A passing face

No, I'm not colourblind. I know the world is black and white.

Train stations in any major city like New York are one of my favourite places to be. So much movement and life, and so many independent stories crossing tracks.

I imagine sometimes that people are just like movie characters, and for a brief moment I'm making some kind of insignificant cameo in their lives, and they in turn in mine. In their world, I'm just a passing face in one scene of their intersecting movie.

The station

This is the G train's stop at Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, part of the station complex now called Metropolitan Avenue/Lorimer Street. The G runs on two tracks here, with a platform on each side, so this view looks straight across the tracks to the far platform.

The G platforms opened on 1 July 1937, the day the Crosstown Line was finished. The G is the subway's Brooklyn-Queens Crosstown, running between Court Square in Long Island City, Queens, and Church Avenue in Kensington, Brooklyn. Apart from the shuttles, it's the only service in the system that never goes into Manhattan.

Close by, the L train stops at Lorimer Street, a separate station that opened in 1924 and is linked to the G by a passageway. The two lines were built by rival systems, the BMT and the IND, and changing trains meant paying a second fare until free transfers began in 1948.

The name on the wall

The tiled sign says Metropolitan Ave., with Grand Street in smaller letters underneath. That was the G station's original name. It had entrances along Union Avenue at both Metropolitan Avenue and Grand Street. The Grand Street exits have since closed, but the tiles kept both names.

Below the sign, a line of smaller tiles points the way: To Street & Transfer, meaning up the stairs and across to the L.

The green border is part of a code. The Independent Subway System, or IND, which built this line, gave its stations coloured tile bands, and every station on the Crosstown Line is trimmed in green.

Why everyone is wearing a mask

Every face in this picture has a mask on. A federal judge struck down the national mask rule for public transport on 18 April 2022, but New York kept its own rule for the subway. On 7 September 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul made masks optional on public transit across the state. This photo went up on 16 May 2022, while the rule was still in force.