Don’t get it twisted.

The Shades of Grey books made their way around my vicinity at work. A co-worker gave the first one to me, said The Wife might like it. What do I know? I took it home. And just like Mikey, she liked it, she liked it! (and in a roundabout way, so did I, Hell-to-the-Yes).

Now, I notice women reading these books on the subway all the time. I smile to myself and fight the urge to say, “Hey, my wife is reading that, too. She loves it. Let’s discuss.”

[Image Via This Isn’t Happiness]

From the Atlantic...

Funcrusher plus. Aie, papi.

[Illustration by Namio Harukawa (warning, erotic content)]

Seen, on the IRT yesterday. It’s not just boys that like to look out the window. Girls just wanna have fun, too.

Only time I miss tokens is when I’m running for a train and the damn card doesn’t swipe right.

More Turns series by Bill Sullivan.

Sullivan is a gifted painter.

An Instagram photo gallery via Subway Art blog.

While you are it, check out this week’s gallery too.

You’ve had a long day and seen hundreds or maybe thousands of people, faces that you’ve barely registered. You are tired and distracted and then, alone on a subway platform there’s a woman. She’s dolled-up, a vision.

Yes, life is good.

[Picture by Ramin Talaie via the New York Times; thanks to This Isn’t Happiness (again and again)]

Today’s New York Minute is brought to you by Ted Berg.

[Picture by the most-talented Larson Harley]

Strawberries on the IRT. Because  sometimes you’ve just got to bring breakfast from home.

The Museum of the City of New York gives us: Stanley on the Train.

Crowded subway this morning, I’m two seats in past the door. A group of teenage girls are standing above me. Hairspray, glossy lips, gold earrings, tight jeans. Eventually, they are pinned in place. One girl, her back to the door, is twisted around and practically sitting in the lap of a woman sitting in the first seat. The girl has no place to go and she says to her friend, “Yo, I can’t move, yo.” She laughs. “I got my ass up in this girl’s face, my nigga.”

I looked up and see a toy Minnie Mouse watch on her friends’ wrist.

Morning train.

Take the train.

Take the train.

A subway train retirement village at 215th St.

My neighbor and I boarded the downtown A Train at rush hour one morning last week where I noticed a man drawing a portrait in a seat close to us. He was using bold strokes and working quickly.

The artist was a Black man, around forty years old by my guess, and he wore close-cropped facial hair and an army-green cap. His two front teeth appeared to be wrestling and the right tooth was winning.

My neighbor and I chatted for several stops and I didn’t give the artist another thought until I turned my head and saw that five or six people in our vicinity were holding portraits of themselves. The artist was reaching across the aisle to hand a fresh drawing to a stout, middle-aged Korean man who had his eyes closed.

The Korean man rejected the drawing without looking at it. Generally, this isn’t an insulting move. If you took every piece of paper that was handed to you in this city, you’d drown in the stuff. The artist explained, albeit with an edge, that he was handing him a drawing. The Korean man relented, though I still don’t think he understood what was going on.

And the Korean man’s instincts were at least partially on target. The artist was seeking tips. It was a clever, much more palatable (to me anyway) method of asking for cash on the subway, but it still put the recipient of the portrait on the spot. Some people gave the artist money for the drawing, some didn’t.

I leaned over to see the picture of the Korean man. It was a very good-not-great likeness, but when I considered that it was probably the seventh drawing the artist had done in less than thirty minutes, I bumped up the grade. He saw me looking and asked if I wanted a picture too.

I wanted to say yes, but we were slowing down to arrive at my stop, so I told him that there wasn’t time. He went to work on someone else. Then the train stopped and we waited for ten minutes poised right outside the 59th st stop.  He finished three more drawings in the ten-minute delay.

He didn’t come back to me, but he did catch my neighbor. Check it out.

I found the artist on the internet. His name is Roderick Perry Anthony and he signs “Orin” on his artwork. This is a profile of him from 2006. He’s still (or back) on the subway in 2012, and whatever that means for his career at large, I admire his dedication to his art.

Drawing by Orin

A boy, must have been two or three, skipped onto the A Train yesterday morning. He had a red baseball hat pulled down over his tight black curls. He held an asymmetrical Duplo tower with both hands.

I raised my eyebrows. In my house, I’ve never seen a Lego/Duplo construct retain structural integrity for more than thirty seconds, so this struck me as an overly courageous endeavor. Luckily, the boy got a seat right away and his mother stood over him. I thought he might have a chance after all.

It turns out his luck ended with the seat. Before the next stop, the Duplo tower crashed to the floor of the subway and the blocks scattered across the aisle. The young mother dutifully tracked them down and returned the pieces to her son. I thought it was cool of her not to get upset. After all, if the mother allowed the Duplo blocks on the train in the first place, she can’t really have expected any other result.

As we rode the train downtown, the boy began constructing another tower. The mother watched patiently, but several other passengers were skeptical. Sure enough, before the next stop, down came the bricks. The mother gathered the blocks again, this time with lots of help.

“Maybe not on the train?” said one of the helpers. The young mother smirked and put the blocks in her bag.

I’m not sure what the smirk meant, but I decided she was saying, “Yeah this sucked, but you should have seen what is was like in my apartment when I told him he couldn’t bring them.”

A mother and her two girls got on the subway this morning on the upper west side. I’ve seen them before. The mother has a long, narrow face with big teeth but she isn’t unattractive. The girls are maybe four and six respectively.

The mother had her hands full this morning. The girls shifted in their seats and the young one kept talking like an infant.

“No baby talk, please,” the mother said.

At one point, the two girls were seated across from each other. The older one turned her back on her sister and looked out of the window into the darkness. The seat next to her was open and an obese man sat in it. He took up more than one seat but there was still enough room for the older daughter. Barely.

Her sister saw this and said, “That woman is too big.”

The mother told her to be quiet. But she said it again, loud enough for the man–who was not wearing headphones–to hear: “That woman is too big.”

The man’s expression remained blank. The mother turned the little girl around and distracted her with baby talk.

New York, 1973: another dope Photo Gallery found at How to be a Retronaut.

I saw this when I got on the train this morning and well, you just know it helped start the day off on the good foot, now, don’t ya?

Overheard on the subway this morning:

“I’m almost fifty, I can’t be locked up again, what kind of shit is that? It’s ridiculous. I need me a Jew lawyer.”

I looked up. Two women stood above me. The one talking wore black-rimmed glasses, a white turtleneck, underneath a navy blue pea coat, tight jeans, high heels. She and her friend spoke quickly in English and then Spanish. I wished I understood Spanish but I just picked up some familiar words and phrases: siempre, tam bein, mi amore, ay dios mio.

“…Yo, that fucking bitch is fierce as fuck,” the woman said. “I fucking love her.” I looked down and smiled.

Next to me a girl was doodling on the front page of a packet that read: AP Psychology, Mr. Wilson.