New York Diary

New York underground

Yesterday, going home from work, I found myself watching a fantastically good breakdancing team in the Grand Central subway station. Other days, the same terminal features an excellent violin-and-banjo duo calling themselves "Ebony Bluegrass" and playing at the platform to the S train. Both of these groups are hot stuff: they are skillful, hip, and catchy. What are they doing performing for change underground?

It made me wonder, then, about just how lucrative such a day could be. I presume that performing for change in the sunless bowels of New York is not a particularly good way to make a living. But surely these folks--the musicians, at least--could get a gig somewhere? I mean, there are plenty of far worse acts that I've seen on stage in New York City already.

Moreover, the MTA seems to somehow sponsor or legitimate many subway acts. Both the breakdancers and the bluegrass boys posted high-quality, stylized signs with an "under New York" bannerline and their names printed underneath. Numerous groups have these banners. What do they signify? How do you get one? I don't know--but it does make them seem like something more than beggars or street performers. This, the banners seem to say, is a gig.

One other interesting sidenote: breakdancing is perhaps the first truly colorblind activity I've seen in this city (though that probably reflects the fact that I live on the upper east side, which is perniciously monochromatic). The breakdancing troupe was anything and everything: black, white, Latino, Indian, East Asian--and this from only 7 boys. But that, if rare, is also not too unremarkable--friendships and associations by interest often cross these barriers fairly easily. What was intriguing, and, frankly, really nice and comfortable, was the fact that the audience was so very diverse. We were young and old and in-between, as polychromatic as you can get, dressed in business suits and baseball caps and t-shirts and jewelry and baggy pants. And we were all having a good time, mesmerized by the guys dancing in front of us. Maybe the subways are the great melting pot that the USA is not, and that New York itself only vaguely approximates.

posted by Skay @ 12:53 PM