Who Walk In Brooklyn

Father Sullivan tugged at his prick and tried to relax. He was back in darkest Brooklyn; the bar was called the Casablanca Inn. The men’s room was stifling, the radiator spit on his cast, and the beers he’d been drinking since ten in the morning knifed his bladder. Because he’d fractured his skull and his right ankle, he’d made a number of adjustments large and small: he mapped each excursion according to how many steps there’d be to climb; he continued to be puzzled by the peculiar sensations in his ankle, more like a plant pushing through the soil than human pain, and he was still not used to holding his prick in his left hand while supporting himself with the aluminum cane in the right.

Sullivan held his breath, swallowed the stench and swayed beneath the bulb that illuminated beads of plumbing sweat. He read the wall from bottom to top. Three woodknots were linked obscenely. The graffiti were pretty high-string:

Hey Europe, eat my Florida!

Sullivan, bracing his cane in a spot where the tiles had lifted away, was inspired to add:

As a final gesture of defiance
My uncle left his cock to science

from Tom McDonough, Virgin With Child (Viking, 1981)

This moment in Brooklyn literature was brought to you by Caz Dolowicz, serving Kings County since 1923. He grew up in Irish Town, near Sands Street, and his first ex-wife was a Mick. Today he lives in Bay Ridge with his cats, one of which is from Williamsburg, the other’s Persian.

It seems like everyone should know Laura Lindgren but empirically speaking, that’s not the case. What case? Not the nominative, accusative, dative nor genitive either. At the turn of the century in Brooklyn, the Piel’s Brewery of East New York would sell you 24 bottles— let’s call it a case— of beer for $1.25 ($1.50 for dark) delivered; can’t get that kind of deal today! If you look on the shelf there is The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald, first published in 1959 and costing $2.75 by its sixteenth printing in 1983, which is when I came on “the job,” not to be confused with the collection of William S. Burroughs interviews first published under that title in 1969. It’s unclear if Laura Lindgren ever met Burroughs personally but the then nearly 80-year-old Lawrence, Kansas resident did write the introduction to The Drug User: Documents 1840-1960, an anthology of dope literature edited by John Strausbaugh and Donald Blaise, which Laura’s own Blast Books put out back in 1993, the first year Heiner Müller’s production of Tristan und Isolde was performed at Bayreuth. I’ve always assumed— but don’t actually know— that Blast Books took its name from the Wyndham Lewis‘ brilliant journal of the same name, which burst unto the literary world in June 1914; Vorticists unite!

See publisher, editor and designer Laura Lindgren TONIGHT at 7 pm at the Proteus Gowanus Gallery, where she’ll give an illustrated presentation on the 2009 Mütter Museum Calendar. For those who might not know, the Mütter Museum is  part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Will the ghost of  Street of No Return (1954) author David Goodis, Philly’s most appropriate novelist be in attendance? If not, check the bar at Monte’s,  where he’s probably a little drunk.

A couple days late but dead is dead, right? Likewise, while Indiana-native Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008) was probably not the signal example of jazz genius, during his peak years, he demonstrated a still staggering ability to be there and do his inside pushing outwards thing for Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley, Ornette Coleman, Oliver Nelson, Wayne Shorter, Brooklyn hero Max Roach, my beloved Sam Rivers: the list is goes on, a roll call of American miracles. Being there the nights of April 9 and 10, 1965 meant  the Club La Marchal on Fulton Street. The lineup— including Freddie’s contemporary, Lee Morgan, drummer Pete LaRoca, percussionist Big Black— is more impressive than The Night of the Cookers albums, which are blurrily raucous but not so much more that I won’t recommend a dozen (two, three, four dozen) other albums with either Lee or Freddie first. Back in the winter of ‘82-’83 I had a girlfriend (let’s call her “Jackie”) in Fort Greene whose parents were big Freddie fans— that’s how I got turned on to the dude, in fact, although marijuana and Jackie’s crimson kimono helped. Cut open anyone hip to the early-mid ’70s African-American musical diaspora and you’ll almost certainly find of heavy layer of Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay there. It don’t wash off! — The Music Director

The Music Director has more stories about the corner of Nostrand and Fulton than most yokels in the blogidad; so what?

