I'm a lasagna boy!

The restlessness of bridges.

Of nice notebooks, insomnia, and bridges: this weekend's New York Times Magazine features an article on Santiago Calatrava's designs for bridges.

November 30, 2003

To Draw a Bridge
By ADAM SACHS

hen he can't sleep, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava draws pictures. Birds, bodies, bulls -- the fluid, figural images repeat themselves in sketch after sketch. The drawings fill his notebooks, and the notebooks -- elegant Japanese ledgers with pages that open out like a room-length accordion -- fill the offices and homes he keeps in Zurich, Paris, Valencia and Manhattan.

Calatrava is known for buildings and bridges that look as if they could have sprung forth whole from the pages of his dreamy sketchbooks. In Valencia, on the Mediterranean in Spain, he built a planetarium inspired by his sketch of a human eye, complete with a hydraulic lid that closes. A drawing of a man's midsection gave rise to the twisting form of a residential tower called Turning Torso, now under construction in Malmo, Sweden. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, the canopy arched over his recently completed opera house resembles a petal of a flower. If his remarkable buildings start as a gesture on the page, for Calatrava it's the act of drawing itself -- the silent, endless hours spent sketching and resketching a subject -- that constitutes the creative process. So when the mayor of Jerusalem asked him to build a bridge that would serve as an entry point to the holy city, Calatrava started drawing.

Ehud Olmert, Jerusalem's mayor at the time, wasn't just seeking a functional solution to a traffic problem. He wanted a symbol. ''When I went to sign the contract,'' Calatrava remembers, ''he told me: 'You have done many bridges, but you will do a bridge for Jerusalem that means something. This will be the most beautiful thing that you have ever done.' ''

Calatrava, who was recently chosen to design the $2 billion transit hub at ground zero, began by considering the constraints of the situation in Jerusalem: a tram line that needed to cut an S-shaped path from Jaffa Road to Theodor Herzl Boulevard, rising above a dense intersection and clearing the way for a public plaza beneath. The city engineer wanted to make life easier for pedestrians and also give some much needed character and panache to a congested urban entanglement through which much of the traffic arriving into the city passes. Building in Jerusalem means using Jerusalem stone, and Calatrava knew that he would need to balance the sturdy honey-colored rock with more modern touches of fluid steel and glass. He wanted to create something that would seem to fly -- its span soaring over the tops of the cars -- and hoped the structure would serve the city as a gate and not another wall.

The first drawings for the bridge were abstract. ''If there was a reference to anything, it was to musical instruments,'' Calatrava says, looking back over his initial sketches. For each of his projects (he has designed more than 60 bridges), Calatrava, who is 52, keeps extensive files chronicling the progress from inchoate doodle through the final stages of computer modeling. ''Bridges with cables very easily resemble stringed instruments. I thought the city of David deserves a bridge that looks like a harp, the instrument he played.'' Not only would the harp strings hold the bridge up, they would be the focal attraction of a design meant to be as light and transparent as possible. A cable-stayed bridge would avoid the use of heavy pillars that would take up space on the ground, which Calatrava and city planners hoped to use as a pedestrian meeting space. If the embankments were to be of Jerusalem stone, the pylon would have to be tall and thin but stable enough to hold the curvy deck of the bridge together.

Unlike most bridges, Calatrava's well-regarded Alamillo Bridge in Seville has just one supporting tower. The mast is angled, leaning back from the water and, with visible tension, carrying the roadway by its cables. Building on this idea, early studies for the Jerusalem bridge suggested a straight incline, sticking up like a hand on a clock. This, he realized, would create too much pull on the pylon. A second incarnation featured a curved mast resting on two legs. Soon, however, Calatrava figured out that he could add more cables and get rid of one of the legs altogether, resulting in an even more slender, streamlined form -- a single, sloping mast at the center of the S-shape. ''It's very powerful, but it has the ability to disappear,'' Calatrava says of his solution. ''There were three different versions, though each one built on the other. You calculate, you make the model, you leave it for a while, then you come back. Each one tries to be better than the one before. They make a kind of city.''

Santiago Calatrava is a modern architect. His large staff uses computers to help him analyze his models. Calatrava guesses that even Antonio Gaudi -- Spain's singular surrealist Catalan architect who at the turn of the last century was testing structural models with strings and weights -- would use computers if he were designing today. But a couple of factors distinguish Calatrava from the current crop of star architects. First, he has a second profession. He is an engineer. Most architects are not engineers, and most engineers do not design buildings. They graduate from different schools, and though they must collaborate on the same projects, they eye each other with the mutually dependent suspicions of the sausagemaker and the health inspector.

