by Jacob Goldstein
You know the guy: He pulls in on the downtown local at 96th Street, runs across the platform to check the express track for an inbound train and, seeing only darkness in the tunnel, runs back onto the local and continues on his way.
That man is my brother in spirit. He is not running across the platform because he is late; he is running because, like me, he knows the primal urban pain of seeing the express train pass his local by. Like me, he knows the joy of riding the express on its lightning run from 72nd to 42nd, the pleasure mounting as the train blows through one local station after another.
This is no novel pleasure, no perverse outgrowth of our manic new century. The first subway line was built a hundred years ago with four tracks - uptown local, uptown express, downtown local, downtown express. The route's first slogan was "City Hall to Harlem in 15 minutes." Imagine the riders of 1904, frowning into their newspapers as they deliberated over whether to get off the local and wait for the express.
They were no strangers to the pain of choosing wrong: They knew the heartbreak of getting off the local to wait for the express, only to have a second local pull into the station a few minutes later, with no express in sight. And then what do to? Slink back onto the local and accept the loss of a few minutes, or stand firm and wait for the express, running the risk of seeing a third, humiliating local arrive?
Behind these questions has always lurked the unsettling, inarguable truth of the timetable: On many trips, the express doesn't really save you that much time. Between 96th and 42nd, for example, the difference between express and local is a mere three minutes.
When I first looked at the timetable a few months ago, I was devastated -- all this agony and ecstacy, for three lousy minutes? For a while, I became a lethargic, apathetic subway rider. Then Ralph Waldo Emerson saved my underground soul.
Emerson divided humanity into two sects: Materialists and Idealists. "The materialist," Emerson wrote, "insists on facts, on history, on the the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle."
The materialist points to the timetable and says: You are a fool for running across the platform to see if the express is coming, for devoting your heart to the irrelevant question of whether to transfer to a train that will, at best, save you three minutes.
The idealist replies: Whether it is three minutes or three seconds is irrelevant. I came to dance with the city, and on a groggy weekday morning, the sight of an express train pulling up to the platform at the moment I'm gliding in on the local is miracle enough.
For the idealists, I'm Jacob Goldstein.