John Wick

 

By now we’re familiar with Keanu Reeves.   Depending on how geezin’ we be, it’s anywhere from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (and “Bogus Journey”), “Point Break”, or “The Matrix”.  Throw “Constantine” and “The Devil’s Advocate” into the mix as well.  Here are 4 more recent films of his, a series.  I’ll try to keep it brief and avoid spoilers.

John Wick 1 (2014).  John Wick (Reeves) is a retired hitman who has a beloved wife dying of cancer.  Shortly after she dies, a delivery arrives: a puppy sent by her in her last days, to keep him company after she’s gone.  I suppose she didn’t think his Boss 429 Mustang would be a sufficient companion. (Something made by Pontiac might have been enough).

Well, he goes out to fill the Mustang with gas, and a local moblord’s son, Iosef Tarasov, played by our beloved Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), takes a shining to the car, and is not happy when Wick politely advises him that it’s not for sale.  The Boy sends Minions (Banana!) to kill the car and steal the dog – or vice versa.  Oops.  Not a wise move, as his father Viggo tells him that Wick is not someone to mess with (“Ohh, is he the bogeymen?” “No, he’s the one you send to KILL the bogeyman”).  And Wick spends the remainder of the film showing how true that is.

A huge body count amidst NYC clubs piles up, with NYPD, FBI, and BATF curiously absent amidst all the shooting with various different potent firearms.  Although Wick is injured, he somehow survives to continue extracting vengeance until it’s down to Iosef and Viggo to be the last victims of Wick’s crusade.

Oh, did I mention there are some heavy hitters amongst the cast members?  Ian McShane plays Winston, the owner of the Continental, a Flatiron type hotel in Manhattan which serves as neutral territory for all these people to conduct their business.  Lance Reddick (RIP) plays Charon, the concierge thereof.   Willem Dafoe is Marcus, a fellow assassin who enters the picture.  Even Adrienne Palicki, aka Kelly Grayson from “The Orville”, is Perkins, another assassin.  Who knew the underworld could support so many assassins? 

The gunfights and martial arts are all implausibly well orchestrated, which can sometimes wear on your patience.  Fortunately Wick remains likable throughout, and you want him to achieve his goals.  Well, at least I did. 

With the existence of three sequels, forgive me if I spoil it for you by pointing out that he survives these films.  Will he survive #4?  Well, watch it and find out.

John Wick 2 (2017).  An Italian mobster arrives in NYC and presents Wick with a medallion, an item which obligates the recipient to do a mission for the presenter.  In this case, the mobster, Santino D’Antonio, tasks Wick with assassinating his sister Gianna so he can take her place on the High Table, the criminal underworld’s secret council.  After Wick initially resists, having his house blown up and Winston’s advice (“you have to do the job, he has a medallion”) induce him to travel to Rome, Italy to complete the mission.  There’s a Continental Hotel in Rome, and its manager is played by Franco Nero, a famous actor most recently having a cameo role in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained”) (yes, I know he was the original Django).  Common (yet another rap guy with a pretentious name) plays Gianna’s bodyguard and moves against Wick to avenge her, as do D’Antonio’s own army of assassins.  It frequently reaches the point where Wick runs out of bullets and has to replenish his supply of weapons and ammo from the vast body count of fresh, heavily armed corpses.  [Guess the local morgue may need to rent out a warehouse or a crematorium. Again, the police are nonexistent herein.]

Here's where it gets annoying.  NOW D’Antonio puts a bounty out on Wick to avenge his sister’s death – the death D’Antonio arranged himself.  It’s a fairly large bounty ($7 million), so every assassin in NYC comes out of the woodwork to earn it, notwithstanding the negligible likelihood of success or survival.  Again, who knew there were that many hitmen around?  Oh, and Wick gets help from Morpheus…er.. the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) in the form of medical attention and firearms.

Wick ultimately “resolves” the matter in a fashion which will incur him the wrath of the High Table, as we’ll see in JW3.

John Wick 3 (2019).   This time around Wick travels to Casablanca, Morocco, and the Desert, in an effort to redeem himself with the High Table by meeting The Elder.  He’s assisted by Sofia Al-Azwar (Halle Berry), a fellow assassin and manager of the Continental in Casablanca, who takes him to see to Berrada, (Jerome “Bronn” Flynn), another lowlife who can tell him how to find the Elder.  Before the Tracker and his dog, Sofia has her own canine companions who assist her in her badassness. 

More shooting.  Of course.  More absent police.  Or maybe they were just smart enough to stay away and chow down on donuts - then simply come by to pick up the bodies.  Chief Wiggums, you know.

Then it’s off to the desert to find The Elder.  The terms for re-admission to the High Table prove to be onerous, leading Wick and Winston to fight back, which induces the High Table to send an Adjudicator, played by Non-Binary Ice Bitch herself, Asia Kate Dillon (from “Orange Is the New black” and “Billions”).   And guess what?  In addition to all those assassins who take the bounties offered by the High Table, it has its own spec ops team of heavily armed and armored assassins, who – guess what - go after John Wick.  And if you know there’s a John Wick 4, you can guess what happens. 

