Most of us take the subway every day, and many of us spend a lot of time underground. It can be a time to read, or it can be very noisy, slow, and stressful. It is one of the givens of NYC that you never know what you are going to get when you walk into a station. There is a nicely restored old-fashioned one at Astor Place. The conditions vary from station to station considerably; the rush is the same everywhere.. The good thing is that it is open 24 hours, 7 days a week, and $2 will get you anywhere in the far-flung system. This helps to keeps the city open all hours, to make it “the city that never sleeps.”

]Some stations have been renovated and art commissions have been installed (here is a mysterious mosaic of a child’s game of marbles, underground at 42nd St and 7th Avenue). Some stations have never been renovated or are poorly maintained (like this grungy crypt at 14th St. and 7th Avenue) If it weren’t for the trains, NYC could not exist. People who live in the outer boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island all use public transportation to get to their jobs; most in Manhattan do also. Even so, there is a particular brand of New Yorker who prides him/herself on never setting foot in the trains. They take cabs or refuse to lead the kind of life that deals with rush hours…