Imagine that, today I get to be a food critic! My friend Despina is fasting for Lent, and was looking for a decent place to eat (her variety of “fasting” is essentially eating vegan), and suggested Valhalla Crossing, which right next to Valhalla’s Metro-North station, and historically, was the original station building. I see the place just about every day on the way to work, yet had never gotten a chance to eat there.

Of course I brought my camera for documentary purposes, and the decor was quite nice in the place, so I took quite a few pictures. Our waitress told us that most of the woodwork in the room where we sat was not original, but the floor of the bar is the original station floor. Trains regularly pass by the place, which is kind of cool to watch. The noise from said trains was not bad at all, I’ve heard and felt worse in the city when subways pass by underneath. Though thinking about it, during the lunchtime hours mostly M7’s were going by… I imagine one of the diesels passing by is sure to jolt you from your reverie.

That’s right. Documentary purposes.

Throughout the place were framed prints and photographs of train-related memorabilia, as well as original photos of the Valhalla station, with the original platform. There was a caboose room in which you could eat, which we took photographs of. Of course all the people eating in the room had pause their conversations to turn and look. This is why I often feel shy about taking photos in public. I quite liked the large painting of the steam train that was not far from our table, but my friend kept saying to me that the plume of steam looked like an umbilical cord. Delightful imagery for lunchtime.

The food itself was pretty good. I am notoriuosly picky about my food, of which most people who know me can wholeheartedly attest to. I ordered the “Third rail” mostly because I was amused with the name. It contained chicken with buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, lettuce and tomato on a wedge. If I had to find a fault in it at all, I would have to say, “you call that buffalo sauce?” Weak and hardly spicy. The bleu cheese should complement the buffalo sauce, not overpower it. Alright, perhaps I am just bitter because my friend’s wrap looked better. If you go to Valhalla Crossing, try a wrap, they look good. And the onion rings look better than the fries. But they’re so awesome that they’ll allow you to get a little bit of both if you want. Either way, the Valhalla Crossing is pretty cute, and I’d certainly go back. They get major points from me because there were no big, black hairs in my food, which happened to me down the road at the North Castle Diner. There’s a place I’d never revisit.

Anyways, be sure to take a look at their website, ValhallaCrossing.com. My web designer nature must make me of course say that with the interesting decor of the place, they really could have carried that over and made an awesome website, but unfortunately they chose an out of the box template look, which saddens me slightly. (I can redesign that for you guys. Call me!) But really, go take a visit. Valhalla’s got some nice little places to eat, all in walking distance of the train station. Another favorite of mine being Mughal Palace, an Indian restaurant across the street from the station. Yummy.

[View with PicLens]

 

In other news, I got a call today on my sign phone line. Whenever I go and put up crazy signs at the train station, I always include a phone number at the bottom. It is a voicemail box number, and it isn’t answered by anyone. Yesterday’s pigeon sign had a message on the bottom “To report suspicious pigeon activity, call: 206-376-0748.” Apparently someone thought they’d have a little fun of their own, and sang me a song. A dirty song.

Ok, who is going to admit to it? I bet it was one of my amusing online readers. (My friend thinks it was the Crazy Coat Guy in White Plains) Fess up! Or just call and sing me a song. 206-376-0748. Major points go to whoever can make up the most awesome “Harlem Line Song.”

Apparently Metro-North has gotten fed up with the pigeon problem in White Plains. Maybe they were embarrassed by the fact that people were videotaping, and blogging about it. Or maybe they were getting a little pissed off that birds that have pea-sized brains were outsmarting them. Either way, last week I noticed something new at the station. Pigeon traps. With all the snow I didn’t really get a chance to post anything about the traps. But I did happen to get into a conversation in the waiting room with a woman about them. Really, the pigeons aren’t harming anything. In fact they are eating the crumbs off the floor, which is more than what some of the cleaning people manage. Their antics are amusing, and Metro-North could probably be spending money worrying about other things, rather than purchasing pigeon traps to put throughout the station. Even if they had the traps on hand, someone had to place them, and that takes time. Time that could have been spent doing other things. Like cleaning the bathrooms? Or going after the annoying people that smoke in the waiting room, or beg for dollars? I’d prefer the pigeons over those.

Now, remember whose blog you are reading. Obviously, I had to put up a sign about this. Someday I may use my talents for the good of man-kind. Today? Not so much.