John Wick 4 (2023).   Now Wick goes to Osaka, Japan; Berlin, Germany; and finally Paris, France, to escape the High Table idiocy by regaining membership in his original Romanian mob (led by Natalya Tena, best known as “Osha”, the wilding girl in Game of Thrones) and forcing the High Table to agree to a Trial By Combat at the Sacre Coeur (big church on the highest hill) in Paris.  However, YET AGAIN, the High Table has put out yet another asininely high bounty, and a shadow army of Paris’ muscle-car-driving assassins attempt to make sure he doesn’t make it past the Etoile, or up the steps of Rue Foyatier, to the final location.  Did I mention that Johnnie Yen plays Caine, a BLIND assassin, who seems remarkably effective despite his obvious handicap?  There’s also a black guy with a dog, “The Tracker”, who alternates between protecting Wick and trying to kill him.  By this point the High Table is now represented by the Marquis, played by Bill Skarsgard.  Clancy Brown joins Asia Kate Dillon and Toby Leonard Moore as yet more “Billions” alumni herein. The Kurgan guy from “Highlander”, who played the Attorney General in “Billions” here plays the Harbinger, a quasi-Adjudicator role of the High Table.

As a resident of Paris from 1979-1990, I was happy to see the city get such attention – Osaka and Berlin were mostly represented by buildings indoors which could be anywhere.  The parties hammer out the terms of the duel at Chaillot, opposite the Eiffel Tower.  The Bowery King meets Wick in an abandoned Paris Metro station.   The High Table’s Paris office monitors Wick’s whereabouts on a huge map of Paris with the arrondisements (the 20 different districts of Paris) marked out.  A huge shootout occurs at the Etoile itself – here’s where CGI enters the equation, as they obviously didn’t shut down Paris’ most active traffic circle just to film a movie (actually done on a green screen parking lot near Berlin).  But those steps up to the Sacre Coeur, the aforementioned Rue Foyatier, actually were shut off to film the action sequence wherein Wick and Caine have to fight their way up to the church to attend the duel. 

High Table Bureaucracy.  Oddly, the High Table, Assassin’s Guild, or whoever it is taking care of this whole network of assassins and bounties, has an elaborate bureaucracy with sophisticated networks worldwide.  They have forms, old school file cabinets, and the beloved stamps – all in oldfashioned offices with clerks and secretaries taking care of this – presumably sworn to secrecy somehow with NDAs enforced by assassins and bounties.  All for what is an illegal enterprise, to which the FBI and Interpol seem to be oblivious.  If I were a US Attorney (Federal prosecutor) I’d be amazed they’re keeping a paper trail of all this.  I suppose they expect to burn all of it should the need arise.  Maybe we’ll get a High Table backstory in a later movie, although the next film in the franchise, “The Ballerina” (featuring a character I didn’t see in #3), will take place in between #3 & 4 and is Charon actor Lance Reddick’s last role before he died.  In the meantime, enjoy these four.  

DC to NYC and Back

I don’t want to get into a major comparison of Washington, DC vs. New York City, except to say that as of 2013, the Federal government’s massive role in our country has made DC just about as important as NYC, a state of affairs which definitely did not exist before World War II.  And when you consider the cities, you also have to consider the surrounding metropolitan areas.  For DC that’s Montgomery and Prince George’s County, Maryland, plus Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County, Virginia – possibly Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier as well.  For NYC that includes Long Island, Staten Island, and northern New Jersey.  We could think of southern Jersey as a big suburb of Philadelphia. 

So the DC-NY corridor winds up heavily travelled – by myself included.  My first trip up was in March 1991 to visit my friend Dave, who lives out on Long Island.  From then until a few years ago I took several trips to New Jersey to visit my friend Ken, who progressively moved from Bloomfield, to Ford, and then to Hillsborough, and to this day still lives in NJ.  Since June 2009 I’ve been back and forth to Fort Lee, which is on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge, a part of NJ which is northwest of Manhattan. 

Plane.  Of course you can fly – if you want.  There is a shuttle, and the standard flight takes 30 minutes.  DC is served by three airports:  DCA (Reagan National), IAD (Dulles), and BWI (Baltimore-Washington), while NYC also has three:  JFK, La Guardia, and Newark.  The problem with flying between the two cities is that the logistics of getting to and from the airport mean it will take longer to do so than the flight itself.  I’ve never flown, just to fly between those two cities, although on home leaves we’ve flown from Paris to DC by way of JFK.  If the train is impractical, the plane is even worse.

