100 Subway Riders, 100 Screens
My nosiest survey yet! Plus: Weird Trash Photo #32!! Good news for ME!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #148 of CAFÉ ANNE!
Well! I can’t you tell how pleased I am that the State of the Newsletter quarterly update in last week’s issue prompted 39 new paid subscriptions and one Venmo donation. That’s the most ever in one week! And it got me to 438 paids—a little closer to the goal of breaking even on this newsletter, which happens when I get 1000 paid subs. Thank you!
So of course, huge dead-of-winter shoutouts to Neal G., Alan S., founding member Lisa S., Thomas R., Aaron J., Nicky S., Sally N., Rose B., Janet R., Andrew M., Gail C., Wako (rhymes with ‘taco’!) T., Ingrid D., Carl B., Dave T., founding member David R., Sonia G., Diedre C., Helen S., Suzanne H., Leonor, shounakkul, Rachel R., Mary G., Helen K., Liz M., Larry O. (a gift sub to Roger S.!), Molly B., Kate M., Ella S., Bradly A., Kelly D., Nancy P., Dore N., Eric C., Chase B., Natalia S., Ashely L., and Kathleen C. (a gift sub to Princess Comachi!).
That’s enough $$$ to buy a last-minute plane ticket to Barbados and then head back as soon as I land, because why would I want to spend the rest of January in any place other than wonderful, wonderful NYC?
Meanwhile, a lot of people sent sweet notes along with their subscription orders, but the most intriguing came from Helen K. who suggested I invest her payment in Sui, the crypto currency that one of the bodega workers I interviewed in last week’s issue predicted will have a huge run-up in 2025. Helen, you’ll be happy to learn I will soon be the proud owner of six Sui—as soon as I can figure out how to buy it. “They” don’t make it “easy”.
Yes, this is gambling, but I’ll never regret the $100 worth of Bitcoin I bought back in 2014. It’s now worth $13,000! Of course, the password on my Blockchain.com crypto wallet no longer works, so I can’t access it, maybe not ever. Haha! Apparently I’m not alone in this regard.
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. I got 100 New Yorkers to reveal what they’re doing on their phones while riding the subway. Plus, we’ve got an oddly lovely new Weird Trash Photo. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
Weird Trash Photo #32
This issue’s weird trash photo doesn’t look very NYC, but it was actually snapped at the Marine Park Salt Marsh in Brooklyn.
“The incongruity of a nice couch in a salt marsh struck me,” wrote reader Nance Treuber, who lives in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and sent me the pic. “Although it was dirty and muddy, it still gave a homey, cozy feel to the marsh. One could sit there and enjoy the birds, the wind, and the changing light. I also thought it looked like an indie album cover. My kids had fun posing with it.”
Thank you Nance!
Please send your weird trash photo to annekadet@yahoo.com and I will include it in a future issue.
SURVEY
100 Subway Riders, 100 Screens
The worst consequence of this brave new digital era is the fact that New Yorkers now have way too much privacy when it comes to their train reading. Back in the good old days, before the subway had internet, it was easy to make spurious assumptions about one's fellow passengers based on their train reading: The Wall Street Journal (greedy capitalist!), The New York Times (smug), the Post (fun but erratic!), The Village Voice (commie pervert) or the Daily News (hopeless).
Then, in 2017, the MTA installed wireless service in all the stations. While the connection between stops is still quite spotty, it's serviceable enough for many purposes. As a result, the newspapers, books and magazines have largely vanished. Now, everyone on the train is hunched over their screens, and all you can see is the back of their phone. Who knows what they're up to? This drives me bananas.
Last week, I decided to do something about it. I asked 100 subway riders what they were doing on their phone.
My first task was to establish how many of my fellow passengers were actually online. I did a rough count of every rider on about 20 train cars over three consecutive weekdays. My tally included about 500 passengers.
I was surprised to find only 55% of the passengers I observed were staring at a screen. The rest had bigger fish to fry—like doing nothing. A full 15% were staring into space. Another 7% were sleeping—sometimes fully prone. I was happy to see 8% chatting with a fellow human. A dozen were reading an actual book.
