When I ride the subway I often think about what came before the car I am in. Surprisingly, I had never heard of The Brooklyn Transit Museum which exists to answer all those questions. I learned about the subway fare dating back to 1904, where the cost of a ride was only a nickel. This fare stayed the same for FOUR DECADES, 40 years! After 40 years, it was increased to 1o cents, which definitely didn’t take into account inflation. That’s crazy to me because the subway fare seems to be increasing about 25 cents every 2 years or so. At the museum, I also saw the evolution of the turnstile. First it was wooden, and rotated horizontally and had to be manually operated. It was cool to see the change in design, style, color, and materials. The way of paying also changed over the years. There were paper tickets, coins, and tokens. Metro cards weren’t introduced until 1993. There were also ways in which people used counterfeit tokens called slugs. People evaded fares using foreign coins, washers, amusement tokens, and even tokens from other transit systems. The weirdest trend of fare evasion was called “token sucking”. Token sucking was when people would jam the token slots with paper or something and waited for an unsuspecting traveler to drop a token into the slot. When the turnstile didn’t allow them through, they would walk away from the turnstile to ask for assistance. In that moment the evader would sneak over to the turnstile, put their mouth over the slot and suck the token out. Creative booth agents started coating the turnstile slot with hot sauce to deter evaders, also pretty funny if you ask me.
Anyway, that was a big tangent.
I really enjoyed looking in all the subway cars, and seeing all the materials used, and all the original ads on the walls. It was cool seeing the longevity of some brands, like Vicks, Mars Milky Way, and Campbell’s Tomato Soup. My favorite story we heard from the museum director had to do with the 2nd World’s Fair in Queens. She explained the dilemma of not knowing how travelers speaking so many different languages would find their ways to and from Queens. That’s when they decided to paint the subway cars that were going to the fair blue, so that all people would have to do, would be to look for the blue car.
We then left the museum and walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. That was a great walk because it was such a beautiful day. We walked by the river and learned about the previous docks that existed where we were walking. We also discussed the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and how high the water rose.
We then walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was actually my first time, as I generally try to avoid the touristy things that people go to just so they can take a picture for Instagram. The bridge was really beautiful, I’m glad I did it. I found it weird how many people were selling things on the bridge, and at the entrances of the bridge. I mean it makes sense, I would just think their would be some more rules about selling things in the middle of the bridge. I’m glad I got to walk the bridge, especially because it was such a beautiful day. I did some more research on the bridge online because I was more preoccupied with surviving the walk over the bridge (because of all the bicycles and tourists) to really take it all in and actually learn about the bridge. I learned that it was the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge, and one of the oldest roadway bridges in the US. It’s cool to think that all of the seemingly little wires actually have a bigger purpose.
Overall it was a really beautiful day and a really cool field trip. Also I walked over 7 miles by the end of my day.