Here are higher resolution images so you can see all the text:

So far I haven’t seen any pigeons dumb enough to get caught. Traps are located behind the benches in the waiting room, and on top of the ticket machines by the window. Truly the question is, what happens to the pigeons if they are in fact caught? Taking them outside the station and letting them go would do little, they’d probably come right back in. Do they get sent up the river to pigeon prison? Are they gassed by employees in a dark, back room? Your guess is as good as mine. In a few weeks the problem will work itself out anyways, traps or no traps. The weather will be warmer, and the pigeons wont need to be inside. They aren’t dumb. They come inside because of the cold. Hell, I know a lot of crazy people that do that too!

As an unrelated bonus, I figured I would include some amusing video I saw on YouTube, of a pigeon riding public transit. The pigeon’s name is apparently Henry Goodfeathers. Looks like the video was filmed somewhere on the subways of Toronto.

More polite than a lot of human subway passengers

I figured this would be an opportune time to post a bunch of the pictures I’ve taken during the snow. Some of the pictures I know I’ve posted before, but I added them all to a nice new gallery called Winter on the Harlem Line. I have a lot more photos which I’ll be scrounging up and adding to the gallery when I can.

[View with PicLens]

 

A thick blanket of snow has covered New York today, a snow some media dramaqueens have called a “snowpocalypse”. I must admit I laugh every time I hear that term. While some folks were collectively crapping their pants due to snow, I instead decided to take a walk (after sleeping late of course, work was cancelled after all). Not far from my house (and from Goldens Bridge station) is an old railroad bridge with a lonely numerical designation: L-158. With the area covered in snow, it looked even more lonely.

Additional photos of L-158 can be found in the image gallery.

L-158 was once a railroad bridge, though the tracks are long gone. It was originally built in 1883 over Rondout Creek near Kingston, NY. In 1904 it was dismantled and reconstructed in Goldens Bridge to cover the expanding reservoir. The tracks were part of the Lake Mahopac Branch, which opened in 1872, and went from Goldens Bridge to Lake Mahopac. The Lake Mahopac Branch ended service in 1959, and the tracks were removed soon after. In 1978 L-158 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

All historical information and photographs come from Louis Grogan’s book The Coming of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Years for the photos above are as follows: 1951, 1948 and 1946

Ever since I moved to Goldens Bridge, I’ve always been fascinated by this bridge. It is situated on land owned by the DEP, and thus you must have a Watershed Access Pass in order to visit. I have a rowboat on the Muscoot Reservoir, and many summer days I went out on the water rowing underneath the bridge. And as witnessed by the photo gallery, took way too many pictures of the bridge. I’m really longing for the return of the spring and summer so I can go out and row again, and to see L-158 surrounded by greenery, as opposed to today’s snowfall.

If you’ve ever been to the White Plains train station a few times, it is highly likely that at some point you’ve encountered the guy that I’ve dubbed “The Crazy Coat Guy”. He’s a fixture of the station, and has been around long before I started commuting through the city of White Plains. He talks to himself, and he’s loud. Depending on the weather, he hangs out in the upstairs and downstairs waiting areas. He has some questionable taste in jewelry, and has been seen wearing big earrings up both sides of his ears. His taste in accessories isn’t much better, as he’s begun a love affair with womens’ purses. He has the craziest haircut, though due to the cold we haven’t seen it for a while. And now, it isn’t all that strange to be wearing a coat due to the temperatures. But come back in July on the hottest day of the year, and you’ll still see him wearing that coat, stalking around the station, and talking to himself.

Without the Coat Guy, I don’t think White Plains would be the same. But seriously, don’t you think he wears some of the craziest stuff? Wouldn’t it be awesome to dress him up yourself, in something more normal? Or something even more crazy? Guess what, now you can! You can dress up the Crazy Coat Guy in this spectacular flash game that I wasted quite a few hours of my life on! Every piece of clothing in the game (with the exception of the iridetheharlemline.com shirt) is something that I’ve actually seen him wear in real life (yes, even that leprechaun hat). So what are you waiting for? Get in there and dress up the Coat Guy! And when you’re done, click the button that says “Go Out” to see him stand on the platform!

