How to Ride in Rush Hour

Often, especially during morning and evening rush hour, the train is simply so crowded that you have no choice but to touch your fellow passengers. This too comes with its own unspoken etiquette, complicated and full of nuances that can take years to learn. For the uninitiated, there is a simple rule to be followed: If you must touch people, touch them in a way that indicates that you are receiving absolutely no pleasure whatsoever from the experience.

Put your bags on the floor, but hold your arms, hands, and elbows at shoulder height to create a “cage” of personal space around you. Arrange your body so that it touches the side of some other person, as opposed to the front or back. If you must stack, go butt to butt. For the sake of all that is good and holy, do not spoon against someone on the subway train. Unless you are romantically involved, there is never a situation in which it is appropriate to fully press your body into that of another person, crowded train be damned. You are commuting here, not romancing the stone.

Sometimes the Train is Full, Bitch!

This dovetails very nicely with the previous section. Sometimes, when all the seats are full and all the people on the train are as smashed into each other as possible, it could be that the train has reached its capacity. Clues that might indicate this situation include completely full subway cars, and angry passengers keeping the doors from closing completely.

Should you witness something like this, do not try to attempt to board. Sometimes the train is full, bitch! No more people can safely fit in, but there are always those diehards and foreign visitors who insist upon cramming their bodies into the train, armpits flailing into the air, toes stepped upon, misery palpable.

No one likes to be inconvenienced by waiting for the next train, but in most cases, if the train is this crowded, it is because it is running late, and the next train, directly behind it, will be blissfully empty. Wait for it. The constant exceptions to this rule are the 2/3 train at rush hour, and the Manhattan-bound L train, as it reaches Bedford Avenue. These trains are always busy. Sometimes you have to let one or two trains pass before you can get in, even if you’re only traveling three stops to Union Square.

Hey, This Car’s Empty!

Imagine it’s a hot day, summer in the city, and after sweating out the wait on a crowded subway station, a train pulls into the station with one car blissfully empty. DO NOT ENTER THIS CAR! It is empty for a reason, and trust me, you do not want to discover the reason.

Fight instinct and logic and follow the crowd into already-occupied cars. This seemingly perfect empty car is either 150 degrees with windows that don’t open, or inhabited by a smell too heinous and hard-core for even New Yorkers to handle, a crazy homeless person exuding said smell, or a wayward rat that has scurried in at a previous stop.