The editorial board of amNewYork would like to wish a happy Halloween to New York City. After all, it’s a spooky place.
This citywide haunted house adventure starts in the subway, home of lost souls and departed time. Descend if you dare into that realm of surprise liquids and shrieking mechanical behemoths. Our necessary underworld is also a good place to lose our souls — or at least a good portion of our remaining hours. A total of 35,000 of them on average for morning commuters, according to a gruesome recent report from NYC’s Independent Budget Office.
The tour of horrors continues with the familiar tale of being stuck in traffic anywhere from midtown, where average vehicle speed has declined 23 percent since 2010, to the always nerve-racking Cross Bronx Expressway. No Allhallows Eve in NYC would be complete without being forced into the metal straitjacket of worsening bumper-to-bumper boulevards. After 45 minutes of such bondage, you might beseech the dark gods of the subway to let you down there again.
In the next room, you will be inserted into an endless crowd of zombielike fellow New Yorkers. The zombies are friendly, but what is the crowd for? Is it a line to get into a pointlessly hip restaurant? Is it because some clothing store announced a sale? You’ll never be able to find out because you never actually make it in.
Then the room changes and becomes an auditorium for all NYC’s sinister weather. Oh, we’re all done with 100-degree heat waves? Prepare your fingertips for bone-chilling winter winds. And then the kind of slush that is perfectly proportioned to seep into even the best snow boots. Cower in fear.
As another NYC Halloween draws to a close, beware the rats hopping out of pumpkin-plump trash bags. Watch out for sewer overflows and other unidentified aromas, and, of course, for those undead tricksters who try to persuade you to move to the suburbs. But good New York ghouls would never fall for that kind of prank. We know that leaving would be much scarier.