A few of my spectacular creations…

I just happened to be looking through my photos on my cell phone, and I came across one that I had forgotten about. It is above. There had been a storm raging that day, but on the ride home it had begun to clear up. I snapped that photo when we were at Mount Kisco station. I was sitting near the door, and the train conductor, Guy, said to me, “come out and look here,” as he was standing on the platform. I ducked out of the train for about two seconds to gaze at it. Then engineer was wondering if he could go, and the conductor in the back, Dave, was like, “Wait, I think they’re looking at the rainbow. Isn’t that nice?” The whole thing took a matter of seconds, and my recollection of the dialogue is probably pretty off, but I smile when I remember that time. And really, I wish it was a nice day with a rainbow outside, instead of the cold and the snow.

I know a lot of people would agree with me. And a few of my avian friends. That would be the pigeons in White Plains. They of course are sick of the cold, and have begun hiding inside the station again. Apparently a recent addition in the past few weeks to the station were spikes added to the inside windows, a former popular spot for the pigeons. Now the pigeons have taken to some other spots, one being the ticket kiosks. I bet the machinery keeps those nice and toasty for the birds. I work for FUJIFILM, and we have photo printing kiosks in places like Walmart and RiteAid. And I’ve heard horror stories from techs that have to go out to service those machines, and have found animals that have made homes inside the machines because of the warmth. I can only imagine, and feel sorry for the poor chap that is going to have to service or clean those ticket machines at some point in the future.

I even have video, hooray!

I was amused though, on the MTA’s new site, they have a list of Frequently Asked Questions. One of which is how they are working to deter pigeons from roosting inside trains and stations. Their answer?

To address the problem of pigeons in our stations, we are testing a new system that drives away pigeons by sending a harmless, low-voltage electric shock through wires installed in areas where they perch.

Yeah, I wonder how that is working out for them… zap.

Despite living rather close to Danbury, I had never visited the Danbury Railway Museum. Today I decided to change that, and went exploring to the museum. It was quite an incredible day, the temperature really warmed up compared to last week. And the sky was amazingly blue, and quite beautiful.

Two of the Metro-North cars on display at the museum

The inside of the museum was not too bad, though it felt more geared towards children. There were a lot of model railways, with buttons you could press to operate. I did like their collection of uniforms and conductor hats. I must admit though, the fun part of a trip to any train museum are the trains themselves. I spent a lot more time out and exploring the trains and the rail yard, than I did inside. The fact that a young child of about four kept following me and pulling on my pant leg inside probably played a bit in that decision as well.

I took a whole bunch of photos, which you can see in the image gallery, the link is on the right. Or if you’re lazy click here. If you’re interested in finding out more information about the museum, or taking a visit, you can get to their site by clicking here. Looks like they are in desperate need of a new website though, as it totally looks like a circa-1997 geocities website! The museum is definitely worth the visit though, and I’ll certainly have to go back after April. They do run trains on which you can ride, but they don’t do so during the winter, apparently.

Every single day we go through, we are bombarded by advertisements. On the television, billboards, and even on our commutes. All Metro-North stations and trains have plenty of advertisements themselves. And on some of the newer trains, they are even testing video boards for advertisements. I have yet to see one of those. But before you know it, I’m sure all the trains will have them. The MTA needs the money.

But I think compared to a lot of other advertisements, Metro-North train ads end up getting looked at a lot longer than most other advertisements. Which, if you are an advertiser, might be a good thing. Take a billboard, for example. You drive by it, or walk by it, and there is only a small finite amount of time where you are actually looking at it. On a Metro-North train, it is impossible to not see an ad. You are essentially sitting in a tin can for an allotted period of time, probably around a half hour, possibly more. You are looking forward, and the ads are just there. Subway ads are sort of there, but you really can go through an entire ride ignoring those, as they are smaller, thinner, and higher up. If an ad is good, there is a good chance a possible consumer is going to look at it, and for a long time. Longer than the few split seconds that some ads get. I’m sitting here for a half an hour. I need something to do.

Just by facing forward, you are going to see a bunch of ads. It is inevitable. You will see them.

Most days I ride the same train, in the morning or the evening. And I sit in the same car both rides. So often times I see many of these ads quite frequently. There are some that I like, and some that I hate. But some of my favorites are the ones that take into account the location and audience of the sign. Whoever designed them understood that they can possibly be looked at for longer periods of time. Because like I said, sometimes I need something to do.

