What'samatta With WMATA? A New Yorker's rant against DC Metro

Ah, the daily commute! One of the necessary evils of working in a big city. I grew up in NYC and since the age of 12 was riding the subway a minimum of twice a day, so I knew the system and I knew the ropes: Move quickly, don’t block anybody’s way, be aware of your surroundings, use common sense. And you could ride anywhere in the system for a standard fare. NYC was dirty and there was crime and it wasn’t perfect, but it was an efficient system that set my expectations for how a city’s transit system should be. Admittedly I have been gone from the daily NYC grind for 20 years, and I’m obviously older, so my perspective may be skewed. But despite the Washington Metro being named the Number One public transit system in the U.S. by a firm called SmartAsset (should be called SmartAss), I’ve been in the VA-DC-MD area for four years now and this is not my experience. Riders are throwing in the towel and going back to driving (if I had better night vision for driving I probably would, too). Metro in DC sucks on multiple levels.

Here are 12 admittedly somewhat personal quibbles with the system:

1) Metro trains do not meet my definition of a "train." They are high-speed conveyances that approximate a train. They are more like "trams," those people-moving automated transports first put into use at amusement parks and other attractions. The Metro "trains" have drivers but no conductors, they lurch along an electrical track but the driver seems not to have the same controls as New York’s older, more traditional trains. Because of that, the Metro ride is herky-jerky as hell; a sudden stop can wrench your arm or throw you to the floor. These Metro drivers often can't hit their marks because of the imprecise braking controls so they will slow to a stop in the station -- fooling folks who gather by the doors -- then pull up to a second or even a third stop before opening the doors.

2) The electrical wiring along the tracks smokes frequently, so there is a constant noxious smell billowing through the tunnels that I am surprised no one complains about. You can tell it's poisonous. Last year there was an electrical tunnel fire when a train was caught between stations, and one woman died and others were hospitalized due to smoke inhalation.

3) The doors are horrible; they have no sensor mechanism to reopen if they close on something and they are so sensitive that leaning on them can cause the entire train to go out of service. And trains frequently go out of service. During rush hour, many train operators are so focused on keeping to a schedule (or are just oblivious) that they will slam the doors and move to the next stop regardless of how crowded the station is. This means that oftentimes not everyone who wants to get off gets off, and not everyone who wants to get on will get on. I've seen strollers, children, and the disabled smashed in the doors. I've seen children separated from parents, husbands from wives, and people from their bags. In July 2015 The Washington Post reported a news story about a man pulling the emergency brake outside of L'Enfant Plaza and jumping off with a 10-year-old; turns out dozens of riders helped him pull the brake because the doors had shut and separated him from his other child, a terrified 5-year-old boy.

A new recent Metro study undertaken after dozens of red light violations and near collisions shows that many Metro drivers are just tuned out. Which means riders are at the mercy of sleepwalking zombies.

4) Despite the fact of rapidly-closing doors, Metro riders are notoriously nonchalant in their movements. They have very little hustle or awareness. When those doors open, people stroll out like they have all the time in the world, and then you have to shake a tailfeather to get on so you won't be the one quashed or excluded. But people are clueless. They saunter just inside the doors and stand there, as though there aren't 30 people behind them. Tourists are the worst -- they take one step onto the train and gawk around like "Wow, so this is a train?" Or there's that guy who, regardless of how many people are getting on, insists on maintaining his spot in the doorway. I want to shriek MOVE THE FREAK INTO THE TRAIN!!! I have been known to push on occasion, something I know is awful and rude. But if there is room on the train, I don't have time for selfish, lackadaisical bullshit, I have some place to be and I'm not gonna be left on the platform because of selfishness and lassitude. A public service campaign about how to step lively could help.

5) People are just self-involved in general. The number of commuters sleepwalking along the platforms looking at their phones is legion. They have only a dim idea of where they are actually walking, they don't gauge the pace of the crowd, they don't have a sense of walking in a straight trajectory, they aren't paying attention. Metro is all puffed up and crowing about a new deal increasing the availability of cell phone signals in many stations, but I say CUT OFF ALL SIGNAL ACCESS!! Just have emergency call boxes! People don't have any common sense about what constitutes an appropriate place to check their devices, and most are just doing it to look important. Really? Really? Words With Friends or Candy Crush is so compelling that you are zigzagging and slowpoking in front of me during the height of rush hour??? Gah!! They are a shade worse than the people with the big headphones who can't hear anything in the real world, like the fact that you are coming up on their right or left while they are road-hogging. I won’t even get into the people who stop short in front of you, especially exiting an escalator, or who dart into your path without looking both ways. I want to hurt them. I have been known to step hard on the backs of their heels with my size 10 shoes. Again, get those PSAs cranking about common sense and pedestrian traffic in the Metro.