Train.  DC is served by Union Station, a huge edifice near where 1^st Street, NW, and Massachusetts Ave. converge.  Like many European stations, it began in 1907 as yet another palace of transportation.  When rail travel began to decline after the national highway system gave Americans their own Autobahn, Union Station likewise fell into decline.  Its renovation has been fitful and controversial.  I rarely travel by train, so every time I’d go there the place would be set up completely differently inside. 

On the New York end, Penn Station is now buried deep under Madison Square Garden.  It was built in 1910 and was originally above-ground, just as spacious and magnificent as the other major rail stations.  In 1968 all the above-ground sections were demolished, replaced by the Madison Square Garden skyscraper complexes above, and became completely underground.  My guess is that most modern depictions of a fabulous, Art Nouveau era train station in Manhattan are actually showing Grand Central Station, which is completely different.  Whereas Penn Station is on 8^th Avenue at 33^rd Street, Grand Central is at 42^nd Street and Lexington Ave.  I’ve seen one concert at MSG – AC/DC, during the summer of 1988.  Although we did in fact use Penn Station for train travel to NYC – the only time we’ve done so – it was not in conjunction with that concert, which simply took place during our time in the city.

As for the logistics of it, the train is as rigidly bound by schedules as the bus, but much more expensive, and thus impractical.  That’s why I never take the train to NYC.

Bus.  DC’s bus terminal used to be the Greyhound Station located a few blocks north of Union Station, which only recently moved to Union Station itself.  The bus terminal was a very small, square building and only served the Greyhound intercity bus system.  Today’s “Chinatown” buses stop elsewhere.   I won’t call Union Station a backwater, but it’s really only busy because of itself.

In NYC, the Port Authority Bus Terminal dates from 1950.  I recall going through there as a kid whenever our family went to NYC by bus, or went through NYC on the way up to Glens Falls to visit our relatives in upstate New York.  The PABT also handles considerable local bus traffic, including the 158 bus to Fort Lee.  It’s a huge, multilevel building which occupies the equivalent of 4 city blocks, on 8^th Avenue at 42^nd Street.  Walk out of the building and you’re on the famous part of 42^nd Street leading directly to Times Square.  Very convenient!  There’s also a bronze statue of Ralph Kramden, the famous bus driver (Jackie Gleason) from “The Honeymooners” right in front, and the New York Times building is across the street. 

Nominally the bus takes as long as driving yourself:  4 hours (add more time due to traffic, as necessary).  In my case, it’s more like 7 hours: getting home from work, getting a ride to the bus stop, and at the NYC end walking to the bus terminal and then getting the 158 bus to Fort Lee.  The price paid for dozing off on a bus and not paying gas or tolls is that the logistics eat up 2-3 hours as well:  plus you have to leave according to a schedule instead of whenever you want.  Nowadays Greyhound has competition from various other small private companies who simply run DC-NY routes, in particular TripperBus (the one I use), but there are others, such as the Bolt Bus and Megabus.

The buses are much cheaper than the train, let you relax instead of driving, and take care of the tolls and gas as well.  They sometimes – not always – stop at the rest stops in northeast Maryland, a big new facility in Delaware, or the smaller ones on the New Jersey Turnpike. 

Car.  If you can’t predict when you’ll come or go, or don’t want to be fixed to a bus schedule and are inclined to drive  yourself, you can do so. In addition to the gas you’ve got tolls.  Lots of them, and as of 2013 they really add up.  Fortunately EZPass makes it more convenient, but the cost remains basically the same.

Let’s start with the baseline.  This is the simplest, most direct route which most people will probably take (and the bus takes it).   For simplicity I’ll just go northbound but note toll differences.

1.         95 or 295 (BW Parkway) from DC to Baltimore.  No toll.  This is the first hour out of 4.  To the extent there is any nasty traffic which would make the trip last 4.5, 5, or 6 hours, it’s probably here.  In 2006 it once took me 3 hours to get from Falls Church to Baltimore, and earlier the DC Beltway traffic was so horrendous, it took me two hours to get from Rosslyn just to the exit for 95 North from the DC Beltway, over near College Park. 

2.         Fort McHenry Tunnel or Baltimore Harbor Tunnel (by way of the 895 Bypass):  $4.00 each way.

3.         JFK Memorial Highway, i.e. 95 from Baltimore to Delaware.  $8.00 northbound only.  This is the second hour out of 4 – so crossing into NJ means you’re halfway there.

4.         Delaware Turnpike (95) from MD to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  $4.00 each way.

5.         Delaware Memorial Bridge (DMB) from DE to NJ.  $4.00 southbound only.

6.         New Jersey Turnpike from DMB to Exit 18, the very end, at the George Washington Bridge.  Note: the Lincoln Tunnel is Exit 16 and puts you downtown most likely where you want to be.  The full turnpike toll is $13.85 both ways.   The halfway point on this part of the trip is Exit 7A.

NJTP charges a different rate for peak vs. off-peak: the full toll in off-peak is $10.40.  Peak is defined as 7-9 a.m. and 4:30–6:30 p.m. M-F and all day Saturday and Sunday.

