After thinking and staring up at the subway map on my way home (freaking out some other riders, no doubt), it occurred to me this idea of “four themes on your route” might be a little rigid. So my new proposal is this:
1. Everyone track their commute from their neighborhood, as we originally discussed. I suggested before that you include some of the Federal Writers’ Project Guide entries about your neighborhood; we might think also of hunting down a modern guidebook and including text from that. Either way, this part will be a little history of your neighborhood and also a discussion of how it’s different now. I’d love to see an exploration as well of how you do or don’t represent your neighborhood or identify with it–but that would be up to you.
2. Rather than trying to find stops along your route, think of how the subway lines intersect. I can’t remember all the lines you guys mentioned the other day, but I do recall a number of them. Subways often intersect in busy, important areas, and they’re where the city literally comes together. Subway intersections and transfers mix people from every neighborhood, making them important to a wide array of New Yorkers. Looking at the map, you can also see that many of those intersections come at places that coincide with our themes–especially if we increase the topics on which we focus (not just work, culture, recreation, and the fourth one I can’t remember).
So, for example, the 4/5/6 and Q (and L for you, Josh) intersect at Union Square. This was a big protest area (hello, Kevin, Anastasia, and Joanna) in the 1930s. Today it is a center of the city’s new food culture (Stephanie, Michelle). Farther uptown, the 4, 5, and 6 all converge on 125th Street (Josh?), the main boulevard of Harlem and a place that represents the way race shaped the New Deal and the way gentrification is changing the city now. The 1/2/3 lines hit the A/C at Columbus Circle–right at the edge of the park that comprises the city’s recreational heart. Farther south, the 1 hits the 5/6 near Wall Street (Quan?), the city’s financial heart then and now but also a source of protest. The J/Z and F converge on the Lower East Side, heart of the old immigration and center of the new gentrification.
Do you see where I’m going here? The project could consist of your own personal commutes and ways you understand your trips into the city; at the same time, you could sign up to be in groups that do a then-and-now look at where the lines cross and what they tell us about the city’s past and present. The groups you choose wouldn’t have to be for places on your line–just in your area of interest. And you might sign up to do “half” an entry–the “then” part of Union Square (protests) and the “Now” part of the N/R/4/5 transfer point. That way, you could fit your own interests into the sites you choose (further personalizing the site and making it about you, as well as NYC), and for at least some of you, there would be definite overlap between your research for this and your oral presentations.