After completing his years of architecture training, Calatrava decided that he needed to know more about how things are constructed. He took a Ph.D. in civil engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The important thing for Calatrava isn't just that he learned about building but also that he learned to ignore the traditional divide between his two vocations. ''Many architects say that they will never do a bridge,'' Calatrava says. ''But I think they will discover that just as Fallingwater is a piece of art, so Golden Gate is a piece of art of the 20th century. And Frank Lloyd Wright was very proud of his study of engineering.''

Which brings us to the second point of departure in Calatrava's work: his process of drawing and sculpturing buildings and bridges into life. Unattached to any school of architecture, Calatrava draws like an artist and thinks like a scientist. ''What is interesting,'' he says, ''is that the sketch is always spontaneous. If you keep drawing, you can preserve much of this spontaneity. You have an idea. You refine it through sketching. You see, the interaction between the free work of the sketches and the pure geometrical work makes things move toward a precise solution. On one side, you have the spontaneity of the sketch. And on the other side, you have the rigor of the confluence of all the square footages you have to account for, all the toilets, the elevators, the doors, the security issues, the questions of fire protection, all of this.''

Right brain and left brain are kept in lock step by a constant overlapping of enthusiasms -- and by constant work. The movement of a man's torso is sketched and reimagined as a sculpture of sleek cubes and tension wires, the figure translated into pure mathematics. The Jerusalem bridge is drawn and, after the models have been tested, drawn again. The result is architecture born of both creative inspiration and scientific rigor. Enthusiasm itself, Calatrava tells me, comes from the Greek enthousiasmos, or ''possessed by the gods.'' The artist, in the Greek mind, was a man given remarkable tools by the gods.

It's no accident that the book ''Santiago Calatrava's Creative Process'' was published in two volumes. The first, ''Fundamentals,'' deals with the mathematical and engineering underpinnings of his work. The second, ''Sketchbooks,'' collects a portion of Calatrava's 60,000 drawings. Neither is it an accident that the books are boxed together: one informs the other. ''You can't have one without the other -- besides, they come as a set,'' says the architect-engineer, who is also something of a salesman. Calatrava is a man of many enthusiasms.

Calatrava's structures tend to be stark, white and eye-catching. Though they proclaim their own complexity, his bridges are more than mere science projects. They are lovely, each an elegant argument for itself.

For his Jerusalem bridge, Calatrava has indulged in a bit of color. Running along the pedestrian walkway is a band of blue light. ''It is a pastel blue, like the blue of the Israeli flag and also the tallit,'' Calatrava says, referring to the traditional prayer shawl worn by observant Jews. ''When you see the bridge from far away, it will appear like a modern obelisk. And at the top we would like to put a bronze plate, something that will reflect in the sun like a golden dome.''

In the post-Bilbao era, comparisons to Frank Gehry will necessarily be made. The two men admire each other, and though they both have produced remarkable works of public-pleasing art, they could not be more different in approach or effect. Gehry makes buildings with beautiful skin. Calatrava is an architect of bones. Gehry's cosmic collages of shimmery titanium speak to the expressive power of modern computing. Calatrava doesn't know how to send e-mail. He sits with his staff members as they test with a computer, but he doesn't create with one. And if Gehry is the more famous of the two, it is Calatrava -- with his railway stations, museums, theaters and bridges -- who has constructed the greater presence in Europe. You may go to Bilbao for Gehry's Guggenheim, but you will arrive via Calatrava's airport -- nicknamed la paloma, or ''the dove,'' for its poised-for-flight form -- and walk across his Campo Volantin footbridge.

Gaudi, too, is an obvious point of reference. Calatrava has noted the unfinished Sagrada Familia temple as a source of inspiration. But in conversation, the Spanish polymath who Calatrava refers to most isn't an architect at all. It's Picasso. ''I prefer the zigzag way as opposed to the linear; Picasso has done this,'' Calatrava says, referring to both a process of art and the development of a career. Picasso painted in different styles while always expressing his time. Calatrava admires that. An architect's career is long, he observes. By always drawing, letting every idea build on the last, he hopes to see his work evolve.

''I think it is like people who pray, repeating the same thing,'' he says. ''Even if you say it a thousand times, finally what you are saying is praying is part of my life. Well, drawing is part of my life.'' He admits he sometimes has a problem knowing when to stop drawing and to let the building begin. He fears the client will tell him to get on with it. ''Or my wife will say, 'Enough,' '' he says. Robertina Calatrava runs the family business, spread as it is between Europe and New York. Robertina keeps her husbands' appointments and generally blocks out distractions so the architect can draw in silence for hours at a stretch. ''The Chinese say dissatisfaction is the first step to progress,'' Calatrava notes. ''You can always think, How can this be better? It happened to me with the Jerusalem project. Everybody was satisfied, but myself, I thought this can be better. The process teaches you. You do the steps again. That was when we took away the leg, and suddenly it emerged. You know you're done when you get the feeling that at last you're in a new land.''

