The Curious World of the Last Stop

The Curious World of the Last Stop

A somewhat surreal article in the Times about the last stops on the NY metro:

At the city’s often-threadbare fringes, there is an inescapable sense of lonesomeness. There might be a Last Stop Deli, a forlorn bar, a maintenance yard populated mostly by rows of empty trains. There is, surprisingly often, a cemetery.

Yet to visit all the system’s extremities is to see that the last stop is not a single, monolithic place. There are subway lines that end, logically, where the city runs out of land; lines that end, anticlimactically, where builders ran out of money; even a few that fetch up in bustling downtowns of one sort or another. From the marshy lowlands of Tottenville to the lush hills of Riverdale to the ceaseless clangor of Flushing, the end of the line manages to take in the entire breadth of the city beyond Midtown Manhattan.

After living in DC for a year, I can confirm the universal sense of urban ennui that awaits commuters at the end of the line. Also, the article reminds me of two songs worth checking out: “End of the Line” by Max Larkin & The Relations (available here, and our interview with Max Larkin here) and “Dirty Blvd.” by Lou Reed.