Trip Toll Total from DC to exit 18 on the Turnpike: $29.85 northbound, $25.85 southbound, round trip total $55.70 ($48.80 off-peak).

Recently I got back from northern New Jersey (Fort Lee) and took a very strange route, which added 30-60 minutes in travel time but eliminated all tolls.   Is it really possible to avoid them?  Yes, but it takes some work.

Toll saver alternate Route 1.   Northbound, take Route 40 in Delaware from 279 (last MD exit before DE) and get back on 95 just before the DMB (NB); if going southbound, get on Route 40 just after crossing DMB into DE and follow it to 279 in Elkton, MD, back onto 95.   Route 40 is a four lane highway with a huge median and not many stoplights. You can stop for gas or fast food.  Total amount saved:  $4.00 each way.  It’s not a bad change of scenery.  I took this route when DE was redoing its toll plaza, causing massive backup southbound.

Toll saver alternate Route 2.  Northbound: immediately after crossing into NJ on the DMB, keep right and take 295 North.  295 goes parallel to the NJTP a few miles to the west.  When it passes Philadelphia it gets very confusing, but follow signs for 295-Trenton and there’s no problem.  But eventually at exit 36 it allows you to go back to the NJTP at Exit 4.   Going southbound, get off the Turnpike at Exit 4, go west for less than a mile, and then take 295 south.  The savings are $2.60 (peak) and $1.90 (off-peak), or $5.20 and $3.80 respectively, round trip.   The junction at the end is right at the bridge, and at Exit 4 it’s about a half mile, hardly noticeable.  Moreover, the bottom end of the Turnpike is VERY boring, especially at night.  295 isn’t much of a scenic route, but at least you’ve got mile-marked exits fairly often (36 to 1).  The big catch is the confusing business around Philadelphia, but if you follow the signs carefully you’ll stay on track without a problem.  I found this to be a worthwhile detour.

Toll saver alternate Route 3.  Instead of veering east for the DMB on 95 in Delaware, veer north towards Wilmington and Philadelphia and take 95 up that way.  Eventually 95 will cross the river, plunge into New Jersey, loop around on a major detour, and …eventually find its way to Exit 7A on the Turnpike.  This is kind of a pain in the ass detour, plus you run the risk of hitting Philadelphia traffic.  The savings are $4.30 peak, $3.35 off-peak, for $8.60 peak roundtrip or $6.70 off-peak roundtrip.  I don’t find this detour to be worth the savings.

Toll saver alternate Route 4.  This is the big one:  off into banjoland Pennsylvania but NO TOLLS.  Roundtrip savings approximately $50.  Additional driving time 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on traffic, but it is a VERY different route and during the day quite scenic and picturesque.  No huge smoking refineries, no huge bridges or rivers, no tunnels, no Dupont ethyl lead plants, but lots of liquor stores, tattoo parlors, farmland, etc. 

It’s a bit different each way, but the general idea is 95 > 695 > 83 > 30 > 222 > I78 > 287 > I80.

1.         Drive up 95 North or BW Parkway to the Baltimore Beltway (695).  Take 695 west/north to Towson.

2.         Take 83 North up to York, Pennsylvania.  This becomes a 4 lane highway winding its way through hills and forests, somewhat reminiscent of the lower Turnpike but more up and down.

3.         Get off (N. Hills Rd/462), continue straight on Hills and take a right onto 30 East.  Follow this for about 30 miles.

4.         Take 222 northeast all the way to Allentown.  This is by far the worst of the trip.  The road varies from highway to two lane road, back and forth, and several times you have to exit 222 onto 222 (???).  The key is to continue on “222” towards Allentown and not get distracted by the route numbers and road changes.

5.         Just south of Allentown, get on I-78 East.  This takes you east into New Jersey and remains a major highway all the way through.  By this time you’re probably fed up with “small roads”, especially if you’re driving at night and can’t see much anyway.

6.         Take 287 North.   This remains a highway, apparently curving up parallel to the Garden State Parkway (which is to the east).  287 N eventually meets the NY State Thruway if you follow it over the NY State Line.

7.         Take 80 East.  The interchange is exit 43 on 80, about ten miles west of Wayne.  Follow 80 East to NYC.

            Overall time:  just under 5 hours and NO tolls.

As noted, southbound it’s a bit different.  It’s still I80 > 287 > I78 … 222 > 30 > 83 > 695 > 95, but getting from I78 to 222 is the tricky part.

1.         Take 80 West to 287 S.  As of 11/13 they’re doing construction on that interchange, so the traffic is nasty.

2.         Take 287 S to I78 West.

3.         Here’s where it gets crazy.  To avoid the toll in I78 in PA, you get off I78 right before PA, at Route 122, getting on Main Street, a winding two lane road through Phillipsburg, NJ, crossing a bridge at Union Square over the river into Easton, PA, through the traffic circle, right on 3^rd St., left on Snyder, which then gets you onto 22 (Lehigh Valley Thruway), which leads to I-78.  

