My Favorite Urban Legend UPDATE

This happened a few months ago, and somehow slipped through the cracks, but I feel it's still significant enough to mention:

The dead-dog urban legend has once again been spotted!

That's right. A while back, I talked about a story involving a dead dog and the subway that I've heard repeatedly in my years in the city. And, while every time I hear it, the teller swears they know, or have a friend who knows, the person to whom it happened, the story keeps popping up in places and times and within circles of people who are wholly unconnected. Who is this girl who was mugged for her dead dog? I'd like to meet her? Where did this story start?

Well, no answers yet, but a short while after posting my obsession with the urban legend, a friend of mine texted me to tell me excitedly that someone had just told her the story. I immediately messaged her back: Who told her the story? Did he claim to know the girl it happened to? Who told it to him? But the trail went pretty immediately cold, "Um, he's British," she replied, "I don't think he completely gets what I'm asking."

All right. So, the mystery continues.

Oh hey, but in the meantime - here's another subway story. Not nearly as incredible, but nonetheless pretty hilarious. I'm pretty sure it's true, too, as it was told to me as a first-hand account by an old Starbucks co-worker.

Anyway, according to my friend, she was on the subway one morning when she saw a man on the platform frantically dashing toward the train, trying to make it on board before it pulled away. Well, the doors started closing and it was clear he wasn't going to make it, so, in desperation he hurled his briefcase towards train. So what happens? The briefcase lands inside the car, the doors close, and the train pulls away, leaving the man standing on the platform - not only late, but stranded and without his briefcase, which I'm guessing played an important role in wherever he was going in such a hurry.

In the words of my colleague, "What did he think was going to happen? His briefcase was gonna land in exactly the right spot to keep the doors from closing, buying him just enough time to make it to the train?" I guess if that HAD happened, THEN it would be the stuff of urban legend. But as it stands, that image - that stupendously bold desperate act, followed immediately by the realization, 'Wow. That was just... colossally stupid.' - is just really funny. "I mean," said my friend, "Who did he think he was, 007?"

My Favorite Urban Legend

A few weeks ago, after attending a reading, I headed to a nearby bar with some of the cast for a little post-performance celebration. As we shot the breeze, swapped our stories and jokes, a friend of mine spoke up. "Wait, wait," he said, "I know a great one. I know someone whose friends once asked her to dog-sit for their very old dog."

He didn't need to say another word. I knew where it was headed. I could have stopped him right there, said, "ooh, I know this one - this is a good one." But I didn't. Where would the fun have been in that? I love this story.

The story goes - if you're curious - like this: A girl volunteers to dog-sit for a family she knows. The dog is getting on in dog years, and while the family is away, he dies. She calls the family, distraught, but the family says not to worry. The poor guy was very, very old and the death is not at all unexpected. They tell her to bring the dog's body to the family's veterinarian. He'll know what to do with it. So she does.

But, now, the vet is a ways away, and, not knowing better how to get the dead dog there, she packs it into a duffel bag and takes it on the subway. Of course, the still old dog corpse is pretty heavy, so she struggles with it a bit on the stairs. A man, seeing her struggle, helps her onto the subway with the bag.

"That's one heavy bag," says the man when they get on the train. "What have you got in there?" And the girl, obviously not wanting to tell the truth, says, "Oh, you know, just stuff I'm bringing home from college. Books, clothes, my computer, ipod, stuff like that." And you see where this is going. At the next stop, the man grabs the duffel bag and runs off the train just as the doors are closing.

This is, without a doubt, my favorite urban legend. At this point, I have heard this story from at least four separate sources; the number might actually be closer to five or six.

I love this story. It fills me with a deep joy and fondness for my fair city. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's because I heard the story for the first time shortly after I moved to New York, and it makes me remember loving the city with a fresh heart. Maybe it's because it's so quintessentially. Struggling down the stairs and allowing a stranger to help with us with our load; muggings, or hearing about muggings on the street or on the train; and of course, carrying something unlikely and entirely ludicrous onto the subway - these are all such familiar circumstances. it seems only a matter of time and fortune before they should align so perfectly and comically.

