13 May 2008

Voyeuristic Tendencies

Eight hours of my Sunday were spent traveling. Tampa Airport to Newark Airport, airtrain to NJ transit station, NJ transit station to New York Penn Station, A train from Penn Station to West 4th, F train from West 4th to Delancey. Ahhh, Delancey. Anyway, it's West 4th that I'm concerned with at this particular moment. It's the only subway station I've been in that has cameras trained on the tracks and the people at the edge. Why West 4th? Why not, I guess. At 10 on a Sunday night, waiting sort of impatiently for the F, they certainly provided some entertaining visual stimulus. People get so anxious and fidgety waiting for the train. It's hilarious to watch them! Especially when they don't realize they're being watched. But hey, the cameras are hardly hidden so no guilt here.

My favorite was a man standing about twenty feet away from me. He had on a baseball hat that either had the intertwined letters "LA" or "UK"; I really couldn't distinguish and he really didn't look like either an LA or UK type guy. He was a normal/geeky looking man, wearing a white t-shirt and khakis. He REALLY wanted that train to come. There were a bajillion people craning their necks every five seconds to see if it was coming yet, but UK/LA guy seemed to be the only one talking to himself about it. It reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine is stuck on a subway en route to a wedding. You see the anguish in her face as her voice over speaks her pissed off thoughts. That's what this guy was doing. And he just kept doing it; I couldn't really make out the words he was mouthing, but imagine the dialogue went something like this: "Fucking bullshit. Where the fuck is this fucking goddamn train. Shit! Where the fuck is it?!? How long have we been here???? It's been two HOURS!! Goddammit! Fuckkkk!"

He walked out of the shot, and then got on the D train when it arrived before the F. I was thinking about posting in Missed Connections to find him. Angry Subway Guy.

2 comments:

  1. did you return that macy's t-shirt?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I still have the Macy's shirt!

    ReplyDelete