Hipsters get ready

Regardless of what subway line I (or any of the other 8 million inhabitants of NYC) choose to take, there is inevitably some delay. There's a lot of work going on. I get that. I'm not the only girl with a pebble in her shoe, to paraphrase my mom.

But why does it seem as though the MTA gets a sadistic pleasure out of the L train delays and detours? I ask this because last night, well before 11 pm (the standard point in the evening when the L becomes a pumpkin), while there were a good 40 people standing on the Brooklyn-bound track, a Brooklyn-bound train rolled into the station on the Manhattan-bound side. We stood there in varying states of disbelief and inebriation. I was torpid and gassy from too much sake. Yet you can't imagine how fast I sprinted up the platform stairs when the motorman slid down his window and shouted at us: "No trains on that side! Got to catch this one!"

Imagine, if you will, 50 or more people with the muscle tone and coordination of your average spastic darting across 14th Street against traffic. People who wouldn't run even if their shoes caught on fire. As N put it, while we were gasping for air once we finally got on the train, we looked like a bunch of streakers. (Only uglier.)