A Trip on the M5
Saturday. Morning. New York.
Today in New York it is emphatically, unmistakeably autumn. I’ve been here for a little over two months, and have been promised real seasons with discernible characteristics; defined edges, weather you can work with or work against - weather with personality. In Ireland our seasons are vague, average, cloudy sorts of things; it’s hard to feel strongly about them. They exist as a murky backdrop I suppose.
This autumn day in New York inhabits the eyes, ears and nostrils - and is the day I will ride the M5 bus and document my experience; a longstanding requirement of Red Burns’ class at ITP.
I’ve decided to resist the urge to get nerdy with this assignment; no GPS logging, no web 2.0 (though I was tempted) - just me, the bus, pen and paper and a Polaroid camera limited to 8 shots (I end up taking two).
To prove I am not from around these parts, I board the southbound bus some time just after 9am and go in the wrong direction for 20-odd minutes. “Not to worry” I think after a while; “there’s time, I have time” - this will just have to be an extended M5 journey, an LP with hidden tracks. I do have time, and I really enjoy my spin south.
The bus needs a new set of shocks, and the driver needs to drink less coffee - we rattle our way down the waking-up Broadway at high speed. Guys are sweeping up, putting out recycling. Two men who appear to have been sadly misinformed about the weather are setting up an umbrella stand near Canal Street. I don’t understand the signs, they’re written in Chinese now; but whatever they’re selling is being unloaded out of vans in brown boxes. Do you know the fidgeting sound the orchestra makes before the hush and opening note? Broadway is fidgeting, soon it’ll hush, and then another Saturday will strike up.
Near Canal Street we scrape through an amber then light; my notes remind me to mention that the bus driver is insane. Insanity appears to be a requirement (or at least encouraged) if you drive any form of public transport in New York. In minutes through no-traffic streets we have made it to the near-tip of Manhattan; the end of the southbound M5 near Wall Street. I get off to wander, to see what the fuss is about; maybe they’ll be handing out bailout money - that’d be nice.
Wall Street
Jet-lag favours the European Tourist; today they, we, are up early, and have come in bus loads to see Wall Street and its bronze Bull.
The respectful ones pose with the Bull, the adventurous ones clamber up onto his neck. A surprisingly large proportion of them hunker down between his rear legs to get a good hold of his scrotum. I wonder if this is a recent trend, a sign of the changed relationship between the world and the global financial system - but it’s probably been going on for years, because grabbing onto a set of bronze bull balls makes for a funny photo. Whatever the motivation, the bull and his bull-bits are a hit.
Time-is-a-ticking - I start my actual mission to ride M5 north through Manhattan. At the Staten Island ferry building I board the bus with a few others, dip my card and take a seat. I take a photo, now that I’m actually on the right bus - then I put my camera in my bag where it stays for the rest of the day. The bus moves off; this one is less in need of repair, and the driver seems a little more relaxed - we only nearly rear-end a taxi once, and not for another 45 minutes.
We pass the former site of the World Trade Centre. It’s now a massive construction site, huge - far bigger than I had pictured in my head, a sad void in the surrounding buildings, a scar. In the month’s I’ve been here I’ve had absolutely no desire to come and gawk, but the M5 hasn’t given me the choice - “we’re here, look”. Then it’s gone.
The Village
The presence of a Psychic Advisor at 10 Downing Street tells me that we’re well and truly out of the financial district and entering Greenwich Village. I am struggling to find a witty link between the Psychic Advisor on Downing Street and the 10 Downing Street in London, but nothing is coming to me. Maybe something about being governed by irrationality. Pretty lame stuff. Anyway, moving on.
At the lovely Father Demo Square I am struck by the pleasure of bus travel. I am starting to get a sense of how Manhattan fits together - before I only knew the islands around subway stations. The sun is still shining, and we are making good time. I am back in familiar territory; we stop by the West 4th Subway where I get off the B in the mornings. There’s nobody playing basketball on the corner today. It’s maybe a little early for hustling grad students.
