Having to take the subway home after finishing a shift at the restaurant can be a trip sometimes.
I forgot how it is to ride it so late at night while the majority of New York is getting some shuteye. On some nights, I'll get lucky and not have to wait long for either of the two trains I need to take. Then there are other nights where in general the wait is really long since it's usually past 1am, but then I'll keep missing the train with just plain and simple bad timing. It's always sort of funny though on the rare occasion I'll see customers I had just waited on also waiting at the same subway platform. For my commute home, the other people on the train are normally fairly young and sometimes a little drunk, or also restaurant industry employees who just got off work like me. One thing that I've really become aware of after taking the subway home late at night lately is NYC's homeless situation. The visibly large amount of people sleeping on the subway carts, waiting benches, or even station stairwells become really noticeable, and it's pretty sad.
Then there can be other days where a really great thing could happen late at night on the subway. Last week, I was sitting on a practically empty subway back home past 1:30 in the morning. The train pulled into a stop and as it sat there with its doors open for a few minutes, a train heading into the opposite direction pulled up on the other side of the platform. And that's when I saw an old coworker from an East Village restaurant years ago standing on the train with his bike. I noticed him immediately and got up a little from my seat to see if he would notice me staring at him. The good news is that as the doors on his train closed up, we did make eye contact and waved hi to each other with a laugh because we never run into each other ever---let alone late at night on the subway like that.
Now I'm at home, trying to unwind after a very long day. I just wish it wasn't 3am.
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