Among the remaining 6%, I spotted five people drinking coffee, four tending babies, three begging for change and three doing a crossword. I also observed two men talking loudly to themselves and a woman applying foundation. Another lady was gobbling pepperoni pizza while guzzling a can of grape soda.
Of the 500, only two were reading an actual print newspaper (Go! Brooklyn and amNewYork, both free give-aways), and I only saw one person reading a print magazine (ARTnews). This, I imagine, is why the city's "newsstands" no longer sell any "news."
Then I started the actual survey, employing the following super-sophisticated methodology: I approached 100 passengers on the train and said, "I'm doing a survey of subway riders. What are you're doing on your phone?"
To my surprise, only ten declined to answer. (When I later related this to my hairdresser Mark, he suggested they were probably enjoying a little porn time). The remaining 90 seemed happy to say they were texting or reading email or scrolling Instagram. After a while, I got a little bolder and started pressing for details: Who were they texting, and what about? What song were they listening to? How did they like the book they were reading?
My favorite response came from Karen Margolis, who was riding the R train from her Tribeca home to her studio in Gowanus. "I'm looking at my art on Instagram!" she said. "Doing the whole narcissist thing."
She showed me photos of her colorful wall sculptures. She has a mural hanging in Moynihan Train Hall, it turns out, and a piece on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Admiring her own work on Instagram is her favorite way to spend her commute, she cheerfully admitted. "And sometimes I look at the news just so I can feel hopeless and depressed."
I started the survey assuming that most folks on their phones were scrolling social media, but that accounted for just 16 of the 100 passengers I surveyed—with the numbers evenly divided between TikTok, Instagram and X (only one person admitted to Facebook). "I'm just surfing social media, cycling between X and Instagram. It's crack. I can't get away!" one lady told me.
An equal number were texting—about everything under the sun.
"I'm texting my boyfriend because I'm having a strange inner ear balance issue," one lady reported.
"I'm telling my wife about the meeting I just had," a man reported on the F train. "It did not go well."
"I'm texting with my friend about evolution and cell reproduction," reported a young engineer riding the Q train. He then launched into an elaborate explanation of how it applies to the latest cancer research.
Twelve people were playing games on their phone, with Candy Crush garnering the most action. Some, in their quest to create the ultimate personal bubble, were playing a game while listening to a podcast. One young lady was playing Fruit Merge while listening to Not Skinny But Not Fat. Another was playing Two Dots while listening to a Vibe Check episode about the LA fires. (Now I’m thinking about creating my own personal combo: Lex Fridman and “Escape From Prison”?)
There was a man shopping for a boat, a women looking for a wedding dress and young lady buying tix to a poetry slam. An older fellow with long, stringy hair was checking his stock portfolio on Yahoo! Finance.
Several were reading books on their phones including Wilson, who lives in East Harlem and was plowing through The Trial. "I moved here a year ago, and I'm reading more here than I did in the last five years because I'm taking the subway," he added.
Indeed, I was surprised by the number of book readers I met doing my survey. Most were under 30 and reading fancy titles like Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and McLuhan’s Understanding Media. It's a highbrow city! Or at least upper-middlebrow.
Danny, also on the Q train, was reading the new Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. "It's dedicated time to focus on a book," he said of his daily commute. "Sometimes I get distracted in other environments—in other places you can do other things. Here, the cell service isn't great and you're in a little bubble. Sometimes I'll take the train over other options, just to get the reading time in."
Others were making use of their train time to advance their career. Six were reading work email. Rodrigo from Queens, riding the F train, was studying for his commercial driver's license exam the next day, hoping to get a job driving a dump truck.
Shaindel, riding the 2 train from her home in Flatbush, was perusing LinkedIn. "I'm looking at Jeffree Starr Cosmetics to see if they're hiring people," she said. "I was working at the Wikimedia Foundation and got laid off. This is my third tech layoff in three years. Maybe it's time to change industries!"
And only one person was reading a newspaper online—an older gentleman scrolling the New York Times.
