One of my (many) favorite things about the city is its subway system. The first thing I buy on nearly every trip is my 7-day unlimited MetroCard at the airport. For a mere $25, I can get anywhere I want in the city, provided my destination is serviced by one of the lines on that iconic map.
But getting from A to B is only part of the appeal of the New York City Subway line. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of reading geographically appropriate literature, and the sometimes lengthy trip from one end of a borough to the other provides plenty of time to savor the likes of Salinger, Pete Hamill, or Claude Brown.
And, of course, there’s something authentically urban about riding the subway. Only 70 or so cities in the world have an underground system, and the scale of human population that necessitates such transit naturally plays out in the riding experience. Without precise knowledge of where you are on a line, you can infer accurately whether you’re in a place that’s desirable to go to, or get away from, depending on the time of day. As an observant visitor, I find that riding on the subway provides snapshots into the real life of the people of the city.
I’m also quite interested in the history and human achievement represented by the subway system. On a recent trip, I made the time to go to the Transit Museum, housed in a decommissioned subway station in Brooklyn. Pictured here are the interiors of a couple subway cars from bygone eras.
I expected to take in the history of the subway system in exhibits such as these, but I was unprepared for the social history revealed in the preserved or restored subway ads in each of the cars. Subway ads are quite entertaining, running the gamut from national ads for the latest blockbuster to local advertising for doctors who specialize in foot care and/or sexual dysfunction. I hadn’t necessarily thought about how accurately ads reveal the styles, tastes, and values of a time until I saw the likes of the ads below.
Enjoy their earnest and authoritative good nature!
Other entries in the New York stories series:
FilkBlog: The Scott Filkins Experience 
6 thoughts on “New York Stories, vol. 7”