The Ghetto Blue is also a moving swap meet, where passengers hustle to sell watches, pairs of white cotton socks, incense, Kool cigarettes, lotions, batteries, tapes, CDs and chocolates. ‘What you want? What you need?’ Bus tokens, which come in bags of 10 for $11, become a form of currency here, like food stamps. People peddle them for a small cash profit. ‘Tokens?’ one woman asks anyone on the train within earshot. A couple of Mexican youths rush over and pull out bags of them. The transaction goes down like a drug deal, both participants looking over their shoulders for authorities as they quickly exchange the goods.

originally posted by xowie

hello, typepad: Shouldn’t Mo Vaughn have been on that last train?

Yusuf Islam’s Peace Train.

originally posted by xowie

“The Trained Eye series began in October of 2000 as I wandered in the railyard near downtown Colorado Springs. All of these images are from the sides of boxcars, coal cars, miscellaneous freight cars and a caboose. These cars have been scratched, gouged, painted, scraped, rusted, and repainted over the course of their lifetimes. From a distance they appear uniformly colored, neat, and tidy. But, up close, with their context removed, they have become the gallery you see here.” I’ll let you find your own favorites among these achingly beautiful photographs. Thanks, Jerry.

Corky Lee was set on his course in junior high school by a famous photograph taken at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. The picture commemorated the completion of the transcontinental railroad and showed workers posing with two trains, one from the Central Pacific line and one from the Union Pacific. But something was wrong with this picture. No Chinese workers.

Thousands of Chinese men worked on that railroad. In fact, Mr. Lee said, the saying "He doesn't have a Chinaman's chance" comes from the fact that when the Sierra Nevada had to be blasted for the railroad, the Chinese were usually the ones lowered from cliffs laden with dynamite and fuses. Each time they went down to set the charges, they got paid a dollar more. But when the time came to party and be photographed, the Chinese were nowhere to be found.

Since Mr. Lee first laid eyes on that photograph, he has devoted himself to making Asian-Americans visible.

It's a way to get around without buying into the money economy, a way of consuming without waste, of living off the leftovers of American abundance in the same spirit as squatting unused land and subsisting on food that grocery stores and restaurants discard. Freight trains are like a communal garden that moves.

"I get into a zone," says Mr. Ince. "I can see them bopping their heads as they walk past. They don't see me, but I can see them hearing it. It's beautiful."

I’ve been meaning to collect links to various subway maps (they serve as great studies in design) but Jason Kottke beat me to it. Always the smartie, he’s got his readers working for him (and for me too, I guess).

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance.

I’m looking forward to riding some of the great Rails-to-Trails bike trails (abandoned railroad lines converted into long, narrow parks) in the greater DC area this summer. One of the best known is the Washington & Old Dominion trail, which connects Shirlington and Purcellville, Va. across 45 miles. If you ride it, be sure to visit some of the African-American historical sites along the route. I was reminded of the rails-to-trails system (which I’d first heard about in an old Banana Republic catalog, believe it or not) by this Washington Post article about an overnight trip on the Northern Central Railroad Trail, which runs from Baltimore to York Pa. Apparently, recent improvements have made the Mount Vernon trail (which was never a railroad) even more enjoyable than when I used to ride it.

Forgotten NY: I get the news I need on the weather report. This site documents a continuing search for New York Cities past, cities which take shape before your eyes as you begin to notice ads on old brick walls, visit unused subway stations, struggle to decipher tags and wonder at murals. For further study take a radical walking tour, explore the underground (or just read about it,) investigate the world famous new york subway system.