Word: subway
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...country in the months after her husband's death, she was overwhelmed by the emotion of all the people who came up to her, telling her how much they had loved her husband. Porters at the station, taxi drivers, doormen, elevator operators, passengers on the train, riders in the subway told her how much better their lives were as a result of his leadership...
...other subway boasts such a pleasing cacophony of dissonant sights, sounds and people. Each line, for instance, is unique and uniquely suited to the neighborhoods it connects. The relative cleanliness of the Red Line is well-suited for the ever-vigilant vanity of Harvard and MIT, as the grimy intimacy of Green Line cars fits the downtown neighborhoods they visit...
...virtues are best seen in relief to its vicious peers. New York's subway, at least, is similarly musical. The musicians inside the subway itself are rare--and rarely any good--but more important is the potential for a New York subway ride to become a veritable sing-along. There, one can actually "Take the A Train," and it's great fun to sing the "Welcome Back Kotter" theme song while entering Brooklyn. The trouble, of course, is the bevy of thugs (meaner than Vinny Barbarino) and wayward youth who scare timid passengers, especially tourists, into silent submission. Nevertheless...
...then there's Washington's Metro, a disgustingly clean and predictable subway. There, faux-Roman arches make every station into a cavernous Pantheon. Which would be fine, had the Romans built with concrete, but they knew better. Washington's Metro is the Mather House of subways--simultaneously large, impressive, cold and ugly. All the same, it has redeeming features--like the Sonny Rollins look- and sound-alike who plays atop Farragut North or the longest escalator outside of Russia at Wheaton. But these amenities do little to compensate for its reigning hobgoblin, a gray-grim consistency...
...Burke intimated: to make us love our subway, our subway must be lovely; not merely awesome, like DC's vaulted ceilings, nor intimidating, like the band of merry men on New York's trains. Perhaps the T's age is gone; maybe that of the D C Metro has succeeded. But, fortunately, the T is safely encased below Boston, and its glory will not fade anytime soon--at least, not so long as every small platoon of liberty, the unique stations, musicians and the rest, remain. Boston had the best subway at the beginning of the 20th century...