In honor of all the venal creeps from David  Yassky (”Term Limits Whore Us”) on down (not that you can get much lower) making crybaby noises about the reopening of the Brooklyn House of Detention, I’m delighted to rerun the WWIB interview with a man who knows something about street justice, journalist and author C.J. Sullivan. QUESTION: what’s the matter with all the “new” downtown Brooklyn types, or did they not notice they live in the civic seat of Kings County? And there have been how many prison escapes in Brooklyn since the old Raymond Street Jail (hear ‘em all say “the what?”) closed? While I sit back and wait to hear the answer, dig on my man— my tall man— my strong man— my virtuous man, C.J., the pure product of Cardinal Spellman who’d never dream of using his old Roy White bat to play fungo with an army of terracotta David Yasskys… But I sure would. If only the ponderous Christine Quinn’s political career were as dead as Awakened Qin! —Caz Dolowicz 

It’s a question that will face nearly every reporter if they hang around this racket long enough: how do you write about a Legend? Especially when you go back like we do— way back, to the basketball & handball courts, the pizza parlors & lechoneras, the ominous stairwells & bachata blasting nights of the our native land. Meet Christopher J. Sullivan, pure Bronx Irish out of Kingsbridge; meet Ernie Koy, Jr., a Filipino octaroon originally from Hoe Avenue but filing this from the Morrisania Branch of the New York Public Library. People often ask why the Bronx doesn’t have its own library system, like the Brooklyn & the Queens do? The Sullivan knows but he ain’t saying; the Koy knows also but there’s three people waiting to get on this terminal, so I better speed things up. Librarians in the Bronx ain’t playin’, damn.

Most of us on the other side of the Broadway, the 145th Street, the 3rd Avenue & the Willis Avenue bridges too had seen it since the late 1970s: white boy has style. It wasn’t until the 1990s however, when Sullivan began to write for New York Press, that the rest of the city figured it out. While much credit goes to Sullivan’s editor, John Strausbaugh, for recognizing the still somewhat raw talent, it was C.J.’s own hustle & diligence that made “Bronx Stroll” among the most important newspaper columns of its era.

While Sullivan’s politics were always somewhat ambiguous— like Walter Matthau in Charley Varrick, C.J. could be rightfully be called the Last of the Independents— the simple fact that he was hitting the Bronx hard & writing about both its glory & its darkness was a radical act. Check the magazines, check the newspapers, check the blogs: Tom Robbins of the Village Voice, Gary Axelbank of BronxTalk & a few others excepted, yeah, the great fake “liberal” media of New York City is falling all over itself to report from Tha’ Boogie Down, so who could possibly care if Sullivan is— ooooh, ‘politically correct’? Your mom loves him, my mom & mami as well: that’s what matters in the streets; the rest is pure jealousy.

Although his association with New York Press sputtered to an end a couple years ago, Sullivan today is more active than ever. He’s contributed stories to the Brooklyn Noir series; compiled the boggling 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York collection; wrote the epic Bronx-essay for New York Calling & is a widely admired part-time crime reporter for the New York Post. (Sullivan’s day job is at Kings County Supreme Court.) Most recently, Sullivan is the author of Wild Tales From The Police Blotter, a brilliant, often funny, sometimes poignant survey of all the things criminals get caught doing & occasionally get away with too. A few knuckleheads have complained Wild Tales is “episodic” but that seems to me way more like an accurate observation than a criticism. If they mean to say Wild Tales stands with the finest episodes of The Honeymooners, F-Troop, Kojak  & The Rockford Files as examples of irreducible American Genius, then alright.

Seated on a bench in St Mary’s Park in Mott Haven one late summer afternoon, Brian Berger & C.J. Sullivan, sweating profusely, spoke of many things. Paul Newman was still alive & they goofed on Fort Apache anyway. — Ernie Koy, Jr.

Brian Berger: Before we walk over to the schoolyard on Brook Ave & I take you in handball, let’s talk about Kingsbridge, where Young Sullivan, son of two generations of firefighters, first got his Irish up, as they say.

C.J. Sullivan: My grandmother came to New York in 1908 when she was 24, as did her husband did around the same time so that side of the family kept the Irish spirit alive in the family. Continue Reading »

Armond White is a funny guy. That Armond’s excellent sense of humor isn’t often noted when people discuss his criticism doesn’t make his wit any less bracing. Of course, I don’t agree with everything Armond asserts— who could?— but still, it’s always strongly—sometimes strangely— argued, challenging and reverential of a life of the mind. As readers, we can ask no more, although a book or two would be quite welcome. Armond’s is one of the lesser-known New York Calling essays I’m most proud of (excerpt below), and elsewhere, time and again, I’ve found Armond’s critical acuities and enthusiasm right the fuck on, just when I needed it. Two recent examples where Armond helped clarify my own througts are his overview of the films of David Lean and his introduction to the unedited version of Mark Romanek’s brilliant video for Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”. There’s no use pretending most people I know didn’t check out on (or get fired from, natch) New York Press years ago but take a look sometime and Armond’s still there, doing his thing. Long may he inspire, and infuriate, and inspire again.— Brian Berger*

