When I was a kid and my father would bring me into the city for a visit to a museum or to the theater, we’d take the train and then the subway, using those old tokens. I still have one or two somewhere, in the bottom of my coin bottle. I couldn’t get rid of them. Even though the MetroCards are wonderful conveniences (but they also have allowed the MTA to easily and substantially increase prices over the years), the tokens were cool.
I like to walk, when the weather is good. This is a perfect city for walking, except for the tourists. In the summer, it’s good, because lots of people leave. I had a car when I first moved here, but it met with an unfortunate combination of explosives and fire. So much for the combustion engine, eh? I use the subway when I have to go long distances, but that hardly happens, except for visiting Lincoln Center or MOMA.
When I was a child, my father let me figure out how many tokens we’d need for our trips to the city. We saw the Nutcracker, skated at Rockefeller Center (even though there was a better place in Princeton, it was still cool to go there at Christmas and skate near the tree), and went to dinner at the top of the World Trade Center once to celebrate some award I’d gotten. It still gives me a lump in the throat, what was lost there.
It’s a wonderful city. Not mine yet, but I hope it will be someday.
Cassie Thornton's Life, Loves, and the Tarot 