« Sketching | Main | Outside Actvity: M5 Bus »
October 31, 2005
M5 Bus Notes
I took the M5 bus today from lower Manhattan to the Bronx. I woke up a little too late after last night's Halloween parties and I would have just gone next weekend but next weekend is the Marathon. My paper is due right before thanksgiving and I wanted to get this out of the way before things picked up again as we started working towards our final projects.
Beforehand, I didn't want to close myself off to possibilities for the paper so I didn't come to the bus ride with any particular theme or thesis. I was going to observe and see what emerges. I had some basic devices in mind which gelled with my assumptions about the bus. People would get off and on. They would be from different minority groups. There would be more minorities the farther we got uptown. The city would change as we moved from hip to rich to poor. The people might know each other as they have formed a community of bus riders.
These are some of the things that happened:
Today was the Sunday we turn our clocks back. It was unseasonable sunny and warm, I was overdressed. Before getting on the train, I bought a coffee and spilled it all over my left hand. Surprisingly it didn't hurt. On my train ride over to Houston street from Brooklyn I noticed that the person sitting next to me was reading the New York Times and the founders of Google were on the cover of the business section. An ITP connection.
I knew I shouldn't have been, but I was thinking about what I should be thinking about as I ride the bus, trying to game the system. Some things I was considering:
- This would be my first trip to the Bronx. It might be my only trip to the Bronx. Except for an interest in the Zoo and the botanical gardens, I am completely removed from that part of the city.
- ITP can only exist in New York, it could not be anywhere else. It thrives because here anything goes and it's safe to try anything you want. Strange is a relative idea. This environment affords ITP the freedom to come out with new and beautiful ideas but most of us don't go above the village let along make a bus all the way to the Bronx. We spend two years on the fourth floor, enjoy the fruits of New York, not acknowledging the cultural mix that led to the creation of Tisch & ITP. Maybe that's what the bus trip is for? Something i've heard here over and over again is "only in New York". No one cares if you walk through the park with a huge tarp. No one cares if you go into a garment store with a multimeter and check for the conductivity of various fabrics. Where does this attitude come from? Is this tolerance a conscious choice or a necessity for cities such New York?
- Or is this environment so rich and diverse because of the noise, because of the activity? I think back to my trip back to Boston over the three day weekend and how eerily calm everything was, almost as if something wasn't right.
I got on at La Guardia and Houston. We went down houston, past galleries and brunch places. We passed an enormous church with a "peace to the world" sign. I took a picture. Through the trip I took a bunch of pictures, a lot of movements shots because the bus was moving most of the time. I don't know how/if I am going to incorporate them into my paper, I'd need to find a cohesive story behind them.
We took a right on the Avenue of the Americas, 6th Ave. Right at the turn was a basketball/street hockey. At this point there was only one couple (w/ child) on the bus with me. I kept track of all the people who got on, when/where but I found it impractical to record all that information. At 6th Avenue, an older black man with a cane got on and rode the bus all the way up to the Bronx with me. He was the only passenger to ride most of the bus ride with me. Most everyone else did short trips. There were some longer trips from the 90s to the Bronx.
We passed the West 4th street station which is the one after Broadway/Lafayette, where I get off for school. I've considered going one extra stop when coming to school but then i'd have to backtrack to Tisch. It was cool to see the stop because it is uncharted territory for me.
At the 8th street bus stop, I saw a rotund hassid with very thin legs and dress shoes. A grey haired hispanic man, 2 older white women and a men with a barrette got on the bus. Most of the people who got on the bus were middle aged or older. There were small children but very few teenagers and 20/30 somethings. No one was particular fashionable or young. This sunday mostly the middle aged took the m5.
At 13th street I saw a kid on a fixed gear bike slinking through congested traffic. He didn't have a helmet on.
At 15th street, everyone who got on was white. There were a couple of sex shops to my left, I imagine it's what times square used to look like. It's been a while since i've seen a couple of adult businesses next to each other. The combat zone in Boston was dismantled years ago.