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The City Sun wasn’t New York’s first black-owned weekly newspaper, but it was the first that anyone took seriously after the ’60s, when black militancy made The Amsterdam News seem New York’s closest thing to communiqués from the Front.When the City Sun proudly printed a cover story on the release of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It in 1986, it was an era-defining day. The Brooklyn-based paper had been in business for only two years, but the premiere of that particular movie—and its local fanfare—became a media watershed. It not only announced a fresh start for independent filmmakers depicting contemporary black culture but made clear that black journalism also had cultural importance, was more than just missives from a war zone. Almost ten years later, Lee capitalized on his black independent-filmmaker image with Clockers, a Hollywood-studio-sponsored depiction of black American life that created a surprisingly different, deflating effect from the hipsterism of She’s Gotta Have It. Clockers, the story of a white Brooklyn cop who investigates a crime cover-up by two young black men,was a tribute to the sanctity of the police and a rainbow-hued reflection of ghetto treachery. In short, everything the City Sun had celebrated She’s Gotta Have It for not being. Ten years made a difference between Lee the black striver, using race pride as a calling card to get a foothold in Hollywood, and his eventual achievement of arrogant middle-class success.

Success for both the City Sun and Spike Lee belonged to a special period in New York’s history. The mid-’80s gave rise to African-American pop communication more varied and prominent than had ever been possible before. In journalism and the arts, the mainstream witnessed the attitudes and ambitions of a social group that had seized upon advances foreseen in the objectives of mid-century education reform and arts consciousness and wrought by the civil-rights movements and black radicalism. The effects were widespread, from newspaper ownership and filmmaker entrepreneurship to hip-hop music. The result was a popular culture that turned black experience and imagery into a new vanguard. Black culture came to fascinate media conglomerates, the fashion industry and academia; it also helped the profile of local politicians and small business folk. Iconic names cropped up across the city: Michael Jordan’s restaurant in Manhattan; Spike Lee’s Brooklyn emporium Spike’s Joint; the Brooklyn offices of the City Sun itself. Black advancement was not monolithic. There were discrete visions of what this new,private black autonomy would mean for life in New York City: black rock bands like Living Colour, self-published guru-authors like Sharazad Ali, and machine-politics straw men like New York’s first black Mayor, David Dinkins. This auspicious moment was not utopian; rather, it was unexpected proof of a now-fragmented dream—a quaking landscape of ideological monoliths.

This was confirmed by Lee’s change of heart with Clockers and the City Sun’s unavoidably disputatious reaction to the film. It was a small controversy, perhaps, but it illustrated that unpredictable dynamic between action and ethics. With Clockers, Lee sought to profit from a particular commercial depiction of urban and  black American life characterized primarily by racial and class division. Only the City Sun stood between Lee and his Brooklyn striver’s pose as the last word on black attitude. The two should not have been in opposition, but their clash demonstrated that another aspect of American plurality was cultural upheaval.

Following the wide range of black radical expression ofthe ’60sand early ’70s, white Americans’ formerly abashed reactions to civil-rights progress dominated the media—especially New York tabloid journalism. With Clockers, Lee forfeited black screen time to portray a white authority figure’s pent-up frustration—a sentimentality in which racist cops are not the products of bigoted indoctrination, just helplessly coarsened by the jungle/workplace. Clockers’ police sympathy misrepresented America’s—New York City’s—basic white cop/black citizen tension.

In the film the police are the bearers of morality while black folks are the problem. Predictably, the white press loved this—Clockers was widely praised as Lee’s best film to date because it appealed to the media brokers’ own limited sense of social reality. Lee didn’t instruct his viewers about conflicting urban racial philosophies; instead, by making the white cop Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) a man of heart, he played to his audience’s prejudices by using the mainstream’s familiar game of equal-time race sentiment, giving white bewilderment the same dramatic weight as black grievance.It was an erroneous quid pro quo that ignored the fact of unequal social power by which the Police Department’s institutional racism was made to seem common-sensical.