6) Part of the problem with people not moving into the trains is the way the cars are constructed. Trains in New York have the seating the long way against the walls, or a mix of horizontal and vertical seats, and there is a wide aisle with vertical and horizontal rails where commuters can stand and hold on. Here in DC, the older metro cars have two-fer seats stacked up on either side, auditorium style, so the aisle between is very narrow for riders to stand in and there’s often only a railing on the seats themselves to grab hold. If you're sitting you have to annoy your neighbor to get in and out of the inside seat. And the seating is one size fits all, a problem of comfort for both the plus-sized and those who must share with them. Newer cars introduced to the system last year are better, but they aren't yet ubiquitous.

7) Back to the Metro drivers -- too many abuse the public address system, haranguing commuters with ceaseless announcements and ridiculous patter. Why do they hold the erroneous belief that their post qualifies them to be radio DJs or certified city tour guides? While each station should be clearly announced, and one welcome statement at the end or start of the line is fine, enough is enough. Too many train operators make loud, florid announcements at every single blessed station and throughout the ride as well – often stating the obvious. They need their ears boxed, hard. SHUT THE F%$@#* UP! I'm not interested in tuning in to RADIO METRO! Some of us are trying to think about the day ahead or behind. Some of us are reading or catching up on e-mails. Some of us are just trying to get those last few minutes of peace before the bullshit waiting for us at work or at home.

I'm telling you, it is sheer torture to be subjected to a continuous, 40-minute loop of a shouted "Gooooooood morning, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the Washington Metro Train, riding from your home depot in Greenbelt Maryland all the way to Franconia Springfield in the great state of Virginia through Downtown Washington, the District of Columbia, our nation's capital! Sit back and enjoy the ride and have a fabulous day wherever it is you are going in our fine city! We are here to serve you and hope you ride with us again! Please remember to use all the doors when you are boarding the train! I'm grateful to be here today and every day and remember: Without you there is no me! (Yes, someone actually said that yesterday.) All aboard ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome to the Green line, next stop today will be [HellFire Station], the second station on our route and the great state of Maryland, traveling through the exciting and historic District of Columbia, Please remember to take all of your precious belongings with you. Watch your step getting off and make extra certain that you have a wonderful day wherever you go.... " This noisy disruption makes me want to end my life immediately, like I want to start cutting and slashing and bleeding out right in the damned aisle.

Even worse is the fact that most of these happy pappy train jockeys are clueless about how to use the microphone properly. They put it too close to their mouths so their words are unintelligible or just deafeningly loud. They let an open window whistle and shriek through it, or they place it too close to a speaker so we get painful squalls of feedback, or they just keep the microphone open all the time so we hear a constant stream of migraine-inducing noise. At the other end of the spectrum are train operators whose announcements are a feeble, incomprehensible joke. Why bother if you a) can't speak clearly, b) cut the mike on too late or off too soon, c) have a faulty intercom system, or d) failed Reading Comprehension class? (There is a stop called Judiciary Square. Pronunciations include JEW-da-sherry, Ju-DISH-oo-Warey, and JEW-dish-ree. Then there is one operator who seems to have some New Orleans-style affection and calls each stop a “stay-shee-OHN.”)

By the time I step out of the Metro, I am completely stressed out, with my ears ringing and my nerves a-jangle.

8) Speaking of incomprehensible, the WMATA insists on frequently and formally referring to those on board as "customers" rather than riders, commuters, or the perfectly logical "passengers." Being called a "customer" reminds me of johns at a strip joint or rubes at a medicine show.

9) I guess at the high prices I’m forced to pay for each ride, I should be called a “customer.” The Metro constantly complains about not making enough money due to low ridership, but the high rates it commands – and charging ever-escalating fares depending on the distance ridden – are just ridiculous. And if you have to park before getting on, look out. I live in northern Virginia; it costs me almost $16 a day to commute to work. A roundtrip fare in New York—bus or subway -- is $5.50. If the DC Metro cost less, more people would ride. But service has to be better. Metro is always repairing things, so single-tracking extends wait times for trains; no service between stations on weekends forces people onto buses to go just one stop; and outside of peak hours you will see your life pass before your eyes before a train shows up. Added to that, elevator service at a number of stops is spotty, so if you have mobility issues you are forced to get out at a station you don’t want and again wait to board a bus back to where you do want to be.

