Ride The Subway With Me - GF Radio

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I was like, oh, I needed to record a podcast today. A bunch of stuff I wanted to share with you. And then I thought, why don't I just share with you what it's like to be in New York, like oral, a U R a L edition here. I'm walking down fifth avenue in sunset park. I'm going to the subway. I'm going to go see my primary care doctor, who I have not seen since before the pandemic. I took a shower and Shinola shaved, and I was like dressed like an, a well dressed like an adult. I'm going by my favorite vegetable fruit market, which I've posted pictures on an Instagram before. And I mean, it's literally around the corner and this guy is not yielding to the pedestrians in the crosswalk, but that is not unusual here. Here we go.

Some people are wearing mass most aren't, I mean, a New York city has a 70% vaccination rate, which is just fantastic. You can get a vaccination in the pharmacies here then there's, there's one, two, there's, three pharmacies within a couple of blocks of my house. So there was a vaccination van up in the park this morning and, you know, it's just like just making it available to everyone. And I just missed the signal here. So I gotta, we're going to make a turn and go down to the subway. We're going to take the R train to the express. I'm going to go into Manhattan. We're going to take three trains and that's not, you know, I'm going to take a local to the express, stopping, going to go express over the Manhattan bridge train stunk over the Brooklyn bridge, but there's going to be a dedicated bike lane on the Brooklyn bridge pretty soon.

And that will be cool currently or as a bike and pedestrian lane. And it's just a big mess because it's not very wide, a lot of tourists and the people who ride their bikes are a little self-righteous on the bridge. And then there's joggers who think they own the thing. And I'm still at the crosswalk and I know the light's going to change, but I'm inching across anyway here. Cause that's what we do here. I'm not good at standing still. And even though I have arthritis in my feet, I still think it's important to, I just like to move fast. The camera operator can walk faster than I, and I do have to stop sometimes cause the pain, but I, you know, from what I understand with arthritis, it's important to move because it gets the lubricating fluids moving in the joints. So, oh, this is another one of those little forgot, five hundreds here. There's a, I've seen a, not a huge, but a big increase in, well, I called generically smart cars around here and a few electric cars actually, because you can park those things anywhere. Well, I mean the smart cars there's there are some people who park and they'll take up two parking spots because they don't want anyone to get near their car because then it's just like, you know, dude, here's a gentleman has got a trash barrel on wheels. [inaudible]

He just hit a hole in the sidewalk. There there's a business improvement district on the avenue. And I think it's through a tax, a commercial tax of some sort, it's a nominal amount of money, but they, then there's a nonprofit called ready, willing and able, I think it's from the DOE fund. And they help people who need a leg up who are perhaps homeless or living in a, not the greatest conditions and maybe have some health issues. And they start cleaning up the avenue. It's the merchant shopping districts, which is fifth avenue is one of those. So that's great. You know, and then it's, oh, there's a Tesla right there. That's a red one.

I'm curious about, I need an electric car that has a big hatchback cargo space and surprisingly, a lot of them don't. So anyway, so, oh, now there are city bikes have moved into the neighborhood. There's those bikes that you can rent by the hour or by the day. And a bunch of those have sprung up here at the stations. I'm curious how they, there are, some of them are electric assist and some of them are pedal only. So I'm going down into the subway station. So I have to put on my mask. So if you just hold on for a minute,

Mask is on and I got to get my a card out now.

All right, where inside the station now, and we're going. So you have to think about where you're going to get off to transfer to the next train. So I want to be in the back of the train because at union square, I'm going to transfer it to the six train and you got to put the back of the train at union square for an R Q R N and then walk, I don't know, a hundred feet or so a couple hundred feet to the Lexington avenue line, which is the four, five and six. And I'll take a six local to 32nd street and park avenue. And so the train just came, so I just missed a train, but that's not the end of the world. I mean, you really can't, but actually there's an app now there's countdown clocks on the station platforms for the next several trains.

And it also gives information about whether there's a delay of some sort. But so I think I have a few minutes. I, I walked past the countdown clock without looking at it. So oh, they have some sort of some sort of a coronavirus advertisement vaccine advertisement on the countdown clock right now it'll pop back. So yeah. So we're going to a local train go. One-Stop almost invariably, as in as express train with a few minutes go zip to Atlantic avenue and then the next stop will be, well, it depends. It could be DeKalb avenue or Atlantic avenue. No, it'll be, I'm going to in the Broadway line, which is the yellow, the end or Q trains. So one stop at the DeKalb, right where I got my vaccination in Brooklyn and then over the Brooklyn bridge to canal street and then 14th street. So it's really fast.

