A Thanksgiving Miracle: Trains Are Not Really Fucked This Weekend
One of the most terrifying parts about the holidays is traveling during the holidays. For example, if you’re driving out of the city today, plunging deep into the traffic apocalypse, I wish you luck, my friend.
But if you are making things easier on yourself, staying here, and just need to get to a friend’s place to drink or (if you want to make things a little more taxing) brave the crowds at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (which I believe is something everyone must do before they no longer live here), then the MTA is your great, dear friend this holiday weekend.
Of course, we can’t get too weepy-happy too quickly: On Thanksgiving Day, New York City subways and buses will operate on a Sunday schedule. Fine: Lucky public transit bastards can’t be choosers. If, all jokes aside, the parade really is your thing, you should know that the closest subway stations to the start of that event are the 79th Street 1 train and the 81st Street C train. Have fun, suckers. I’ll be watching with warm socks on at my mom’s. No, but really, you should go.
For the rest of you who do not want to actually leave the city, but just need to scoot around, eating and drinking and lazing here and there, MTA lines are coming up [insert your name here]! Like, on Thanksgiving Day herself, the only thing you can’t really do is use a street elevator at Herald Square (but why go there anyway), or stand on the Ozone Park/Far Rockaway-bound platform at 80th Street, on the A line. Hopefully, these locations don’t concern you.
The day after, Friday, things get a tiny bit harried on the 6 (Brooklyn Bridge-bound trains skip Astor Place through Canal Street stops), and the F has minor issues, too: Coney Island-bound trains run via the E from Roosevelt Avenue to 5th Avenue, 53rd Street. And your old pal the N? Astoria-bound trains run express from 59 Street to Atlantic Avenue, Barclays.
But you see, what I’m doing here is searching for problems where—considering how awful we have known things on the MTA can really be—there really are none, or, just minor ones at best. You should be able to use the trains you need this weekend, nightmare free. And it’s Thanksgiving, so you should even be able to sit down on them—because the rest of the city has frantically fled—next to your friends, who were smart and stayed behind, too.
You can even get to Bushwick last minute, via the L, without issue, if you are the world’s worst planner and have not yet decided where to eat. A delicious meal awaits you there, and—because this really, truly is a dream MTA holiday weekend—you can get there, and basically everywhere else you need to get this weekend, on time.