Yesterday I got lost in the Subway. Actually, to my credit, I didn't get lost. I just I had no idea where I was going. However, due to my excellent direction-following skills and ability to theorize about maps without the help of one, I made it safely to my destination and back without taking one extraneous subway trip.
Now that I've gotten all my self-congratulation out of the way, let me explain the real problem: Figuring out which stop you want and where the nearest subway station is to any given point. However people do it - and I assume they do - remains a heavily veiled mystery to me. WHO KNOWS? Nobody.
I got on the A-C-E blue line and realized I had no idea which of the zillion available stops and connections would land me closest to my target: Great Jones Street. Instead of consulting a map (because - surprise! - there ARE no maps once you cross the entrance meters and descend into the bowels of the city), I tried to remember what Manhattan had looked like on google maps when I looked it up three hours before. I remembered 4th Street and it being somewhere around Broadway Ave. Lucky for me (/sarcasm), the stop was only called "4th Street," giving zero clues as to how far east or west from Broadway it settled.
So I got off the subway on W 4th St. and ended up having to walk ten blocks in the direction of what I thought might be my target (after pleading with an amused shop-owner, "Can you PLEASE tell me where Broadway Avenue is?"). With only the vaguest suspicion that I might be in the right neighborhood, I literally stumbled upon my destination twenty minutes later. Luck? An instance of brilliant personal resource? Obviously both.
The place is Great Jones Cafe and my story will be posted on my OTHER blog soon. It's your basic run-of-the-mill restaurant feature, but it's been really fun to shoot and the people are priceless.
I'm planning on having dinner there tonight. Lesson taken to heart: I will plan EXACTLY how to get there BEFORE departure this time.
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