Or maybe it's because it feels like something communal- some kind of great in-joke, a story in which we've all partaken. It's something that we've all laughed at, loved, and shared and, for a moment, that makes this great behemoth of a city seem a little smaller.

Here is something interesting, though: the facts never seem to change. I've heard this story possibly a half a dozen times and, unlike most urban legends, the facts of it never seem to change. There's no confusion over detail or circumstance. No, "Oh, I heard it was a dead cat," or, "The way I heard it, it was her dog." No, it's always a girl, always dog-sitting, always a duffel bag on the way to the vet. It's so consistent, it makes me wonder if this is not an urban legend, but a very famous, entirely true story.

Who out there has heard this story? Do you remember who told it to you? Do you know - or know somebody who claims to know - the original source of this story? How fantastic would it be if we could track her down?

The Most Amazing Subway Graffiti

So, I happen to love subway posters. Chalk it up to my alternate life in advertising; I'm totally fascinated by them. I scrutinize them in painstaking detail, get unreasonably angry at the ones that are lazy, slapdash, or lacking in craftsmanship, and get really really excited about the ones that have been artfully and carefully constructed.

For example these:

These posters were out a couple summers ago and I loved them. So much so that I clearly had to document them for posterity. They were somehow entirely aware of their own ridiculousness, and yet still entirely sincere about it. It was genius.

Anyway. I saw another instance of genius a few days ago (although didn't think fast enough to get a picture). This one was not marketing genius, though, but inspiration from a civilian:

This particular poster was for some reality show or another, and featured a bunch of people standing around looking at the camera. There is a poster currently on the subway lines advertising an exhibit about Houdini at (I believe) the Brooklyn Museum. It features a big picture of Houdini with his name and some information about the exhibit underneath.

This graffiti artist had cut out the figure of Houdini and inserted him along with his name in the reality-series posters. The effect was that Houdini had somehow escaped from his own poster and materialized in this one. His name (the final touch), pasted next to him, seemed to announce, "Ta da! The great Houdini!"

It was kind of brilliant.

Subway Stories, Vol. 3

Earlier this week, I rode the subway with a man named Jeff Boss. I know his name is Jeff Boss because he announced it as soon as he entered my car, along with his candidacy for President of the United States as well as for the United States Senate.

Jeff Boss, according to his flyers - and also his website, which you can view here - witnessed his sister-in-law, a top-ranking NSA official, arrange the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Although he didn't understand the meaning of her conversations at the time, after the attacks it all became clear. After narrowly escaping his own death by arriving late to his new job (presumably given to him by the same government-connected family members?) at the WTC on Sept. 11th, he survives to tell his story, only to be thwarted by the NSA at every turn.

There are two obvious options here: either he's telling the truth, or he's not.

As I watched him from across the car, debating passionately with a young man who regarded him with patience and skepticism, I could almost see these two options stretching out in front of me, two separate but parallel stories, both passing through the same plane of reality in which Jeff Boss stands on a New York City subway car desperately clutching his flyers and his truth, while the world around him dismisses him.

Consider the first story: Jeff is telling the truth. A few days or weeks or months before September of 2001, he happens to stumble upon his sister-in-law - who actually IS an high-ranking government official - on a very confidential phone call, during which she actually IS helping plan or facilitate the terrorist attacks on behalf of the U.S. government. How he happened to simply stumble upon such a sensitive conversation, let's not ask. Mistakes get made, Sister-in-Law screwed up. She doesn't know how much he heard or understood, but she can't take any risks. Panicked, she calls a colleague, or maybe a superior. A few more calls are made, and Jeff has a new job that assures his presence at the WTC at the time of the attacks. But, as fate would have it, he is running late that day and is spared. Why doesn't the government just try and kill him again? Let's not ask that question either. Maybe now, if he had already told somebody what he knew, his death would look too suspicious. Maybe Sister-in-Law, wracked with guilt, steps in and says look, we don't have to kill the poor guy. It's easy enough to discredit him. Whatever the case, now no one will every believe what Jeff Boss - who is not crazy - knows unquestionably to be true.