4.         Almost immediately after getting onto I-78, take 100 S, then a right onto Schantz road, which turns into 222 south.  

5.         Continue following “222 South” to get off onto 222 South (???), finally leading to 30 West towards York.  30 crosses the Susquehanna River, a similar two-bridge deal just like all the way down in northeast MD and 95. (the nicer parallel bridge to the south is 462 connecting Wrightsville on the west bank and Columbia on the east bank).

6.         As 30 West hits York at N. Hills Road, take a left turn at a stop light, go down the road about a mile, take a right onto Market, and immediately get onto 83 South.  From there it’s back down to 695 West, 95 South and the DC area again.  NO TOLLS.  

** Note 1: the westbound toll on I78 from PA into NJ is only $1.00; the toll is actually for the bridge itself.  I found it worthwhile to waive the "no toll" concept, eat the $1.00 EZPass toll, and simply stay on I78 from NJ into PA, then take 222 south at Allentown.
** Note 2: When going to/from Frederick, MD to NYC, it works better to take 70 West to Hagerstown, pick up I81, then follow that to Harrisburg and pick up I78 East, which starts there.  

Having a GPS is a huge help with this, as you might imagine.  The Android maps app can be programmed to avoid tolls (I83 route), which gave me a route identical to the AAA TripTik, which is what us twentieth century fossils use. 

I get off in Fort Lee, NJ, without actually going into NYC itself (except on the bus, but then the bus company pays the tolls).  Driving up the Turnpike you’d go into NYC in the Lincoln Tunnel, which dumps you between 42 Street and 34 Street on the west side of the island.  Driving on the alternate route would get you into NYC over the George Washington Bridge, which is up around 175 Street, also on the west side of Manhattan.  From there you can go east to the Bronx (and on to Connecticut), southeast on FDR Drive over to Queens or Brooklyn, or just stay on the West Side Highway.  The tolls for cars on the Lincoln Tunnel and GW Bridge are the same:  $13 cash, $10.25 peak, $8.25 off-peak, and $4.25 “carpool” (3 or more persons).   They only charge going INTO Manhattan – “escape from NY” is free.

I bitch about the tolls, but the real benefit was simply a completely different route than the one I’ve endured since 2009.  I really do NOT like the lower half of the Turnpike, especially at night.  

Hurricanes

I just got back from NYC/New Jersey, which is still suffering the after-effects of Hurricane Sandy.  Power, gas, and Internet porn are all severely restricted.  Fortunately the DC area looks to have escaped any significant damage, and the gas stations are running normal.

 I think of Texas, Louisiana, and Florida as the main targets of hurricanes.  Come to think of it, when it comes to natural disasters, the US gets almost all of them.  Volcanos?  Yep, Mt. St.Helen’s in Washington State.  Earthquakes?  California.  Tornados?  The Midwest.  Floods?  The Mississippi flooded back in the 90’s.  Blizzards?  Mainly the East Coast, plus Chicago and Buffalo.  About the only one we don’t get are tsunamis.  Brazil, on the other hand, gets none of these (least of all blizzards!). 

 Back in 1988, when I was taking summer classes at the University of Maryland, we had a huge storm.  It knocked over trees and knocked out the power in College Park, although UMCP itself did not lose power.  As nasty as it was, suitemate Jeff, from Houston, Texas, claimed, “this was nothing compared to a hurricane.”

 I recall a weather channel documentary about “storm chasers”, these high-flying bombers which fly above the hurricanes and down into the eye.  The eye is truly bizarre, a round area of complete calm inside the swirling maelstrom of nature’s violence. 

 Although several hurricanes have come by the East Coast a few times, I’ve never been directly in the path of one, nor have I suffered any property damage, injuries, or losses of loved ones due to these storms.  I count myself lucky in that respect. 

 Katrina was the worst recent hurricane.  New Orleans is still trying to recover from it.  Galveston, Texas, was hit in 1900 and never recovered.  Sandy swiped by NYC and headed northwest, then circled up northeast, up around NYC, almost dancing around the Big Apple like one of those Mexican hat dances, Sandy swishing her skirt up left and right as she circled the Empire State Sombrero.  I see almost NO coverage of the hurricane’s impact on Philadelphia, which arguably was directly targeted by the hurricane – outside of Philly news coverage, which obviously focuses on that city.  But on Wednesday, the only NJ Transit buses running were in Camden!  Go figure.  NYC was hurt worse from the glancing blow of Sandy than Philly was head-on.  The PA death toll is 1/3 the NJ/NY toll.  I’m getting the big impression here that “national news coverage” pays too much attention to NYC and ignores everyone outside the NYC metro area as inconsequential.  World Series coverage dropped dramatically once the Yankees were knocked out.   Who won?  Oh, the San Francisco Giants.  Again.  (Yawn).