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* Gowanus Houses setting and the sorta awesome “Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers” aside, I too dislike Clockers, taking issue not just with message but the messengers as well, especially the unbearable overacting of Harvey Keitel. Praise be Chubb Rock. O.C. and Jeru The Damaja, production by DJ Premier.

by Yenta Gersh If it’s been a while since I wrote about Kevin Walsh, it’s not because either one of us lost the interfaith— I just forgot. But this morning I forgot to remember to forget, and here we are, 22 degrees and sunny. The Rockaway surf report says “flat and poor conditions” so that’s out, even with a drysuit for the 44-47 degree water temperatures. If you miss those lazy hazy crazy days of summer of like Nat King Cole and Lenny Bruce (once together on “Playboy After Dark”) join the man affectionately known as “The Webmaster” as he travels back in time to Jamaica Hills, Queens. Now I’m more of a Southside guy myself and I can’t remember the bit— oh wait, I can! On the terrific, Hal Willner box set of Lenny, Let The Buyer Beware, there’s a… what? A piece? A cut? It’s not a bit as such but what the hell, let’s call it a bit anyway. So there’s a bit on disc one titled “Censorship on the Steve Allen Show” and I don’t want to ruin it for everyone but Lenny talks about the tattoo he got in Malta in 1942 and… the reaction of his Aunt, on Suthpin Avenue in Jamaica when she saw it. FEH!! (is a Jewish seagull.)

Clarinetist and composer Yenta Gersh, New Utrecht High School class of 1972, grew up in Coney Island and Bensonhurst. He has four tattoos.

by Ernie Koy, Jr Look, my favorite Christmas movie is Blast Of Silence, so I’m not going to tell anybody to buy Lisa Kahane’s Do Not Give Way To Evil: Photographs of the South Bronx, 1979-1987 for any reason other than the fact it’s goddamn great. I don’t want to give too much away either but it’s fully the equal of something like Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art, Mel Rosenthal’s In The South Bronx of America and Camilo Vergara’s The New American Ghetto. And yet I wonder, what kind of name is Kahane anyway? Koy is Bronx Irish (with 1/8th Filipino) but Kahane, Kahane: that’s an odd one. Growing up in the Bronx, it used to be the Albanians tried to pass as Italians; nowadays the Italians feel lucky if they’re mistaken for Albanian and nearly all the cooks in Belmont are from Mexico or Ecuador. Back when I was running South Boogie Down— full court, half-court, handball, down the freight tracks in Port Morris on the way back from Hell Gate or away from some flatfoot in the 4-0 during a late night graffiti mission—there weren’t many Italians left, very very few. That’s when I started learning Spanish: El Jockey es vuelto and other popular songs. (I had taken some Latin at Cardinal Hayes High School but I was more interested in the streets than Catullus.) What’s especially wild about Do Not Give Way To Evil (Ne cede malis— see Father MacMurray; I learned something) is how much it overlaps with New York Calling without actually having bumped into each other at the corner of E. 138th Street and Rider, say. In fact, ever since it came out this past summer, Brian Berger and Bronx-writer C.J. Sullivan have been battling to see who can figure out every single one of Lisa’s locations first. Last I heard, they’d nailed about 3/4ths of the spots but I don’t know if either dude has it in him to finish the job— I guess we’ll see. Meanwhile, get this book— and if you’re in the ‘hood, it’s right from the source, Powerhouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn; it’s still Fulton Ferry to me, man!

Ernie Koy Jr. grew up Catholic in Kingsbridge.

Berenice “The Abbott”/BZA adds: first three photographs are by Lisa Kahane; all rights and then some are reserved. The last picture is by Brian Berger and appears in black and white on page 18 of New York Calling. The sculpture is called “Life On Dawson Street” and it’s by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. For Lisa’s 1982 photo of John and Rigoberto’s “Double Dutch At Kelly Street” see page 92 of Do Not Give Way To Evil; my own “Double Dutch” shot from last summer is currently inaccessible.

Brian Berger himself jumps off: Lisa is awesome, yes, and if anyone is stumped for gift ideas, let me remind ya’ll of the best New York City photography book of 2007, Joseph Anastasio’s Subway Solitude. Don’t be fooled by the self-publication; almost every art photographer will tell you the racket pays barely more than poetry and the monetary costs— especially for those working with film— are far higher. While Anastasio’s work and Lisa’s are quite different they both have similar drives to get in there and do the work. Some publisher would be wise to put out more books by both these artists. (See To The Gates OV Hell for a brief introduction to Joe’s above ground work.)