I was most intrigued, however, by the people I spotted who were doing nothing. No screen, no headphones, no book—they weren't even sleeping.
One such lady—Precious, who lives in Downtown Brooklyn—was smiling as she gazed into space.
"Why aren't you staring at your phone?" I asked.
She laughed and turned her smile on me. "I was trying to relax," she said.
“I'm fine with being alone with my thoughts," she continued. "Sometimes the train time is the only time I get to myself."
I wish I could say I am similarly unplugged when I ride the rails, but I typically use this time to catch up on the news. I might like myself the least, in fact, in those moments when I'm feeling irritated by my fellow New Yorkers because they are interrupting my podcast listening with their singing and dance routines and warnings that Armageddon is coming soon but it will all be okay if I accept Jesus. Aren't such delights the reason I moved to New York City in the first place?
My friend Alex, a native New Yorker who lives in a section of the Upper East Side "that mainly specializes in medical care and highway exits," as he puts it, is one of the few who never do anything while riding the subway beyond riding the subway. "I just genuinely enjoy the experience of being on the train," he told me recently.
How does he pass the time?
“If I'm on an express train, I really enjoy watching myself pass the local train. That's always very satisfying,” he said. “You know, maybe I get too much satisfaction out of that. Like, 'Yes! Gotcha!'"
"I will listen to the sound of the train," he continued. "I will think about stuff. Sometimes I try to meditate. I have found I actually do about as well meditating on the train as I do anywhere—which is not very well—but the train doesn't really make it a worse experience. And there’s always a lot of people to observe."
"What do you see when you watch people?" I asked.
"Today, I didn't see anything particularly interesting," said Alex. "But I was watching this guy who was like, eating chips in the messiest possible way, who just happened to be sitting across from me, and he dropped a paper bag on the floor. I'm like, 'Is he gonna pick it up? Is he not going to pick it up?' And he picked it up and put it under the seat. But sometimes you see cool stuff. You see kids bonding with their parents. You overhear people's wild stories."
Alex was making a great case for doing nothing on the train, but his next point made the biggest impression.
"Sometimes it's also just like a little New York moment," he said. "I remember one time I was on an E train, and the train was stopped in the station, and there was an unintelligible announcement about why we were stopped. And I looked at this guy, and I could just tell that we were both thinking the same thing. And I went 'Mph wphm mmmh!' and everyone laughed. You have these little New York moments where everybody's on the same page because we're New Yorkers. And I feel like if I have my headphones in, or if my head's down, I'm gonna miss that."
That's when it hit me. The real problem with everyone riding the subway encased in headphones and staring at their screens is not so much that we are hiding from each other as the fact that we are no longer riding together. We've somehow managed to recreate the isolated experience of driving down the highway in a car, only with garbled announcements and rats.
Can we put the snake back in the can? Not likely. Last September, the MTA installed wireless service in the S train tunnel connecting Grand Central and Times Square. Within a few years—if things go as planned—every tunnel in the system will have flawless 5G service. And then we’ll all be FaceTiming and video streaming and metaversing and OnlyFansing on the 5 train like champs.
Of course, like everything in life, the change must start with me. So for the next few weeks, when I ride the train, I’m going to be like my pal Alex and only ride the train. Then I can decide if it’s worth it. Meanwhile, I’ll be providing updates on anything interesting that happens as a result. If you’d like to join me (regardless of your city), please drop me a note at annekadet@yahoo.com and let me know how it goes!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The Gate of Heaven is Everywhere.”
—Thomas Merton
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
I’m surprisingly pleased that so many people were communicating, reading highbrow books, making appointments or bettering themselves on their phones. It gives me faith that not everyone is constantly doom scrolling. Great survey! Keep em coming.
I can never concentrate when on the train. I love watching the scenery fly by. My favorite part of riding the train into Chicago (not a NY resident) is seeing people's backyards as we go by. It tells you a lot about someone. And when I'm in the city, the El gives great views into people's apartments. That's even better. I imagine there's not much of that underground for y'all.