I saw my neighbors, you know, there's happy people here. So I wanted to talk about some of the shows I've been watching on Netflix. I'll just move away from here. And maybe you can hear me better. One is called call my agent, which I was reluctant to watch because it had it's in French and it has English subtitles. And I'm like, I'm not going to put up with this because you know, typical American who expects everything to be in English. Right. And I mean the first show or two is a little, a little like what's going on here, but it's really good. It's I mean, there's some in jokes, which if you were French, you would understand from what I understand. So

That was a pre pandemic announcement about the if you see something, say something basically from that's been going on since since the towers fell, that's just yeah. If you see like a suitcase or a knapsack just sitting there and it's no one's, you should tell someone about that. And that has happened. I've seen where they've, they've shut down areas because there's just a bag and, you know, 99.9% of the time it's someone forgot their bag. But there was a while ago, someone that tried to detonate a pipe bomb at the one of the subway stations, we're going to just unhappy people. And they think that violence will solve things. And I guess that's a human, I got Rick radio, Rick could comment on this, but anyway, I'd like to focus on the good in people like my neighbors here, who are I'm going to presume that they are Muslim from perhaps the Arab state, just from how they're dressed and what they're saying. But you know, just, just super nice people. It looks like it's a family thing. They're going to go perhaps into the city to go. There's some amazing spice stores on Lexington. One's called [inaudible] stands, which has, I mean, anyone from any kind of culture I think can go there and find the spices and ingredients they're looking for. There comes an express.

This is our local train across the platform. There's four subway tracks. The two center ones are inbound and outbound express and the outer ones are local. We're on the inbound or Manhattan bound, our local train track. And this is a bay Ridge bound, our train on the far opposite track, which is what we will ride on the way home. And there they go. That's the subway. They've got a really neat voice announcements. Now on the trains that you can hear they can pipe in special announcements from a dispatch center and it'll play on the train. You can hear them clearly. When I first moved back to New York after college, that didn't happen. It was just, it was the late eighties and the city was on the upswing, but the subway system, well, what's not so, so call my agent this French show that we have fallen for the camera operator and I was pretty good on PBS. I don't remember the name of the show it's on PBS. It is a show about an entrepreneur women who starts a, this baking company based on her grandmother's biscuit recipe. And it's it's really good. It's kind of following her through starting the business and I'm going to look it up here. This skit show. Let's see what happens. I can't spell here comes an express. The other way.

That's a Manhattan bound and express train. I don't know where the art is. This should be here by now, the countdown clock I'm going to have. I can't see it from here. I see it, but because my eyes are shot, I can't see it. It looks like about five minutes. That's a little long. It's a little unusual anyway. How she rolls is the PBS show it's broadcast on PBS and you can also get it on their website and app. I'm part of their, I signed up for supporting them. I think it's $6 a month. It's called passport mean much like joining Netflix or a masterclass or something like that, or Hulu or apple TV. And for the $6 a month, you get access to the back catalog of all their programming, like frontline and Nova the Ken burns documentaries. So when you can't sleep at night, you can go down to the TV room or even on your iPad, you can watch it with the PBS app, but it's called how she rolls. And it's just the struggles of running a business and then the pandemic hits. So it's it's a little bit like chef and the farmer. If you remember that, which I thought was also an excellent show in PBS. So, all right, I'm going to hold off here until the train comes and we'll get some recording of the train.

All right. We're run the express platform now. [

Some people, I mean, even though New York city is a great place, you kind of have to watch out for people that might be prone to cause trouble. So if you see them getting on a car, don't get on that car and get on the deck, you know, run out 20, 50 feet, got on the next car. So a w train is going to come here on one minute, enter a w W's run Ws run on here too. Right? I it's been a year since really riding on the subway. No, it's an N alright. W is also run, but I thought they ran local in Manhattan, but anyway, the end goes through Manhattan and then goes up to a story which is used to be a big Greek neighborhood is changing a lot now. So, all right. And one minute we'll have an express Broadway line express train we're at 36. We're going to go to two more stops in Brooklyn here. We're going to stop at Atlantic Pacific street and then Dickow and then DeKalb was right at the base of the Manhattan bridge. We'll go to the Manhattan bridge. Okay. [inaudible]

Back of the train. I want to get off of the back of the train.

All right. That was Atlantic avenue.

So we're on the Manhattan bridge now and somebody kind of noisy

canal street. Next stop is 14th street. [inaudible]

14Th street. I was wrong about the train stopping at the cow, but it's been awhile. So it's about noon,

All right. I thought there was one of the, they had these performances in the subway. I thought that's what that was. All right. We're going to go over and get the six train though.

All right. 33Rd street.

So if you look up park avenue south from here, or this is park avenue, actually you can see the MetLife building, which used to be the Pan-Am building. And my father did worked on all the air conditioning for when they built the Pan-Am building. And he has this I'm sure. He, I don't know if he worked with, he must've worked with the company PR guy, because he was good at this, but there's this really cool photo I have of him standing in the middle of park avenue with the Pan-Am building in the background. And it was very much my father kind of like getting someone to do something for him, for some self promotion and that, you know, that was him. It worked, I have, it's a great photo. So, all right. Half a block from the doctor's office.