Everybody say sh’ma! In the midst of city, state and federal affairs of unpleasant tiding, there came this Sunday at least some good news. Suzanne Wasserman, historian and filmmaker, wrote a piece about her father, Edward, for the New York Times, “A Bensonhurst Boyhood, Unlocked At Last”. I might have more to say about family, Mother Russia, Brooklyn anarchists, and the historical process later but first everyone needs to discover it for themselves. What I can write briefly about today is Bensonhurst and Bath Beach, the unknown and the unknowable— or so one might gather from a media whose greater attentions are, to put it kindly, elsewhere. But like Edward Wasserman, I’ve got my own old New Utrecht style, as did Gilbert Sorrentino, Buddy Hackett and David Geffen, Ralph Kramden, Mr. Kotter and Tony Manero, among many many others, not all of them Italian or Jewish. Still, knowing a little of Suzanne’s interests as a historian, let me point out Congregation Sons of Israel synagogue, organized in 1896, at the corner of Benson Avenue and Bay 28th Street. To say that I have a— how you say?— “complicated” relationship with Judaism reminds me that everyone should read Wallace Markfield’s Teitlebaum’s Window (1971), the greatest Jewish New York novel of them all, ever— accept no substitutes. But Markfield went to Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island, home of the Lady Railsplitters, some of whom from years past, like C.D., still perform the dance of the seven veils in the ner tamid of my mind. I will now put down C.D.’s name. Her name is Clare Dushler. She didn’t give a shit about Emery Roth synagogues then and truth be told, neither did I. —Yenta Gersh

Clarinetist and composer Yenta Gersh, New Utrecht High School class of 1972, grew up in Coney Island and Bensonhurst. He might, in the not-so-distant past, have made his living in a mediocre wedding band.

by Ernie Koy, Jr If you grow up in the Bronx, you grow up cynical, or you’re hiding up in Riverdale; either way, you weren’t— you aren’t— me. How to explain then the staggeringly stupid and vomitous appointment of outgoing Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión to head something called the White House Office of Urban Policy? If anything should hit the Barack Obama cultists in the face like an icewater douche, this is it. Me, I just figured things couldn’t get worse so… what the hell? And Mighty Sparrow said it was okay! On the other hand, if anyone suggested to me that thee absolute worst the Bronx has to offer— and one of the most loathsome of all current NYC politicians (a highly competitive category, I know)— would be plucked from obscurity (because let’s face it, who save a few activists and enterprising journalists cares about the Bronx?) and given any reward from Obama I’d have thrown up yesterday’s mondongo in utter revulsion. But who is Aldolfo Carrión and why are people saying such horrible things about him?

In the first section introduction to New York Calling (2007), “Public Space,” Brian Berger wrote:

… Lest there by any confusion, banners affixed to Park Row lampposts adjacent City Hall declare New York “The Real Estate Capital of the world.” What’s lost with such rhetoric is exactly what it touts, New York. The multi-ethnic Bronx Terminal Market was razed to make way for a big box development called the Gateway Center. If the city seems to be blurring, it’s not an illusion: a huge strip mall near Starrett City in Brooklyn has the same name; likewise dozens of facilities around the country. (Silliest: the Gateway Centr of Ames, Iowa, formerly a Holiday Inn.) A few blocks north, the Yankees, the wealthiest team in American sports, are building a new stadium on what was parkland, partly at public expense. Coincidentally, nearby Mott Haven is the poorest neighborhood in New York, with 46% of its residents living below the poverty line.

In the introduction to the “City Life” section, Berger went further:

… With religion playing only a small role in city governance, it’s ironic few New Yorkers pay attention to local politics. The effects of this disinterest are many— that amazingly corrupt Yankee Stadium deal being a recent example— none salutary, except for those with the money to game a corrupt system to their benefit. This explains how luxury developments receive tax subsidies and why New York will have had sixteen years of Republican Mayoralty when 48 of 51 City Council seats are held by Democrats. The Yankees faced overwhelming community opposition,yet political reaction citywide was largely quiet. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr lives on City Island, which is as far from Macomb’s Dam Park as he can get, but his future is secure: the machine knows he plays ball.

In New York Calling’s Bronx essay, Boogie Down-native C.J. Sullivan observed:

The future of the Bronx will not be found in its politicians. The new-school Latino and black power base has replaced old-school white ethnics who did a terrible job for the borough. The only problem is that the new boss— Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr, who sold out South Bronx locals for a new Yankee stadium and a shopping mall— is just like the old boss.

