Walking the dog this morning I came upon FOUR local news trucks gathered at the Lafayette Station subway entrance in Ft. Greene. A couple of reporters with microphones were standing a discreet distance from each other interviewing passersby. One woman seemed to be waiting for her turn to be interviewed. I asked her what was a happening while trying to make sure Riley didn’t pee on the cables running from the news trucks.
“They’re searching bags in the subway,” she said.
Well, l knew that. They announced over the PA at the 14th Street station last night, and it was in the papers and on the radio this morning. But why were all the news trucks here? It turns out that the police weren’t randomly searching bags at every station. Why had they picked Lafayette? Was it the proximity to mosques on Atlantic Avenue? The nearness of the Atlantic Avenue station itself, a target for terrorists back in ’93?
And does that mean you could wander onto a subway platform in, say, Chelsea with all the C4 your bag could carry and not worry about being stopped?
This comes after more bombings (rather pathetic ones) in London yesterday, and a man being shot to death by cautious police at a tube station there this morning. The London police announced that they were going to start randomly searching bags and NY seems to have followed suit.
Yesterday I jumped on the B train, headed for my day job, running late as always. I had just heard about the new bombs in London and was wondering, like anybody who listened to the news: what the fuck? I got a seat (one of morning’s small victories) and did my usual quick scan of the train. The fellow right across from me stood out; he was also standing up, even though there were seats available. He looked Arabic (in NY, really, who can tell?), he had a very large black backpack as his feet and he seemed…agitated. Sweaty. Eyes glassy. Nervously looking around. And as the train doors closed I found myself pretending to read the Times while looking at him over the paper and thinking: if he reaches for the bag, do I jump him? Try to get the bag away from him? Among the more bizarre ideas running through my mind were: maybe it’s better to be this close, since the explosion will kill me instantaneously and, more pathetically, flipping through the international section: hey, look at me! I’m reading about how messed up things are in Iraq and tisk-tisking! Don’t blow me up!
He got off at Rockefeller Center, along with me, no doubt headed for some job worse than mine. It was already in the nineties, which would account for the sweating, and the glassy eyes could well have been the by-product of working two jobs, as so many immigrants do. Assuming he was one. My fifteen minutes of paranoia are the by-product of listening to the BBC World News instead of Z-100. I hear that new song by the Pussy Cat Dolls is really smoking.