Call it my Ostpolitik with the subway. I no longer want to fly into a rage when I enter the thing. I do not hate the people on the subway. They experience all the same joys along with me, but somehow I’ve managed to get over it.

I no longer find this kind of thing confusing:

Where are we? What station is this? Where is the train coming from? Is this an uptown or a downtown train? I got to where I needed to be, so my rage subsided, a little.

For every good ride, there is always the interior of the subway. Check out this slice of the city so nice, they named it twice:

Absolutely disgusting. This is actually the platform for the next train to Hades:

And believe me, it smelled just as good as it looked. This is actually these are the passageways to the train to Hades:

But, here’s where my detente, ostpolitik comes in:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen your eyes do not deceive you. Color. In this vast gray expanse. Color! You have to get people used to these things, so you can’t just splash tons of color at people, but those do appear to actually be colors.

This next little photo series involves no color, but is really clever. This reminds me a little of the Borf character who was wandering Washington, injecting life and personality into that dried up expanse of boredom. Here is some Borf. Alas, I did not take this picture:

But I took these and they are this daily reminder of the drudgery of going to work. You have to look in the upper left hand corner to see the signs on the beams:

Someone else has a sense of humor on the subway:

Ok, subway, you don’t drive me into a rage anymore. But I don’t now and will never love you.