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For more on this travesty of inane “hope” and ersatz “change,” see the excellent reporting of Neil Demause (greatest living sports writer) and Tom Robbins of the Village Voice (look for his excellent work on the Bronx Terminal Market story years ago also). The dogged folks up at Save Our Parks have been on Carrión like stink on shit, a coarse analogy but one that’s probably too kind to the Borough President. Hell, even the Neigborhood Retail Alliance is piling on!

So… anyone from the Obama administration or, failing that, anyone with an Obama poster, bumper sticker, t-shirt, refrigerator magnet, beer coozie, bath mat, tattoo, mural or book bag care to explain? Gracias in advance. My “hope” is that Carrión self-destructs on the way to D.C. like Bernard Kerik  did before him but given the general lack of attention to the Bronx and Carrión’s token ethnic pass (let’s get real), I fear it’s too late for any good change is gonna come.

Ernie Koy Jr. is a native of Kingsbridge in The Bronx.

I ride the trains nearly every day, have for years, and have never grown sick of it. On the platforms and in the cars, I have witnessed nearly every kind of insanity you can imagine,from the simply peculiar to the genuinely frightening. On one of my very first hour-long trips down to Coney Island, I watched as a gentle, gaudy, 300-pound transvestite who’d covered his entire face with lipstick tore the pages out of a TV Guide one by one before stuffing them into his purse. I’ve also watched a monstrous, shrieking lunatic swing a baseball bat at passengers as the train rolled merrily along.

I’ve vomited on myself twice while riding the subway, and learned that there’s no better way to get a seat, no matter how crowded the train is. I’ve seen rats the size of dogs waddling down the tracks without a care. I’ve witnessed strangers beaten by gang members for no reason other than that they were there, and have been beaten by gang members myself for the same reason.

I’ve shared personal secrets with strangers I knew I would never see again, and dodged people I knew I’d be seeing later in the day. Once, I watched a well-dressed man completely undress on an R train during the morning rush. Nobody seemed really sure why he was doing this,but nobody said a word about it. I spent two hours trapped in a stalled train under the East River and saw lifelong friendships forged. I met an amazing musician who could play Shostakovich on a xylophone constructed from soda bottles filled with water to various levels, and a one-armed man who tooted feebly on a harmonica while trying to collect handouts. I’ve seen stolen property ranging from newspapers and batteries to complete computer systems sold at bargain-basement prices on the trains. Things happen down there that simply wouldn’t happen, and couldn’t happen, anyplace else.

It’s easy to get all poetic about the form and meaning and metaphorical implications of the subways,and that’s just fine. Lots of people have done it. But for my money,none of that really matters when you ride the trains every day. More than anything else, at eye level the subway is a self-contained traveling theater with an ever-changing line-up. While most commuters are content to keep quietly to themselves, they can rest assured that some sort of entertainment will be showing up soon. Musicians of every stripe, preachers, hucksters, madmen—all with a captive audience for at least a few minutes. On some days a simple ride from Brooklyn into Manhattan can take the form of a musical comedy, on others an action-adventure film. It can be a medicine show, a Greek tragedy, a love story, a taut thriller, a disaster movie, a police drama, or a savage quickie horror film. (In fact, I’ve often suggested that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority—the corrupt and ill-managed agency responsible for keeping the whole system running— should use Walter Hill’s 1979 low-budget street-gang fantasy The Warriors as a public-relations tool. No other film in recent memory more loudly sings the praises of the near-Germanic efficiency and reliability of the New York subways. Whenever you want a train, the film promises, there’ll be one waiting for you.) —Jim Knipfel, excerpted from “Subterannean Vaudeville” in New York Calling. Jim’s next novel, Unplugging Philco, will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2009.

Swan, Transportation Editor, adds: The greatest uncensored subway writing of more recent vintage comes from Angry New Yorker, who’s rightly indignant over the proposed elimination of the W line; we here in Brooklyn are likewise defensive about the M train, although I’m not too partisan to admit the W is more important, if forced to choose… which in a corrupt city/state that’s giving even one cent to the goddamn Mets and Yankees, we should not. (Will we have to pay for George Steinbrenner’s funeral too when he finally croaks? Rejoice!) Roll over Mike Bloomberg and tell Christine Quinn, the  bums, creeps, crooks, dipshits, douchebags, dumbasses, feebs, fucktards, jackoffs, knuckleheads, liars, thieves and Randy Levine the news. Angry has all the fresh flavor of just brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now… wow! Safe when taken as directed.