All right, Don, with the doctor, I didn't think he really wanted to hang out. And then in the doctors what's called a treatment room. I dunno one of those, you know, it's got the tape, the table and the blood pressure machine and all that. And there's a deli here that is, I'm going to take a picture of it. [inaudible] Well, there's some people standing here, so I don't really want to take a picture cause it would look weird. But I mean, they rent real estate by the square foot here. And the deli is wedged in between two buildings and it's about five feet wide and about 10 feet. So I am really hungry and we're going to dinner, backyard, dinner, barbecue thing tonight. So [inaudible], I think I'm going to have to eat something healthy. Not that that's a bad thing. So food trucks, there are two food trucks right here or food carts as we, cause they're not full trucks, they're actually trailers. So let me look around here. This will, this smells really good. it's dangerous. [inaudible]

So I went back and took a picture of the, a little hole in the wall deli there for you. I'll I can't put the pictures into the podcast, but I on the blog posts the post on the garden, fork.tv website for this podcast. We'll have the photos there. So, so I'm on 32nd. Believe it or not. There is a home Depot in Manhattan on 23rd, between fifth and sixth. So I'm going to walk over. I was just on park. I'm going to cross Broadway and I'm going to hit fifth. Wait, what am I doing? Oh, I haven't been in Manhattan in a long time. I'm going to walk west. Oh, so I mean, I'm on fifth, I'm hitting fifth now Broadway's on the other side. So I'm going to go down a couple of blocks of 23rd and I want to get some brackets that my local hardware store does not carry to hold some of my garden tools in the backyard. I just want to put the I'm going to get them up there. Just kind of leaning against the fence. And I'd like to get them up off of there and just try and tidy it up. So if he could hurt it, but that was someone who was not happy and yelling on the phone.

There is a lot of noise in the city. This is fifth avenue is a lot of traffic, so there's just a lot of stuff there has been, there is definitely less people on the street and it's one 30 right now. So that's some people's lunch hour and I'm seeing, I'm seeing guys riding these city bikes that looked like they're construction workers. And it's a little weird, but anyway so the city is not as busy as it usually is pre pandemic, but oh, and so my, my father-in-law sends me these links on from msn.com, Microsoft news.com you know, msn.com. And they're not always, well, they're just a little anyway. So one of them is the city, New York city is facing economic collapse and it's not, I mean, yeah, there's going to be some hurt. It's going to be hurt everywhere coming out of a pandemic.

But, and then some of my friends are sending me pictures of this flood in the subway. And I'm like, well, okay, first of all, the subway is underground. It's rained for five days, you know, wow. Just found some tourists. You know, rain has to go somewhere and one stairwell floods out of 435 stairwells are hot. However many stairwells there are in the subway system and it goes viral. And everyone thinks that the whole subway system flooded. They're like Eric what's with the subway system. So the internet is wonderful and the internet is horrible. As we know, cause I just rode the subway. It works just fine. That was a beer truck that went by another beer trucks honking his horn at people he's driving a little fast. All right. So little more walking. We'll get to the home Depot [inaudible]

So we're at 23rd and fifth is that the flat iron building is right here. Some guy just asked me for onto my eye. Some marijuana smoke, smoke smoke is the key phrase there. And the home Depot is about a half a block. Also the original Eataly is right here as well, which is I mean I could go crazy there and buy all sorts of stuff, but I have a fridge full of food. I have to cook. I just went to the grocery store. A lot of actually a lot of chain restaurants are showing up, especially in Manhattan. Starbucks are everywhere, even like a little subway sandwich shops, but home Depot is a few stores down from here. [inaudible]

All right in and out of the home Depot, I got some of those springy kinda clampy things that you can put like a broom and it'll grab onto the broom or a rake. And it'll hold that on the wall. There is a lot of people in Manhattan that dress fashionably or dressed, wearing barely any clothing. It's just a thing here. So I'm going to run. We're going to now go, this is a recurring sound in New York, the ambulance trying to get through traffic. And sometimes people don't get out of the way maybe because they can't hear the, I dunno. All right. I just had my falafel sandwich and union square park and my falafel sprung a leak and I got to Haney sauce all over my pants. So not the end of the world. First world problem. I got to hop on the train here. [inaudible] Definitely a lot of tourists around, but it just feels good. It feels like almost a normal, which I love

all right. I'm at my local station. It's interesting how

I basically stayed within 10 blocks of my house. And then just going to a different part of the city kind of reminds me that we're getting back to normal, which is so great. It's so nice. And the falafels are good. You just gotta watch out for the little bit of tahini sauce, explosion, olive it's just looks like I got joint compound on my pants. So a little different for the podcast, but I thought, well, what the heck? I mean, all I can do is try and let me know what you thought. It's a [email protected]. I'm going to do a little bonus show for the garden for patrons. So go out and do cool stuff. Make it a great day.