At 18th street the bus began to fill up. I should have given up my seat but I needed it for my homework assignment. Whenever anyone passed by who needed a seat, I just pretended I was doing something else. It's a little shitty, but it's a rarity for me. The big box stores begin at this point, huge old navys and the like. It's unexpected, not something I would imagine New York to be like. Malls should be in the suburbs, not in the city where real estate is at a premium and individuality rules. A lot of older people got in at this point, some had bags from the box stores. This was the first time the bus was lowered to make it easier for people to get on. I wondered what the older people had seen, what their New York was like. Mine is only a few months old, but theirs solidified years ago. They don't see what I see, they have more ghosts and memories.
At 21st street I began to notice what people, especially the people sitting alone, were doing on the bus. At this point the bus was fairly crowded but it was quiet. That's a noticeable difference, as the bus went further and further uptown, the voices on the bus became louder and louder. There was more of a community, people were more likely to run into someone they knew (and be loud about it). At 21st street people were listening to music, looking out the window. I imagined they were daydreaming, maybe reliving the past.
Further up, on 27th, the sex shops were accompanied by tattoo parlors. A blind woman, who had gotten on earlier, decided to go to the back of the bus. There is a certain amount of unclear movement on the bus. Someone will be sitting in one seat and then get up and move to a different seat. There is no clear reason for it, for example someone spilling into their seat, etc. It reminds me of walking on the train. I never understood why people do it but they have their reasons. 27th street also had a big sign for the New Yorker festival. The New Yorker has always symbolized the essence of New York City for me and I still find it odd that I get the New Yorker and I live in New York.
The skyscrapers, banks and office buildings begin in the 30s. A bicycle cab passes by on the right. The man wasn't wearing a helmet. He has a leopard print padding over the seats for his passengers. A huge gaggle of people got on at 34th street, also known as Hearld Square. There are luxury condos which don't have to say anything because it's obvious they are. Later on, in the Bronx, I saw poorly maintained, period buildings with a phone number and a 'luxury apartments' sign.
At 39th Street is Bryan Park. Very pretty. There's also a free ice skating ring there. We drive uptown and see guys selling crappy knockoff purses to tourists. We pass Little Brazil street. The humongous UBS buildings which house their own art gallery. All of the buildings have huge public art sculptures which I would have never seen if I didn't take this bus. We pass Robert Indiana's Love Sculpture.
This part of Manhattan is unknown to me, I don't have much reason to go here. It's a fantasy, not real enough for me. Case in point, we pass Radio City Music Hall.
We hit Central Park south and take a left. We pick up families after a day in the Park, maybe three or four of them. At the southwest corner, 60th street, we take a right onto Broadway. There's a baby screaming on the bus. I put on my headphones. A couple of black families get on the bus. For the next couple of stops, no white people get on. People who live here don't take the bus. This one is going uptown into the less desirable neighborhoods.
A bunch of adults in a school bus pass us on the left. We pass Juliards, it's celebrating it's centennial. We pass a bed and bath store. It has a doorman. New York is very service based at every level, there's always someone around to take care of it for you and i'm not comfortable with it. I'm used to doing things for myself, maybe because I don't know how much it's going to cost me.
At 68th street, we pass some sort of event, possibly celebrity centered. There is a tent set up and tough looking guys with earpieces doing security. Everyone on the bus looks to see what it is but we just speed by. I'm sure it's on some society page.
We take a left at 72nd street, off Broadway. It's more residential. As we drive closer to the west side highway, I can look left, back downtown. I can see all the streets we passed. It's dusk and everything looks far away.
We take a right on Riverside drive. I've never been here. There's a nice park that runs along 9a and the area is completely residential. The light is right, this looks like Woody Allen movie New York. A couple of geared up cyclist pass us in the other direction. A man turns his hazards on at a red light, gets out and runs behind the car to check his tires. He makes it back before the light turns green. I see joggers, people holding each other, the sun setting. We pass the Soldiers and Sailors memorial. There are two men playing catch with two frisbees. They throw both at the same time. Show offs.
Dogs everywhere. A little boy kicks a soccer ball around a rock, waiting for his mom to catch up. Our bus cuts off a car from Washington DC, the man in the passenger seat gives us the finger.
We take a right on west 135th street, Shona Baily Place. I couldn't find much of anything about her online except that she was young and murdered in Harlem.
At this point I trailed off. We're in Harlem and then the Bronx. It's louder, dirtier and more confrontational. I am a stranger here.
Posted by mb2811 at October 31, 2005 12:01 AM