With no announcement or any inkling of a clue I discovered that Queensbound N trains were rerouted to 96th Street in Manhattan. If someone had some something, anything, I would have known what to do. Get the 7 train from Times Square to Queensboro Plaza where they will probably have a Ditmars-bound N on the Manhattan-bound platform. This did come to pass but only after a half hour of wading through a morass of humanity that lumbered along between 49th Street and 42nd Street. THe place felt like Hieronymus Bosch’s cry for help. Times Square on an early Saturday evening is nowhere and everywhere, empty and stuffed.Ultimately I was 45 minutes past my regular time getting home but that is a large chunk of time given my routines these days.
It’s probably not as new as it seems but lately I’m hearing a lot of people refer to those who were not born and raised in NYC as “transplants” or other faux-derisive terms. Nativism, I guess it’s called, or could be called. I don’t get it. Did anyone ask to be born here? Was there a choice in the matter, going as far as the dilemma of being born at all. No one asked for this. So why does being born and riased and never setting foot outside your home territory make anyone some kind of hero? It’s a xenophobic trait.
The workplace has come to be my safe place. If only it was bankrupting me. I’ve applied for living-wage jobs but remain unhopeful. It is probably not new but a trend I’m getting in on is contacts from eployers claiming I applied for a job that I never even heard of. Numerous contacts of this nature, only the first one almost fooled me. They set up an in-person interview at which I never showed up. They wasted my time, I wasted theirs. Everybody’s happy.