 Inevitably it’s impossible to completely protect ourselves from hurricanes, but New York’s recent problems suggest that a lot more can be done – and should be done - to reduce the effects.  Look at how little damage earthquakes do these days to L.A., now that they’ve re-engineered their buildings.  An earthquake hits L.A. and the death toll is negligible relative to the strength of the quake itself.  Over in Iran or Armenia a similar sized quake kills thousands of people.  Someone needs to study the weak, choke points here and address them.  Clearly Hurricane Sandy will not be the last one we’ll face.

 Finally, I couldn’t resist posting that pic of Nana Gouvea, the Brazilian model who tastelessly posed in front of pictures of hurricane damage, inspiring a spoof picture of her in front of another disaster, Ned Stark’s imminent decapitation in “Game of Thrones”.  Enjoy.

Subways

My friend Dave recently commented on driving, saying that he prefers to simply sit on a train, but he lives out on Long Island – the suburbs – which makes driving necessary, and would not like to live anywhere so densely populated as to make public transportation so practical or effective.  In other words, in a big city such as New York City just miles west of where he lives.  This reminded me of my own time living in cities where I could get by using subways instead of cars.

 I’ve lived in Paris for some time and spent time in NYC – and of US subway systems I’m most familiar with DC’s.  From September 1998 to April 1999, and then again from January 2000 to November 2000, I worked on L Street in DC and took the Metro to work every day.  Here are my comments on this subject.

 Washington DC.  DC’s subway system is fairly recent (it was begun in the late 70s) and the stations are few and far between; the closest station to Georgetown is 10 blocks southwest at GWU.  They are all practically identical, with very dark, concrete interiors.  I don’t know who designed them, but they really strike me as dull, utilitarian, and even totalitarian, which is ironic in the capital city of the world’s premier capitalist democracy.  Of course there are ads, but the overpowering darkness of the stations is oppressive.  The trains, however, are very well-lit, which is a strong contrast.  The large distances between even city stops (the suburban stops are light years distant from each other) makes them more appropriate for “out of the city to some interior location, and back” travel.  Since driving in DC is such a pain in the ass, the optimum deal would be to park at a Metro station in the suburbs – if you could find a space – and take the Metro in.   I found out the hard way that doesn’t work well when going to concerts; I had to walk all the way home from the (new) 9:30 Club when I came out of a Monster Magnet concert only to find the metro closed.  When I worked at L Street I would take the Metro from Rosslyn to McPherson Square, which is right in the heart of the K Street business district.  On the DC Metro you have to buy tickets according to the distance, and peak vs. non-peak travel time, but at least the card acts as a de facto debit card for the system itself.

 New York City.  NY’s subway is famous, and runs 24/7.  The stops are fairly close together and numerous enough.   Although most still have some ancient tile on the curved walls, with the overall impression being from the early 20^th century even today, there is a remarkable variance in design to them which DC conspicuously lacks.   I remember traveling on the subway with my family in the 70s, back when the subway cars went dark and were covered in graffiti.  Fortunately we were never mugged.

 Boston.  I went on Boston’s subway only briefly in 1987 when I visited my buddy John at Boston University.  Boston’s subway seemed to have real trains going through tunnels.  It looked like the platforms were too low relative to the trains.

 Paris.  By far, this is the system I’m most familiar with and like the most.  The stations were very close together and carpeted the city – you were never more than a few blocks from any stop.  They had a wide variety of designs, with the Louvre stop the most elaborate.  To this day, I can remember the Pont de Neuilly – Vincennes line stops.  Most lines ran older trains, I recall the Balard-Creteil line ran newer ones which were much cooler.  In addition to the RATP (Metro) Paris has the RER (Reseau Expres Regional – Regional Express Network) which comes in from WAYYYY out of town.  I haven’t been to Paris since 1990, though I understand they’ve extended the Pont de Neuilly line out to La Defense.  The Paris Metro dates from the turn of the century and has some very beautiful art nouveau subway entrances.  I recall it as being fairly clean (except for sanitation strikes) and had its share of buskers and street musicians (which I also recall from NYC).  Unlike Washington DC and London, Paris uses generic yellow tickets good for a journey of any distance, though the Carte Orange (orange card) good for unlimited monthly travel on all forms of Parisian public transportation was the best value.  Unfortunately the Paris Metro was not open 24/7.  One New Year’s morning I had to walk back from St Paul-Le Marais all the way to Malesherbes at 5 in the morning. 

 London.  The Underground is, of course, the world’s oldest and very famous.  The stations were close enough together and went to the most important parts of town (e.g. Picadilly Circus and Oxford Street, for us).  The exits are labeled “WAY OUT”.  I haven’t been to London since 1985, so it may have changed since then.  You paid by distance, which I don’t like.   The Underground did go far out into the suburbs, which you can’t tell from the map, though the parallelogram styling of the map itself is one of the London Underground’s distinctions.  I recall some of the trains on the Bakerloo line – down by Elephant & Castle and the Imperial War Museum – were some really old wooden things.  What was that, Hogwarts?  At least the Underground did go to Heathrow, unlike the subways in Paris, NYC or DC.

