In a city where everything has been aestheticized by skate videos — curbs, trash cans, cellar doors — skateboarding inside the New York City subway system has still kept up an illusive mystique. We are hardly the only culture to fetishize the subway, which has tribute IG accounts chronicling the malarky that goes down on trains, right down to books celebrating the MTA’s use of Helvetica or cataloging its insignias. (Shout out BK!)
One of the great pitfalls of human psychology is that the more we can’t have something, the more we want it. Skateboarding in a subway station is no different. Every hurdle is revved up: there’s more people, less space, cops are generally angrier, the fines for getting caught are higher, and if your obstacle happens to involve a platform-to-platform connection, there’s an electrified third rail below. While the overall size of the system is about 850 miles, its A.B.D. list is still shorter than, say, Mambo Bar.
