Why the US can't have nice things, part 2
Or a small travel tale
Thursday morning I woke in downtown Sofia, leisurely drank my coffee, and jumped on the metro that took me directly to the airport. In less than an hour I was at the gate for my flight to Germany, where I transferred to the JFK-bound Lufthansa.
If all went well, I’d land at 8:30 p.m., clear passport control, and be in Port Authority1 in time to get the last bus (11 p.m.) upstate, so I could be in my own bed a little after midnight2.
All I needed to do that was for the flight to land on time, and passport control to take under an hour and a half.
The first happened, the second didn’t even come close. To describe Terminal One passport control Thursday night as a shitshow is unfair to shitshows, which are at least darkly entertaining. This was instead bureaucratic hell: lines of exhausted travelers snaking out into dreary linoleum hallways, festooned with disconcerting and anachronistic cheery posters welcoming us to NY, all managed by TSA employees, who, while trying their best, were in over their heads.
It took close to an hour to even reach the main hall, and then another hour shuffling slowly like a broken army to the ten or so border security agents. It wasn’t until well after ten p.m. that I was done, so I went with my fallback plan of crashing at a friend’s house in the Rockaways, via the AirTrain and the A train3.
After a few hours of sleep, I got up to take the 4:39 a.m. A train to Port Authority, to catch the first bus home (7 a.m.).
The train, to its credit, since it was near the terminus, was on time.
But it was filthy and mostly empty, except for three or four homeless guys per car sleeping/passed-out, so the dozen of us waiting chose our seats carefully, positioning ourselves as close to each other (for safety) and as far away from the sprawled out guys and their piles of trash, puddles of urine, and other liquids spotting the floor.
At each subsequent stop the train slowly filled, until it was standing room only, with everyone crowded together trying not to deal with the guys sprawled out taking up five plus seats.
I was seemingly the only person on the train who didn’t have to take the early train, the only person “slumming it.” All the other riders were coming from late shifts or going to early shifts, carrying their tool bags, hard hats, work lanyards, gym bags of work clothes, but all of us were united in fatigue and quiet frustration with the squalor and passed out guys taking up so much space.
Including lots of women loaded down with bags of Christmas gifts and groceries, who clustered in the rare spots that weren't too gross, where they didn't feel too threatened.
After about ten stops another guy, coated in old vomit, and carrying a cane, his pants down to near his knees, came on, and went up to each sleeping/passed-out guy and hit them on the legs, and yelled at them to "move on, give rest of us some space," or something like that.
Everyone pretended it wasn't happening, hoping it wouldn’t go south, focusing instead on the floor or their phones.
And nothing “bad” did happen (this time), beyond a few raised voices and shouts, and some pantomime air punches. By a little after six I was standing in Port Authority (there are no seats in Port Authority, which is another story) waiting for my bus home.
This wasn’t a big deal for me, especially the long passport control line. While I really wish the US, and JFK in particular, would smooth out their system and bring it up to global standards, flying internationally is still a luxury, and complaining about it can be a bit elitist.4
This particular subway ride also wasn’t a big deal, at least for me, since nothing really bad happened, and once again, I don’t have to take the subway. I have the cash to opt out of the whole AirTrain to subway to bus home thing. I also have the cash, and resources to get TSA global entry.
I don’t do either because the reason I travel as I do, besides being a lazy cheapskate, is I’m not trying to remove myself from the average experience. I’m trying to see, and understand a little, the world as most people see and understand the world.
And the lesson from my last travel day home is, the US, and especially NYC5, is broken. Especially compared to the rest of the world, especially considering our wealth.
Having garbage-strewn subways that effectively serve as mobile homeless shelters and mental intuitions, is no way to run a subway system, or a city. It isn’t fair to anyone, especially the riders, who don't have the money to not take the subway.
It also isn’t fair to the homeless, who are being encouraged (or at least not discouraged) to sleep and hang on crowded trains, maximizing the chances that really bad stuff happens, both from them and to them. The Daniel Penny Jordan Neely case is a perfect example of this.
It is like we are creating the perfect conditions for a nasty backlash against addiction, mental illness, and homelessness.
I’ve written many times over about how jarring it is to come home from trips overseas, often from much poorer places, like in this case Bulgaria, where the subways and buses, and other public spaces and resources, are cleaner, safer, and nicer. Where workers simply wanting to get to their jobs don’t have to deal with navigating the mentally ill, addicted, and desperate.
I don’t know what the long term solution is. For the passport control, there are policy changes that can be made to “fix” it. Yet, as I’ve written before about why the US can’t have nice things, we have much bigger cultural problems.
A functional public transit system that’s safe, clean, and effective, is a fundamental and essential nice thing. Especially for the US, where our larger cities are basically two tiered, with a wealthy downtown professional class that relies on inexpensive labor with long commutes (without the resources to drive) who work early/late shifts.
Ride a NYC subway from the outer boroughs at 4 a.m., and you’ll see it’s jammed with overnight construction workers, office custodial crews, nannies, restaurant staff, hotel employees, etc. The “help” coming into and out of the city.
The recent decline in the subway system hits them the hardest, as almost everything bad that happens in the city does. They can’t pay money to hide from the changes.
We are now firmly a low-trust society, and that’s especially dangerous because social trust impacts everything. Every facet of life, and it can’t simply be legislated back. You can’t “fix” culture through a few house bills, because it isn’t just a top down problem, but a pervasive all encompassing thing.
Social trust is also extraordinary important to maintain, because like a ratchet wheel, once it comes undone, it spins quickly out of control, and getting it wound back is a long, arduous, and complex process, that requires moving it tighter one painful ratchet at a time.
Right now in the US, the social trust ratchet wheel has come completely undone.
Let’s hope we can stop it from spinning too much further out of control, but given all I’ve seen in my travels both here and overseas, I’m not particularly hopeful of that, because the first step is realizing something is wrong, and right now a lot of the US seems determined to deny we have a problem, one Uber at a time and one “that’s someone else’s issue” at a time.
(PS: My post on Sofia is hopefully coming sometime next week. My apologies for this brief detour into a rant on the US. Again)
It takes a little over an hour to get to Port Authority from JFK via AirTrain, and then the A or E.
I don’t check bags, because I never check bags, because I travel light. Like everyone should, if they can.
The AirTrain at Terminal one is under construction, so I had to ride it to another terminal, to then change to the Howard Beach bound train, where I could catch an A train.
That’s less and less true, especially in NYC, where a lot of travelers are middle-class families coming and going to visit relatives overseas.
There's been a lot of exaggeration of the problems in NYC, but it has gotten a lot worse over last few years, especially for those who have the least, who rely on buses and subways, and are trying their best to be decent citizens.
Before the pandemic, in 2019, I wrote about the importance of trust in society and its decline in recent years. The pandemic completely broke what was remaining of societal trust and, as you say, it can’t just be legislated back once lost. It’s a terrible blow and I fear it’ll only get worse.
I appreciate how you write about America without any rancor. You just describe the state of the country without emotion, which makes it that much more powerful.