 Moscow.  I took just one trip on the Moscow Metro, in March 1983, from the hotel to the ballet and back.  The interiors were beautiful:  huge murals of communist propaganda, statues of workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors (you know, those Kronstadt sailors).  Thank Stalin for this.

 Kiev.  Also in March 1983, but just two lines – one north-south, one east-west – and very old and grungy, somewhat like the London Underground or NY subway very run down.  I recall we just took one trip: from down town to the hotel (Bratislava – one of these concrete high rise monstrosities so ubiquitous in the Soviet Bloc).

 Bucharest.  Speaking of rundown, this was just like the rest of the city: extremely dirty, extremely nasty, but it seemed fairly modern nonetheless and the stops were fairly close together.  It was more extensive than Kiev’s.

 Rio de Janeiro.  Rio’s system is fairly new and looks like it.  The line starts at the end of Copacabana and winds its way up the coast to Zona Norte.  One fairly common complaint I hear about subway systems is that they give slum people a cheap and easy way to get into the better parts of town to do their dirty work – although the same applies to buses.  I never really used the Rio subway that much.

 The two most important features of a well-designed subway system are extensive coverage and variety in station designs; the former is functional and the latter aesthetic.  In that regard I’d say the Paris Metro is still the world’s best.  My fondest memories are of that Metro, partly due to familiarity, partly due to the fact that I never had to commute on that subway, although I have been on it when it was crowded, which was rare.

New Jersey

[Originally written in 2009.  Updated in 2021.]

Prior to graduating from college in 1990, I had no experience with New Jersey.  We had been to New York City a few times, Long Island a few times, and upstate New York a few times, but New Jersey was simply a transit area between the Washington DC area and New York.  When my friend Ken moved to New Jersey to study for his masters in psychology at Montclair State University, living in Bloomfield (Exit 148 from the Garden State Parkway), I visited him several times.  This gave me most of my experience in New Jersey.

From 2009 to 2018 I was going up to New Jersey fairly regularly, to Fort Lee, which is on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge.  These adventures put me in Edgewater fairly often, Hackensack (county seat for Bergen County), and Paramus with its Garden State Plaza.  Fort Lee is also next to Palisades Park, where my buddy Ken, Dave, and I saw Blue Oyster Cult in 1992 at the Soap Factory, a club that isn't there anymore.  

I started by driving up the Turnpike, then started taking Chinatown buses, private buses which left DC near Bethesda and dropped off across from Madison Square Garden, with the 158 bus from Port Authority taking me through Edgewater to Fort Lee.  Then towards the end of that chapter, I was driving again, this time avoiding tolls by driving due north from Baltimore up to York, PA, then over northeast to Lancaster, Reading, Allentown, then on I-78 over into NJ, 287 north, then I-80 east to 95 and 46, a five hour drive from Northern Virginia to Fort Lee.    

 

Bloomfield.  Bloomfield is fairly run down, with old houses, and no less than 3 strip clubs.  It’s fairly close to New York City and Newark. Close by are Newark, Lyndhurst, and Giants Stadium (in East Rutherford).  Newark has a high population of Brazilians.

 NYC.  Forget driving in Manhattan – that’s for fools and masochists.  What we did was drive to Hoboken (where the Hindenburg crew lived in the 30’s, as the Nazis didn’t trust non-Germans to service the zeppelin) and park there, taking the PATH train into the city, specifically Greenwich Village.  Near Fort Lee there is a shuttle which takes you into Manhattan at 175^th Street.  For much of northern Jersey, the NYC skyline is visible, especially the Empire State Building (now that that World Trade Center is gone).

 Mid-Jersey.  This part includes Trenton, Princeton, and Hillsborough.  On the more recent trips to visit Ken, I visited him here.  The voyage from my area completely avoided the New Jersey Turnpike, instead driving up 95 past Philadelphia and crossing over into New Jersey somewhere close to Trenton, and driving through Princeton.  My friend Jim was married in Princeton (his wife was from there, though she went to Cornell) in 1995.  Since northern New Jersey is pretty much a suburb of New York City, and southern New Jersey is very much a suburb of Philadelphia (particularly Camden and Cherry Hill), central Jersey is really the only part of Jersey that is more or less an independent suburban area in its own right.  Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, could be considered in this area.  I ended up visiting its main campus in New Brunswick fairly often for a four year period, though not as a student.  