My current favorite ads that are in rotation on Metro-North trains are some ads for Marks Paneth & Shron. I’m not a big city businessman, so I am hardly the target audience, but the concept was intriguing. Each poster has a puzzle. That puzzle gives me something interesting to do while I commute to work. I get the idea of the ad at first glance, yes. But there is the added intrigue of completing a puzzle, if I happen to look at the poster longer than that initial split second.

Two of the Marks Paneth & Shron ads

Another favorite poster of mine were advertising a book, by Dean Koontz I believe. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of it. The ad had a photo of a book, and a phone number that you could text with your cell phone. When you texted the number, it would periodically send you story excerpts of the story to read on your phone. Personally, I think this is an awesome idea. It advertises your product, it gives people something to do on the train, and it transcends this sort of boundary between the physical world, and the virtual. Japan is a bit more advanced in connecting their ads to online information and websites. Many ads there have QR codes, which is a type of barcode, but it can hold much more data than the UPC codes we are used to on our products. Use your camera phone and take a picture of the code in the ad, and you are automatically forwarded to the ad’s website in your phone’s web browser. Maybe we’ll see that here at some point in the future.

Example of what is called a “design qr code” that I made. If you had a QR reader on your phone, like Japanese cell phones do, you would be forwarded to MTA’s new website (mta.info)

Anyone else have ads that they really enjoy? Other than the Sweet Million ads? (I know a lot of people find my blog searching for pictures of those ads online. They are pretty damn cute. Yay, kitties and puppies!)

As my evening train pulled into Goldens Bridge, I stood near the doors, quite puzzled as the train gradually slowed and stopped. I was thinking in my head, “What? The engineer hasn’t fully platformed yet!” (yes, I believe it is acceptable to use “platform” as a verb!) Anyways, not platforming isn’t unheard of. And overshooting the platform tends to happen in the fall, when the leaves make it harder for the train to brake. Normally the engineer goes forward or back to get the train in the right spot, and then the doors open. So then I was pretty damn surprised when the doors did open.

And then I realized the train was on the platform. But it was so completely dark, it was near impossible to see it! Who turned out the lights in Goldens Bridge?!

Looking down the platform as the train pulls away. Right there in the middle is the ticket machine. Good luck seeing that, though.

It was completely black in the stairwell, and in the vestibule. I held on for dear life to the banister going down the stairs. I thought briefly about falling down, breaking my leg, and suing the MTA, but then I was like, shit, the MTA doesn’t have any money. I’d be getting hate mail on the blog, because everybody’s fares would be going up to pay for my bum leg. “Thanks a lot, ****in’ Cat Girl!”

Good to know the lights outside are on, but not inside

In other news, I’ve been sporting my new hat this week. Like all my animal hats, they come from Boshi Basiik. I’ve been asked so many times on the train where I bought my hats, I asked for some business cards when I bought the hat. So next time anybody asks, I’ve got a card for you!

Me, the new hat, and the return of the masked bus rider! I look like a fool, but I’m trying my best not to burst out in laughter at his expression.

Oh, and as a final note, if you haven’t checked out the MTA’s new site you certainly should. The new service and delays status for the subways, bus, rail, and bridges is pretty awesome. As is the new Metro North Train Time.

Alright, let me just say it now, but I love it when people from the MTA read my blog. Alright, alright, I don’t really know if anyone from there or Metro-North read my blog. What I do know, is that a lot of people found my blog the past few days, specifically searching for a phrase. And what phrase is that, do you ask? Goldens Bridge vandalism, and Goldens Bridge graffiti.

The other thing that I know is that today somebody was busy over at Goldens Bridge. Replacing every broken pane of glass, and covering over all of the graffiti. Now that graffiti had been there a few days shy of a month. Though exactly a week after posting embarrasing (for the MTA) photos of the destruction, it is now fixed. What service! Of course it is possible that nobody important read this blog at all, but I prefer to believe my delusions of grandeur.

Unfortunately, I now have no further excuse for putting up crazy posters in the train station. I have nothing ugly to cover up! Maybe some day, the posters will come back. But until then, enjoy a little sound clip. Somebody did in fact call the telephone number on one of the Waldo posters, and left me a message. Perhaps that whole “Operation Cover Up Graffiti & Broken Glass” was not as much of a failure as I thought it to be.