Thursday, October 14, 2010

I take tea, my dear

Yesterday I met the lovely S.-- at 6 for tea and scones at Alice's Teacup. We met at the old-lady hour of 6, though I had originally asked to meet up even earlier because of additional evening plans (when laundry calls, you gotta answer). So I decided I had time to nip over to Desert Island in Williamsburg to look for a comic book first (more about that in the next post) and proceeded to take the Q to Union Square then the L to Metropolitan. After visiting the store, I went back into the Metropolitan Avenue station but I couldn't bear the thought of the crush and rush of the L, so hopped a G instead. G to Court Square (4 stops); E to 53rd Street (1 stop); and 6 to 68th (2 stops) and I arrived at Alice's at a trim 6:02.

If you know anything about me, you will suspect correctly that this commute made my day. Why take 2 trains when you could take 5? Why go back through your twenty-four-years-old Union Square when you can embark upon a new adventure? And new adventures I surely had, pretty much immediately. Waiting on the G platform and reading the last couple pages of Elizabeth Bishop, I turned to the voice of my friend M.--, asking why I was taking his train. (This is not the first time this has happened; in fact, I can think of at least 2 other times where I have encountered him when I took an unexpected train, and each in very different parts of the city.) So we talked about comic books and numbers and children and all that good stuff, until he bid me farewell in Greenpoint. Then, disembarking at Court Square, instead of facing an arduous trek over to the E and M, I discovered...TRAVELATORS. I'd never seen one in a train station before. Why can't we have them every time there's a long stretch of underground walk?(West 14th, I'm looking at you.) One stop later, back in Manhattan, a busker played what I eventually realized was "Englishman in New York" and then it was time for tea.

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