 “Mentertainment.”  New Jersey has an impressive array of strip clubs.  The law says that if the venue serves its own alcohol, the girls have to wear bikinis; one specific club, Frank’s Chicken House, had no alcohol on the premises – just soda and greasy chicken – and completely nude dancers, many of whom were porn stars.  The state has a guide to the clubs, called the “Mentertainment Guide”, which I joked was the “New Jersey Tourism Guide”.  I suggested to Ken (over 10 years ago) that we hit every strip club in the state, to which he reacted in horror: in his county, Essex (when he lived in Bloomfield) alone there must have been 10-15 clubs, and 3 in Bloomfield alone.  As mentioned in my magazines blog, NJ’s convenience stores can be trusted to offer a wide array of porn mags in plain view.  Definitely convenient!

 Jersey Shore.  This starts at Sandy Hook in the far northeast, and runs down the coast to Wildwood.  Asbury Park and the boardwalk are included in this area.  My experience with this is very limited (Sandy Hook and Atlantic City), but to me beaches are pretty much the same everywhere except the south of France or Rio de Janeiro. 

 Atlantic City.  Along the boardwalk and shore, on the southern end.  Remarkably, there is no direct connection between the Atlantic City Expressway and the New Jersey Turnpike: you have to drive through Camden (or is it Runnymeade?) to get to the Expressway.  AC is very much like Las Vegas, but with a beach & boardwalk and nasty weather in the winter.  To my experience, though, the only thing to do in Atlantic City is gamble, whereas Vegas is far more versatile.  On the other hand, if you’re in my area (DC/Baltimore), AC is only 2-3 hours by car, compared to a plane trip for Vegas.  The Viets love to gamble, and love Atlantic City.  And of course, Monopoly was originally designed here: is there an Atlantic City variant of Monopoly?  Go figure.

 Roads.  Aside from the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, the roads in Jersey are… unique.  There are a confusing array of state, local, and municipal roads, and the exits are poorly marked: typically they’re posted 5 feet ahead of the exit itself, so that by the time you see it, you’ve already passed it.  Then you have to turn around at a jughandle – because of the concrete barriers running across the median – and go back again.  It really seems that the roads are set up for the benefit of people who live there, at the expense of anyone else: if you can’t figure it out, tough shit, that’s your problem. 

 New Jersey Turnpike.  This opened in the 1950s and serves as a high-speed conduit for traffic coming from Delaware over the Memorial Bridge, all the way to New York City (Final Exit 18 & the George Washington Bridge).  Oddly, it does not hook up with the New York State Thruway.  Most of the traffic on the Turnpike seems to be out-of-state.  There are various service areas which – until recently – had Roy Rogers restaurants, at a time when McDonald’s had bought out and closed most of the ones down here.  There are 18 exits, but they are not evenly spaced apart: the southernmost exits are far apart and then they get closer and closer in as you get closer to Newark and NYC.  The Turnpike also divides into cars-only lanes and truck lanes, changes from being surrounded by forests down south to surrounded by chemical plants further north.

 Garden State Parkway.  This serves as the primary conduit of traffic within the state itself, and most cars on the GSP seem to have NJ tags.  There seems to be a toll plaza every 10 exits or so.  NJ natives tend to orient themselves by GSP exit numbers, though I recall when visiting Hillsborough that the GSP was rarely part of our travel plans – in that part of the state it runs far to the east, near the shore.

The two cross in upper-middle New Jersey, exit 11 on the Turnpike, exit 129 on the Garden State Parkway.  South of the interchange, the Turnpike winds through the middle of nowhere, and the GSP goes east over to the Jersey Shore.  North of the interchange, the GSP goes up in the middle of highly populated areas, and the Turnpike goes up parallel to the river, with exits for the Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge (to Staten Island), the Holland Tunnel (to downtown Manhattan), the Lincoln Tunnel (to midtown Manhattan), and finally ends at the GW Bridge.  

 Celebrities.  Bon Jovi are not only from New Jersey, they named an album after the state.  Bruce Springsteen makes much of his Asbury Park origins.  Danny DeVito grew up there; and Joe Piscopo was very much in-your-face about his home state.  Frank Sinatra is from Hoboken.  Kevin Smith is from Red Bank, and sets most of his movies there.  Zakk Wylde (Ozzy’s guitarist), the Misfits (who we saw at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park) and Glenn Danzig are from Jersey.  The Seton Hall University radio station, WSOU (89.5) played an impressive array of metal and obscure rock (e.g. “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Megalomania” by Black Sabbath).  What all these celebrities seem to share is a consensus that “New Jersey is f**ked up, but it’s our home and we’re proud of it.” 

Vs. NYC.  My father's side of the family is from Brooklyn, and many of my relatives have that distinctive accent - though for some reason my father didn't.  It seems New Yorkers look down on those from New Jersey, bragging that "we're better than them,"  as if everyone from New Jersey - at least the northern half - is trying to bask in the glow, glory and notoriety properly the exclusive domain of true New Yorkers.   But once you leave that area, the rest of the country makes little or no distinction between Jersey and NYC.  To everyone else, everyone from that area has an attitude problem.