Last time I rode a subway train in NYC was in 1984. You could have fallen asleep in it with your wallet in your hands and not have ever lost it. A lot can change in forty years, it’s a lifetime. Like the difference between 1960 and 1920.
The last time I rode a NYC subway was February 2002. My boss took the company to NYC for a weekend trip. He thought it was out duty as Americans at the time. Six months after 9/11 the city was pretty much a ghost town on the weekends.
We were riding the train and were told by a middle aged Black man that we were on the wrong train. We needed to get off at the next stop because the one we were on would not stop again until Brooklyn on the weekends. We thanked him for helping us out. He thanked us for coming to the city. Even though we were a bunch of Red Sox fans.
I may never go to NYC again. The way it is today.
Last time I rode the NY subway was in 1996 I believe. I'd taken my youngest son to the city to see Shaquille O'Neil play his last game against the Knicks as a member of the Orlando Magic. We got there the day before and I wanted to take the ferry out to Ellis Island, which is where my father, his two brothers, and their parents arrived in 1913. We got on the train, and didn't get very far when the train broke down, and we all had to get off. We just walked the rest of the way.
I worked in NY State Corrections, and there were a few times when I, and another officer would have to take an inmate down to the City, either for a court hearing, or for a funeral visit. We'd usually go down the evening before, and drop the inmate off at Sing-Sing or the Brooklyn House of Detention for an overnight stay, then pick him back up the next morning. What a zoo. When I made Sergeant, that wasn't part of my duties anymore. You couldn't pay me enough now to go to NY City these days.