Sometime ago, Astoria comedian Louie Visone started pasting around flyers with a fake Keith Haring illustration advertising what he called a “Turnstile Jumping Competition” set to take place on February 7th of this year. Visone had decided to set this at the Morgan Avenue L station, a well-worn location with notably traversable turnstiles and occasionally beset by stabbings, though he also wrote that he wanted contestants to pay the fare before jumping over the barriers “with style.” Though the purpose of doing all this seemed opaque, and police presence largely prevented any of this from happening, whatever it was1 seemed to encapsulate resentments surrounding fare jumping culture in certain corners of the city, or at least this one. What are we paying for? What do these choices mean when we decide to slip through the emergency exit and leave Janno Lieber on read? 2Should everything be, like our young hot mayor once promised, fast & free?
The non-debacle reminded me of a letter I received from a reader who was bothered enough about this to write in about it. God bless them, whoever they are, in whatever second floor apartment alongside the rickety and windy Morgan Avenue highway they might be sitting, playing Fortnite perhaps while the white paint peels gracefully off their walls with the rattling of every truck passing by… — Andrew Karpan
I woke up at 9:30 am this morning, ignoring my seven alarms. Running late to my work, I didn’t panic. I took my time, even; I did my 15 minute skincare routine and was out the door by 10. I didn’t need to be anxious, because my corporate job in the city allows for me to mosey in an hour or two late. Moving to the city in the past year (with the help of my parents, of course) for a cushy job allows me such luxuries.
I walk to the L train and rummage through my purse, throwing aside my Dior lip gloss, looking for my OMNY card. As I finally find it, I can’t help but notice a woman beside me. The Manhattan train had arrived moments earlier and I could see the trickle of people now leaving the station. As someone went out through the emergency exit, the woman slipped in, quickly dashing toward the Manhattan-bound line.
Though the now-$3 fare is chump change for me, for a lot of New Yorkers that fare can be back-breaking. I don’t need to tell the reader that prices are rising everyday and our country is stumbling towards a Gilded Age era wealth divide. With a quarter of the city under the poverty line, every penny matters to much of the working class. Can one really blame one of these struggling Brooklynites for skipping out of the fare?
But what about her? With a vintage bistre mink reaching down to her perfectly clean creme booties, she strutted through that emergency exit with a confident gait. It’s a pattern I notice. With Bushwick up and coming, loads of people with my same modicum of privilege are moving to the area. I hear the accusations of gentrification. And yet, many of these privileged individuals feel above paying what must be half the price of their morning coffee.
When a person spends and doesn’t see an immediate tangible benefit, they might think they’re wasting their money. However, every dollar spent on the MTA gives you access to the subway, which gets you anywhere in the city that a 24 year old might want to be seen. That is the immediate tangible benefit. The MTA isn’t solely funded by fares. However, fares make up over a third of the budget, and every person that skips out on paying is taking away from that funding. I think we should empathize with those who cannot afford, but why don’t we install shame instead onto those who have the means to help fund the miracle that is public transportation and yet don’t.
The leftism of this Brooklyn enclave has confused me since moving here. Fundamentally, to be a leftist should be the same thing as being a populist. And yet so many of the leftists of Bushwick, and wider New York, seem to think posting infographics and voting for Mamdani is all that’s needed to heal this City of Dreams. Not saying these don’t help; I certainly think they do. Nevertheless, collectivism is something we’ll never achieve if we don’t practice it in our day to day. Those of us who can afford to should be putting our money into programs that benefit everyone, like subways and buses. We should be kinder to strangers and give up our seats for the elderly. We should constantly be working toward a society in which we want to live.
I’d be a hypocrite to say I’ve never skipped a fare, though I’ve felt guilty about it. I assume most people never think of the consequences of their tiny actions on a macro scale. It’s easy to do. I do hope, however, if you are someone who can afford that daily $6 coffee, that you reevaluate your decision to walk through that emergency exit.
— more like, Lana Del Pay, right?
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- It was later revealed to be a stunt for a punk band called Fare Evasion. (Spotify bio: “The MTA’s least favorite band.”) While the competition never happened, the group ended up playing a free show outside a train station in Manhattan. ↩︎
- A different midwest gentrifier, new to what he calls “East Bushwick,” writes in, concisely:
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