On Riding the Subway

There’s something I like about the Baltimore subway and rail system.

The modern art.

You’ll notice it at virtually every station or stop — there’s some sort of modern sculpture made of concrete or metal decorating the entrance. One station has a rather tesseract-like cube half-buried in the ground on its side. Another station — the State Center station — has a metal sculpture that looks like a high-powered telescope or a box kite hanging from the ceiling.

The light rail isn’t immune. There’s a modern sculpture of sorts at several of the stops, though only Cultural Center comes to mind. It’s a weird metal sculpture I couldn’t begin to describe, so I won’t.

At one stop, there’s a statue of a squirrel.

Things like this give the metro system character. It’s nifty.

After a little more than two weeks riding the rails, it’s become routine. It’s what I do. I do things like little fist pumps when I disembark from a train, denoting a successful journey.

There have been some snafus along the way. Monday morning the subway wasn’t announcing stops, and it was only because I’d learned to recognize what the station looked like did I realize I’d reached my stop.

Time to brave another day!

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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