am one of the characters that he wrote about, but the book is really about New York City and the way in which the subway has been the daily crucible which has formed the New York persona. In the columns, some of the people Randy sought out and spoke with usually go unseen and unnoticed by the general public. He spoke with and observed subway track workers, motorman, subway musicians, transit police, emergency medical workers, conductors, passengers who lean on poles or block doorways, people who fell in love on a subway platform, subway evangelists and so many more people who press against you every day.2004 is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the New York subway. There will opportunities to appreciate the beauty of the stations and to ride some old subway cars. But Randy's book is not really about the hardware of the subways. It's a celebration of the software, the people who ride it, work in it, entertain us in it, live in it and are fascinated by it. I highly recommend it to any New Yorker who rides the subway and has lost the wonder of it all.

I just picked up this book this past weekend and have not been able to put it down since. This is an amazing collection of articles from an amazing author. Arcticles can be loaded with interesting facts about the subway, funny amusing notes about the people that interact or work on the subway, emotional in depth examinations of the multitude of characters, actors, and preformers who inhabit the subway. All together it is one of best, most interesting books I have pick up in recent years. I highly recommend it to anyone that lives in NYC, lives near NYC, has thought about living in NYC, or even nows where NYC is!

Kennedy's book, a collection of his NY Times columns was a fascinating read (although if you look closely on the cover, there are two discarded NY Times papers on the sidewalk--kudos to the Times for it's oh so subtle product placement). I do not get to read Mr. Kennedy's columns as I don't subscribe to the Times or read it online enough. However, I might well check out his column weekly from now on. The book is a delight. It is fascinating account of the hidden history of a city. I think New Yorkers or ex-New Yorkers will love this book the most, but even as someone who ridden the subways as tourist, I can revel in his prose and tales. It reminds a bit of Joe Gould. Fine writing and his love the people shines through.

Too many books about the New York City subway system are content to impress the reader with their data gathering and mounds of trivia. Others focus on its history and/or social and economic impact on the city. Many of them are quite good, most are not. However, Randy Kennedy's "Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York" is a welcome break from all that. Part anecdotal, part instructional, part historic, and part sheer joy, "Subwayland" offers a great deal more than statistics. What Kennedy has proven, in a way, is that the subway system isn't just a transportation option. The subway is a city under the city. Let me take it a step further, the subway is another New York City underneath New York City, complete with its own eccentrics, complexities, codes and rituals, dangers, and attractions.

I ride the subways at least 10 times a week, and have done so since I was a kid growing up in the 1960s. There are plenty of others like me in this regard. But "Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York" will surprise even the most ardent and experienced subway rider. Many times I found myself smiling in acknowledgement, and muttering, "That's right! I never really noticed that before!" There are many great moments like that in this book. I recommend it highly and it makes a great companion to Brian Cudahy's "A Century of Subways".

Rocco Dormarunno, author of "The Five Points"

"Subwayland", collated from the New York Times' column "Tunnel Vision" by Randy Kennedy over a period of several years, immediately brings to mind the word - MICROCOSM. As an itinerant contract programmer, I am currently a street-walking New Yorker - which to many would be a contradiction in terms, but here I am. So, I was fascinated and really thrilled to learn more about this world that exists a few levels below the streets that I see every weekday.

The articles give a good perspective on how the subways enforce brotherhood and/or tolerance amongst New Yorkers, who represent a vast diversity of ethnic and monetary backgrounds. This is seen as central in building a New York state of mind, and contributes significantly to the "melting pot" simile that is almost synonymous with NYC.

The book glorifies the subway as a world unto itself. A world that has developed its own cadences, sleep patterns, behaviours, characters, and identity. I read that pigeons ride the subway for food, and get off at the next stop. I was adviced that the E train is the best for spending a homeless night of sleep, because it rides entirely underground, which makes it very desirable in winter.

I learnt that hardcore subway buffs are called "foamers" because they tend to foam at their mouths (!);
that the lettered lines (E,A,G..) and the numbered lines (6,7..) actually descend from two different transit systems;
about crimes like "token sucking" that are unique to the subway;
about subway stations that double as schools;
about monster vacuum-trains that suck muck off the tracks at the rate of 72,000 cfm and sound like the "end of the world";
about hi-sci-fi "train geometry" cars that run at night and ensure that the 370-odd miles of subway are fit for another day's pounding;
about the fact that the hydraulics department matter-of-factly pump thousands of gallons of seawater seeping into the tunnels everyday;
about using "racial profiling" for increasing your chances of getting a seat when jockeying into position near the most likely candidate to get off at the next station (e.g., Chinese person before Canal Street);
about the characters - both subway performers and transit personnel - that make the subway their home and livelihood;
and, about the behavioural adaptations "subwayland" engenders (e.g. - the "subway stare", the "leg spread" for marking territory, and so on.)

It is a quick read, humourous in spurts. The book's final chapter is "The day the trains stopped" , which refers to the special trials and challenges of September 11, when the subway station under the towers was among the many casualties of that day. I'm especially happy to have read this book just before the official centenary (Oct 27th 2004) of the subway, so that I can feel some history the next time I'm down there.

I've traveled a bit but I've never spent any time in NYC. I am going to spend a week in the city in October and besides some good tour books I wanted to read something that made me feel like I lived in the city. This book was a nice journey. The essays are well written and amusing but also help explain, for those of us who live elsewhere some of the humanity and heart of the city and why people love to live there...

For years, Randy Kennedy's columns were the most enjoyable part of the NY times. Their combination of humor, sociology, and history made them a great window on life in NYC.

This compilation of his best columns does not disappoint - it has the token suckers,the subway performers, the pigeons that ride the train and the dreaded leg-spreaders. Every New Yorker will thoroughly enjoy this book. Even if you don't live in the city, you'll find these vignettes of the great subway melting pot enjoyable.

A colleague of mine taught this book to a class of new immigrants. As a daily denizen of the NYC subway system, I wondered if they really would want to read about the very thing they had to grudgingly trudge through to get to class (or read on it on the way).

"It's fun," she said. "Read it, you'll see!"

Two years after I quit that teaching job, I finally read the book. I wish I hadn't waited so long. For one, it would have been more timely, as the book is essentially a collection of NYTimes columns from 2000-2004. But more importantly, my colleague was right - it is a lot of fun. Kennedy catches the character (and characters) of the subway with flair, pathos, and a strong reporter's eye (to the point of that stodgily self-referential first-person "the reporter" when he finds himself in his stories).

In Kennedy's hands, the subway is a 500-mile-long Coney Island, with a strange (but all too recognizable to any New Yorker) assortment of heroes, bums, workers, entertainers and representatives of both sides of the law. As could be guessed by its time period, it ends with a section of pieces from the aftermath of 9/11, but even then things never get too heavy; at its heart the book is 225 pages of a transplant's love of the city under the City (Kennedy's from Texas), a fun, elucidating read for any immigrant, whether from Korea or Kansas.

A collection of short NY Times essays, these were fun to read and finally answered the question I've always had about the Knickerbocker sign at the Grand Central/Times Sq. train platform. Not really a historyof the subway, but a nice sampling of stories of the subway and it's users/inhabitants/workers.