The Subway

Diary Entry: September 9, 2024

Today was a deeper plunge into the city’s extremes — the vibrant spectacle and the underlying rawness.

I spent the morning revisiting the Financial District, then walking back up through the core. Everything here is so densely packed. You feel the pressure of capital and history everywhere you step. But it was tonight, after the sun went down, that the city truly transformed.

I was roaming in the city at night, coming from the financial district, when I stumbled upon a massive queue line. It snaked in front of a club, an overwhelming testament to the city’s nightlife, which, for a solitary tourist like me, feels distinctly unwelcoming. People go out here in groups; joining from the outside is practically impossible.

The queue was strangely divided into two lines, separated by a small street entrance. Thinking the second line was the start of a separate entry, I walked straight to the bodyguard. I asked him if I needed a companion to get in, as I know many clubs require couples. He said no, but told me in a curt, dismissive tone that I needed to go back to the line.

I was confused. I immediately suspected he saw me as a tourist and was just making fun of me. My look of confusion infuriated him. “What do you mean asking me?” he snapped, his hands already starting to tense up, ready for a confrontation. It took a moment of frantic realization for me to understand: the two queues were one continuous line, merely cut to allow access to the small, dead-end street. I quickly backed off, offering a hasty retreat. I was not about to fight a towering New York bouncer over a misunderstanding. As I walked to the end of the line, he came over, checking to see if I had admitted defeat and was now behaving myself. Of course, I was. I didn’t have the patience for the long wait and never went in, but the brief flash of aggression was a sharp reminder of the city’s low tolerance for hesitation.

Later, on my long walk back toward the hostel, I witnessed a startling public argument. A young girl and a boy were yelling on the street. The girl was utterly frantic, her voice high-pitched and hysterical. Then she screamed the phrase that stopped me cold: “How did you touch me? How the fuck did you touch me?” The boy instantly recoiled, almost running to get away from her.

I approached her, asking if everything was okay. She sobbed a raw, guttural response: everyone was trying to use her. Before I could say another word, she was gone, diving down the subway entrance, leaping over the barrier like a desperate creature, and disappearing into the tunnel’s mouth.

The subways here are a spectacle of their own. Raw, loud, and designed with these strange, aggressive yellow accents. They are a genuinely exotic sight for a first-timer, a chaotic mix of all kinds of creatures — rats scuttling along the tracks, and people, even living down there. It’s not clean, it’s not peaceful, but it is intensely, violently lively.

Tonight confirmed the financial reality of this trip. New York is expensive as hell. I have been here less than three full days, and the money is flowing out of my hands. It would be easy to drop thousands in a few days without thinking. Every decision here is a costly one.