10) Many of the underground stations are impossibly dim. As someone with vision problems, I feel uniquely handicapped, like I need a flashlight. Or better yet, one of those headlight helmets for descending into mines. I’m always worried that I will slip, trip and fall. Or walk into a wall. Or bump into someone and make them fall. Or trip over a child. I worry that we all will tumble ass-over-elbows into the tracks because of one misplaced step. When I get off at a station I am frequently just following the person in front of me because I can't see a thing before my eyes adjust to the darkness. It can feel scary when I can't see the edge of the platform or the height/depth of that first step. People have piled up behind me when I stick my foot out to test if that last step is actually the last step. And it's hideous becoming that slow obstacle person that I was just complaining about above.

11) The stations are dangerous. They're nice-looking, if you like atmospherically-lit slabs of molded concrete, but the fact that the indoor ones are poorly lit and weirdly constructed makes them a hazard for everyone. A man sat, slipped and fell behind one of the low concrete walls a few months back; he wasn't found for days. Also treacherous are those terra-cotta colored hexagonal tiles used as flooring. The tiles break and wobble, they catch a woman's high heels, and they are slippery when wet. I busted my ass one drizzly morning on an outdoor platform trying to hustle onto the train, like in a slapstick movie pratfall, and as soon as I got up another lady went down in exactly the same spot. If one of the tiles goes missing, you could break your ankle stepping into the hole left behind. Supposedly Metro is replacing the tiles, but they should have gotten it right the first time. The cost of constantly replacing these gizmos is astronomical. And what's with the little kiosks on the outdoor platforms? Did no one think these through? Purportedly they are weather breaks but they are open at the bottom, letting in the wind, the rain, and the snow, so who wants to sit there? Because they are metal and plastic, in the summertime they are sweatboxes. What were these MTA people thinking when they designed this crap?

12) Security on these trains has been a joke that they’re just starting to rectify. When I rode the NYC subway, it was a regular thing to see Transit Police going car to car or posted up on the station platforms. I hardly ever see uniformed police or security officers on the Metro trains or platforms. If I see them at all, they are hanging out by the fare booth. This is a problem. In recent months there have been stabbings, robberies, and assaults on the train and the platforms. As I mentioned, many of the stations are ridiculously dim and cavernous. If there is more than one exit, they are far apart, and even then, the station may be a good distance below ground.

I was dropped off at the Wheaton Station in Maryland one fall morning and experienced an interminable and concerning escalator ride down to the station – 230 feet, in fact, the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere! While that may be some sort of architectural marvel, it is a security nightmare. During a non-rush hour it was terrifying because a lone rider – me!-- is isolated and vulnerable, particularly at the point where you can’t see the top or bottom. If the escalator were to suddenly go out of service, anyone with a physical disability would be up shit’s creek. If a wolfpack raced down the stairs, punched you, robbed you, sexually assaulted you, knocked you down, you would be hard-pressed to pursue or even be heard calling out, and it’s a long ride to any escape or assistance. Even with video cameras available, who is watching and how soon could someone respond?

Too many spots in the underground system are ripe for riders to be preyed upon. A deal was just struck to improve safety on the Metro system through a new oversight agency, and Metro has increased the police presence – we’ll see if it makes a difference.

People want a safe, effective, reliable, moderately priced transit system that doesn’t hold them hostage to unnecessary inconveniences and human folly. Let's hope WMATA can continue to address the issues of safety in the system to help boost service and ultimately ridership numbers.

Love To Love You, Donna

I am devastated to learn of the passing of the brilliant Donna Summer, whose music was such an integral part to my maturation. "Love To Love You" was mindblowing, with its driving synth and daring vocals. I thought Donna was gorgeous. When her second album, A Love Trilogy, was quickly released in March 1976, just eight months after Love To Love You, I went to DiscoMat on Lexington to buy the album. Reminiscing about dancing to Donna's music, I listened to her 70s output on YouTube one day back in 2008, and it reminded me how much I loved these tracks. I even incorporated Donna into the current novel I am writing, in which the main character is obsessed with her (Lady Lady or Personal Summer).

In tribute to Donna, here is what I wrote back in 2008:

Writing while jamming to music on YouTube. Why does “Try Me (I Know We Can Make It)” by Donna Summer give me such a delicious thrill? Because it’s 1976, lost in time.

Donna’s voice is operatically, candy-coatedly sweet. There’s the precision of the violins making their commentary over the four-on-the-floor beat, made more emphatic with congas, drums, and rhythm guitar in unison, on the One. Behind it: an ethereal progression of harpsichord notes, questioning, as though this is Marie Antoinette’s disco fever, as though Mozart himself condones this conga-driven, guitar-scratching morsel of dancefloor heaven. Try me, try me, try me, try me just one time, try me, try me, try me, try me any time, try me for love, baby don’t you think you should? Don’t you? The beat clops on, simple, bright and sharp as new pennies landing in a marble fountain. Donna in a wind tunnel, her voice a piccolo of melody rising from a golden throat, her breath and her hair floating, tossing, as the background vocalists sigh their harmonies.