The Vague, Touristy Innards of Manhattan
My notes through the heart of Manhattan are a bit sparse; there are shops, and people, and movement. Block after block passes, nothing really takes my fancy.
Broadway is blocked while they set up for the Marathon, so we take a detour into the fabric district; 35th Street. This is more like it, more people, more buzz. In Butterfly Fabrics a man is showing some silk to a young woman; then we move off again. Once we have passed the fabric shops and garment sellers, normality or blandness resumes. There just isn’t much going on. I look inside the bus for some inspiration; it’s just me and a guy. He’s passive, zoned out, you can tell that this is his daily commute, and his heart just isn’t in it today.
Somewhere near 42nd street we re-join Broadway and more people get on the bus. I overhear a woman on her phone saying that Warhol was just the ideas guys, that no, they weren’t paintings, they were just prints. I think she’s underselling him a little bit.
People are coming from and going to Central Park at Columbus Circle. Traffic is light, we quickly swing by the home of the New York Philharmonic, Avery Fisher Hall, the Lincoln Centre, the Apple Store. Outside of the window now it’s affluent, touristy, Saturday morning on the Upper West Side.
Riverside Drive
72nd Street delivers us from Broadway to Riverside Drive; a gorgeous, leafy street that follows the river north. This is real affluence - the apartment buildings are fancy, but the view, the view is the real treasure. The drive is bounded to the West by Riverside park, a thin strip of trees and grass where people are walking, running and playing in the still-crisp morning. The park slopes down to the river, then there’s New Jersey. A woman and her daughter board the bus; she is off to a birthday party with her invitation and a nicely wrapped present.
Outside, a peleton of cyclists pass us heading downhill, down Riverside Drive. They are mostly on fancy bikes - far fancier than my own bike. I am not jealous (I am a little bit). I write a bitter little note that if they were real cyclists they’d be cycling up the hill, not bombing down it feeling smug. That showed them. We continue on our way up Riverside, past the fancy apartments and the dog-walkers.
Into Washington Heights
It’d be nice to think that New York, or Chicago or San Francisco - or any of the other places I know reasonably well in the US, function as one continuous, gradual spectrum of people and cultures, but that’s not really the way it seems to work out. Change is usually pretty stark - a few blocks in any direction can take you anywhere.
This part of New York seems to be like this; we turn off the affluent and I sense, mostly white, Riverside drive and head back towards Broadway. We’re in a diverse, busy, middle or working class neighborhood. This is Broadway, but a different Broadway - here it reminds me of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Small local food shops, fast food restaurants, clothing shops. Families get on and off the bus speaking English, Spanish and other languages I can’t place. I reflect on the last few hours, from Wall Street to here; it feels like a pretty different Manhattan. The M5 journey ends by the George Washington Bridge; I start to make my way home.
Home
I take the subway back south and over to Brooklyn. On the Subway I think about the contrast between Wall Street and Washington Heights and the journey on the M5. I think I expected to experience more diversity; different cultures and areas jutting up against each other, but maybe Manhattan has had most of the edges sanded off it - I don’t know. It’d be interesting to look back over the years of M5 journeys taken by ITP students to see what type of New York they experienced. Where I live in Brooklyn feels like a more raw, more actively shifting clash of people. Not better or worse, just different.
On the Subway I think about taking the 29A bus to and from school in Dublin as a child; the time traveling on the bus gave me to read, listen to the radio, sit and look out the window, breathe in before the day. I think about the last three years of taking the bus to and from Belfast for work. The M5 connects me to Dublin and to Belfast, unexpectedly.
On the Subway there is no light, no window, no leaves or shops or bustle, little romance; but I am grateful for its speed. I make it to Brooklyn to meet Cliona and Eoin, a friend visiting from Ireland via London. We eat brunch, drink beer.
A good day.