Or, there is the more likely story, the one I choose to believe: Jeff Boss IS crazy. Yes, he does have a family member (maybe his sister-in-law, maybe not) with high-ranking connections, but their worst offense is a little nepotism - they happened to pull some strings and get Jeff a job when he needed one, working at the World Trade Center. Now maybe this is a better job than Jeff deserves, and maybe his family member's neck is sort of on the line for him, or maybe Jeff is just sort of a notorious deadbeat, but whatever the case, he is told sternly and insistently that he must not be late on his first day. So of course, he is late. And as it happens, his irresponsibility saved his life. Overwhelmed with survivor's guilt, he tries to give meaning to what happened. What kind of asshole is late on his first day of work? he thinks. And why was that asshole spared? From the depths of his incomprehension and shame, he creates this delusion.

The fascinating thing about these two stories is that one or neither of them might be true, but both of them cannot be. These stories define two entirely separate, both somewhat sad, worlds. And I can never be sure which one I live in. I can guess (and I have), but I can never know for sure.

A world in which the nation I believe I live in is ultimately good and free and democratic is concretely, quantifiably different from a world in which this same nation would, like a dictatorship in a captive country, murder its own people to get and retain power. And yet, from my vantage point, they both look exactly the same.

Maybe this is where I get a little too existential for my own good, because here is where I start thinking about God. With God, like with Jeff Boss, we have two options: either It exists or It doesn't. And a world without God is an entirely, unequivocably different world from a world with God. And yet, both look the same to me. I've often wondered, how is that possible? And the question has bothered me. Yet here is Jeff Boss on the subway, showing me how it is.

And what does that mean? What do I do with that, if anything at all? I don't know, but there it is, standing in front of me with a flyer in its hand.

Drums and Strings

I'm standing on a subway platform, listening to the steady, rabid beat of drums - a busker somewhere further down, obscured from my view. I notice without really noticing a melody underneath the drumbeat, a shy, thin strain on strange strings. Barely audible, but persistent.

For a moment it sounds like the two are keeping time together, and the observation calls the string melody into sharp focus. I listen closely. A few refrains more and it's clear the synchronicity was accidental. The music is not playing along with the drums, but struggling mightily against it.

The enormity of the struggle is extraordinary; the drums overwhelm the entire platform. The situation suddenly strikes me as utterly bizarre. What would compell someone to compete against such immensity of sound? But then again, what other options are there? Clear out whenever a more ostentatious act rolls in? Tap the player on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, you probably couldn't hear me on the other side of the platform, but my music just can't compete with yours, so if you don't mind..."? Appeal to some imaginary authority for justice? I move closer to the source. It's a funny instrument that I recognize but can't name, played by a woman who hits each string with some sort of hammer. She's a small, thin, Asian woman - middle-aged, I guess, neither old nor young. Her bony body hunches over her instrument, eyes downward in deep concentration. I imagine her terrible battle against the rhythmic Goliath, bending forward, fighting to hear her own music through the roar of the drums, silently cursing with every note. Then I correct myself: she's probably just tuned it out, depending on how long she's been here.

A subway train comes through (not mine), taking even the ceaseless drumming with it. The wind off the train knocks the woman's music off its perch and she struggles - unsuccessfully - to replace it without breaking from the music.

My train still has not come, so I move toward the other end of the platform in search of the drummer. When I find him, he is in his element, flipping his drumsticks in the air and keeping time with easy expertise. You can't even hear the string music from here. Does he even know she's there?

I want to claim allegience to the woman and her strings, but the percussion is exciting and intoxicating. He moves effortlessly from beat to beat, his eyes soft, his muscles tensing and relaxing as the rhythm moves through them.

He must be improvising, mustn't he? It seems impossible, the beat is so crisp, so unwavering. I wonder what it must be like to create rhythm like that. To be so at one with it, so alive within it that the question of which drum to beat next and when becomes irrelevant, the answer is so obvious, like one's the next breath. It must be excruciatingly wonderful.

The drummer pauses to rearrange his kit, replacing one type of drum with another. For a second, before the divine cacophany resumes, you can hear the woman's tinny strains again, sounding very far away.