And the breakdown, it’s heartbeat compelling, it’s a Gotta, you are gonna move your damn feet! The bass is metronomic in just two keys, alternating, I tell you the congas are delicious, I just wrote a whole story about the compelling propulsion of congas, try me, ohhhh, try me…. And now it’s a decision, a mandate: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know … twirling around in a silver feathered dream, and now the oh-so-European synth is tinkling down like a stream over the running bass and the shiver of high hat accent, … I know --we can make it! Now comes the part that is just the running bass with a tickle of guitar, the part that made me pick up my feet, hop a little in the Hustle, back and forth, We can make it if we try, we can make it touch the sky. Oh the happiness, the optimism, yes we can, I know we can can, there’s no way not to keep the beat, you bump up against the bass drum’s wall of massive power, pow, um, pow, um, every two steps, and she says, I wanna hold on tight with all my might, pray you’ll never stop, it’s a cupid prayer sent to the sky, to the glory of the night, and this is a disco siren song of symphonic, epic proportions, we’re now in the third movement.

We can make it if we try, we can make it, dead or alive, because even if we pass from here, we’re going on, our feet keep us moving to a place beyond this pale reality, where nothing fails us. And now we’re onto the next phase, baby, the place where we began, and the cymbals crash, we pause for breath, there’s a tense warning crescendo of strings, and we tumble back to Try me I know we can make it, I know we can try, and the black girls go, if we try try try. Damn, this shit gives me goosebumps.

Yet it’s so silly, so simple, so creaky with age, this track. But it wings me back to 16, when all is still new and I am fleet of foot, dancing in perfect time with a guy, a stranger who holds my hand who matches me step for step, we’re a tag team of two, never met but we know exactly what to do, and there is nothing but wind in front of us as we concoct this instant magic across a starlit floor. We’re sliding into the end zone, a beautiful high-heeled and sequined denouement, and now the drum kit is shivering, the drummer’s got both feet working, the cymbals are chattering with joy, and Donna is heaving, moans of ecstasy fading, afterglow sweet as honey sliding slowly down like the sweet icing in MacArthur Park, and I am sticky, limp with gratitude.

Thank you, Donna. Thank you.

Bittersweet Memories ….

Whitney Houston: An Alternate View

From the beginning she was
the embodiment of duality:
Sweet yet sensual,
young yet old,
pop yet R&B,
gritty yet sophisticated.
Who could successfully balance these opposites
without verging on schizophrenia?

The world is bidding farewell to songbird Whitney Houston, who left us much too soon. Her passing at the age of 48 is so tragic, ironic, and awful that even these words can’t encompass it. Her voice was a gift to the world, a force so powerful that whole generations of singers owe a debt to her shimmering mix of gospel feeling and pop precision. She had seen the pinnacle of success through adulation, awards, applause, and admiration. She had also endured the deepest recesses of hell due to addiction, abuses, failed expectations, troubled relationships, and public ridicule. I mourn for her passing, and pray for her family, friends, and fans – all of those who loved her.

I first became aware of Whitney Houston in the mid ‘80s via WBLS New York’s quiet storm program, which played her “Saving All My Love For You.” I was an editor at Essence then, and not on the music beat. The song was amazing. It sounded world-weary to my ears, rendered in a voice that was sweet yet supremely mature. This was a song about dreams of forbidden love crushed, over and over, by a married man who won’t commit, yet the dreamer chooses to delude herself into not giving up on it. Relatable, certainly, but also pathetic: love leads us to make foolish choices but we just can’t help ourselves. The performance put me in mind of someone older and/or stylistically alternative – an Anita Baker, a Regina Belle, a Jean Carne, or a Marlena Shaw. Who was this fabulous new singer? Whitney Houston, a fresh-faced former teen model, daughter of the great Cissy Houston, barely into her 20s.

The photos I finally saw of Houston, and the material she released immediately after “Saving,” did not jibe with my initial musical impressions. What could this stick-thin baby diva know about cheating with married men? I know that singers are only interpreters of music, of lyrics often written by others, and that their material is not always autobiographical. However, experience does deepen performance. In a certain way I felt gypped – maybe not by Whitney herself, but by what was being presented to me as Whitney. “Saving All My Love For You” was a great song – but the fact of her recording it told me things about her: That she was after an audience that wasn’t exactly her peer group, that she was fine with casting herself as a victim, even in a song; and that she was out of step with an era witnessing the rise of street-level hip-hop, retro British soul, and new jack swing.

