A brush with death: subway track diving 101
(my baby)
What have you dived onto the subway tracks for? Come on, I know I’m not the only one, since I read Thomas Beller’s iPod on the Tracks in the NYTimes.
In 1984, I was a starving art student waiting for the Path train (I took the Path train because it was cheaper than the subway and I had to make the petty cash I stole daily from my little brother’s poker stash go as far as possible). As I stood there thinking about the entire semester’s work I had to finish and hand in by morning, a very expensive sable brush—my only brush— slid out of the gap in the zipper of my outlandishly large black art student’s portfolio, and landed on the train tracks.
I dove.
Yes, I jumped right down on to the tracks after waiting for two trains to pass so I could time the gap between passings. A train came sooner than I expected but as luck would have it, this story has a happy ending. Because I had a long history of jumping up onto train platforms, since the railroad station by my parents’ house had no steps or ladder at the point where I used the shortcut through the bird sanctuary to reach it in the mornings.
To this day it’s my lucky brush. I still use it, and no other brush seems able to do what it does. I got it out of it’s box after 20 years and started doing cartoons for The New Yorker with that brush. It was like reuniting with a lost love. Bob Mankoff has offered advice on using other brushes for certain effects, and I’ve bought other brushes and tried them out, but I always return to my lucky brush.
So I felt for this guy who dived for his iPod. But I don’t recommend you try it yourself, unless you’re good at jumping up on horses or have a friend to help you back up onto the platform. Even better, have this friend keep an eye on whatever you dropped while you go get help from MTA people paid to help you!
Any track-diving stories you want to share? Please add them via the comments below!