Sure, I loved Whitney’s “You Give Good Love,” and she did a fantastic job with the notoriously difficult anthem “The Greatest Love of All,” but when the video for “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” came out – with Whitney in pastels, blonde extensions, and tutu, jumping around like a pogo stick, backtracking artistically to scoop up the young, all-American pop audience – the disgruntled feeling of having been duped in an artistic bait-and-switch had taken over me. I admit that I’d been giving the girl the fish eye ever since.

Whitney possessed a beautiful face, figure, and talent. She was an old-fashioned chanteuse for a new generation; she could venture into pop ditties, sweeping anthems, and R&B grooves with equal ease. She had laserlike control over that unbelievable voice – like Luther Vandross, she could execute exactly what she envisioned with little audible struggle. Her phrasing was off-the-chain pristine. My response to her was varied, though. I liked individual songs. I knew her story, where she came from, how she had developed, who she was working with musically. But I couldn’t really feel her as a person behind the artist. As naturally talented as she was, I was profoundly aware of her as a construct, as a product of an ever-spinning “A Star Is Born” machine.

Does no one remember how Whitney was booed at the Soul Train Awards in the early ‘90s because of the perception that she’d sold out to cross over to the pop chart? Whitney was a church girl from Newark whose genes came from Cissy, Dionne, and by extension, Aretha, and she had become the epitome of the American Dream Girl. But we like to claim our own. And folks weren’t comfortable with the genre tightrope-walking visible in her career trajectory. From the beginning she was the embodiment of polar opposites: Sweet yet sensual, young yet old, pop yet R&B, gritty yet sophisticated. She went from chitlins to caviar. (And let’s not forget that her first film role as a proud black diva paired her romantically with – not Denzel, not Eddie – but the older, white Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. When she married Bobby Brown, her fans could not seem to wrap their minds around the Pop Princess marrying the Bad Boy of R&B.) Who could successfully balance these diametrically opposed qualities in their life without verging on schizophrenia at times?

Personally I was stuck on the jazz promise I’d first heard in her. I wanted Whitney to front a big band, break out some standards, and scat. I wanted her to write poetic material and sing words that came from her soul, backed by organ hits and a horn section or soft acoustic guitars. I wanted her to, as Teddy Pendergrass once sang, “get down, get funky, get loose.” Some people will say that I’m nuts, that Whit was as real as it got, that certainly she could go there, and when she performed gospel material it was a revelation for all. Folks were eating up what Whitney dished out and clamoring for more. In interviews there were flashes of warmth and charm. Still, I wondered when the real Whitney Houston would stand up. To me she seemed professionally rehearsed and guarded, with something harder underneath. But this was my critical view; my perceptions can often be those of a jaded conspiracy theorist. What I wanted for Whitney clearly had no bearing on anything, and if she had taken the musical path I imagined for her she would not have become a worldwide phenomenon and beloved vocal icon, may not have attained the well-deserved honors bestowed on her. But perhaps she’d still be alive.

While working at Billboard, I did get a chance to meet her. In fact, I was invited to her palatial home in Mendham, New Jersey, for her 26th birthday bash. It was incredibly exciting to make the drive out to her private domain for a spectacular bash chock-full of music industry greats. She was a gracious hostess, but we did not have a conversation.

Just a few years later, I became a product manager at her label, Arista Records. I did have dealings with the Nippy camp; The Bodyguard soundtrack had just topped the charts when I came on and Whitney was busier than ever. I dealt most often with her close friend and handler, Robyn Crawford, rather than Ms. Houston herself. I remember making a business trip to provide support for a Houston event, and Whitney barely acknowledged my presence. Granted, she had a lot going on. I had a better time goofing around with her husband, Bobby Brown, whom I always found to be engaging and funny. But I lasted less than a year in the gig. I was never to see Whitney again other than on television.

Whitney’s downward slide into drug abuse, bizarre behavior, financial ruin, and ultimately divorce saddened me. Like her most ardent fans, I hoped that with the release of her last album she would rally and reconnect. That did not happen. I was surprised to learn that she had been cast in the remake of Sparkle: that too represented a glimmer of hope for her professional and financial future. But perhaps the role – as the mother of a singing star in the making – only served to remind her of all she’d lost. We’ll never know. But as Whitney Elizabeth Houston is sent home in grand style at her family church in Newark this weekend, I hope that she truly and finally is “at rest.” The world will never experience a voice like hers again.