Work is set to begin on the Jerusalem bridge early next year. Construction will take 16 months. When it is completed, Calatrava says, he hopes that he will have done something more for the city than just smooth the flow of traffic. ''Bridges join places that were separated,'' he says. ''They are built for the sake of progress and for the average citizen. They even have a religious dimension. Even the word 'religious' comes from the Latin, meaning 'creating a link.' A bridge makes a lot of sense in a city like Jerusalem.''

Adam Sachs is a writer living in New York.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

$250 large for a free ride.

The investment company ING Direct, which runs miserable ads on taxicabs and public benches, are sponsoring a free commute this Thursday morning on BART.

As part of the Free Morning Commute, BART and ING DIRECT are sponsoring a contest with great prizes: $1,000 cash in an ING DIRECT Orange Savings Account, $500 in a 1 year ING DIRECT Orange CD, ING DIRECT Marin Hybrid Mountain Bikes, and $100 worth of BART tickets.

The path to righteousness.

Riding east on the Panhandle bike path, riders can now gracefully turn north onto Baker, so as to start the Wiggle in style.

America's fastest-growing sport (Pun intended)

Perspective on competitive eating:

The IFOCE hosts official eating contests and tracks the world's top eaters, like record-holder Oleg Zhornitskiy, who downed four 32-ounce bowls of mayonnaise in 8 minutes.

This year's Thanksgiving Invitational eating contest attracted talent from all 'round the competitive eating circuit, but petite (106-lb) Sonya Thomas took home the turkey statuette after downing almost 8 pounds of turkey and trimmings in 12 minutes. Bookie money was on either the Chili Champ or the Donut Dominator.

And from Sonya's profile:

There is an century-old prophesy (sic)(no pun intended) within the competitive eating community, dismissed by most, that foretells the rise of the “One Eater" ...

She can down a gross of chicken wings in ten minutes. Yowza. I mean, yowza.

UPDATE: The Travel Channel ran a one-hour special on eating contests, told from the perspective that these were "epicurean" contests in places that would be fun to visit. Terrible.

The answer, my friend ...

I'm glad I'm
not the only one this happens to.

A bootiful thing, is a properly-fixed tyre.

More biking to work, alleluia. Just as I was about to pedal home for the evening, Lupe mildly pointed out that a ugly bubble of inner-tube was poking through the sidewall of the rear tyre. I only had finifs and sawbucks in the ol' wallet, so I booted the tyre with a fiver; belatedly I realised that I kept a single in my patch kit for this very reason. More incentive to take off this bad piece of rubber (two big holes in the past week, and this one on the sidewall is just Bad News).
I am going to replace the tyres on the commute bike -- either the Kogswell or the Dutchess -- with the reflective-sidewall tyres that this guy on Caltrain was telling me about.

Homage a Catalonia.

Snowflake died over the weekend.

Every day is bike-to-work day.

Today I rode the fixie to work, for the first time in months. Thanks to a new pair of rat-traps from jimg, a few minutes in the shop, and a little encouragement from my lethargic body, I hopped on the Dutchess and got moving.
Within fifteen minutes, I rode over something sharp and ripped the rear tyre (it's always the rear!), and had to boot the tyre in order to keep moving. Of course I didn't have a spare tube with me, but fortunately I had some big broad patches and a tube of vulcanizing fluid.

Maglev land-speed record.

While the United States' efforts to produce even a low-speed Maglev prototype bog down in bureaucracy, we have have this report from Australia (but about Japan):

Japan's super-fast Maglev has set a new speed record for magnetically levitated trains, reaching 560 kilometres an hour during unmanned testing.
The Central Japan Railway company says the new speed, clocked on an experimental track west of Tokyo, broke the previous record of 552 kilometres an hour set by a manned Maglev in April 1999.
Further tests are planned for Wednesday in an effort to further improve the train's speed.
The company says it aims to attain a maximum speed of 580 kilometres an hour.
The superconducting Maglev train, which uses magnetic forces to float over its track, has been under testing in Japan since the late 1996, but is yet to be launched on the market.

In pace.

Bay Area engineer Tung-Yen Lin died one day after his 91st birthday. Every time I drive, bike or walk around the Berkeley Marina I see one of his most elegant and simple expressions of engineering, the University Ave. pedestrian overpass.

Father's Ofc.

Tapas, beer, etc.

"Traffic is moving at 1 mph"

This morning's radio announcements surprised me. The traffic reporter, hovering somewhere north of Oakland and somewhere south of Oregon, said that traffic on the approach to the Al Zampa would lose a road-race to a snail. His claims were not exaggerated: turns out that Caltrans, in their haste to open the bridge, did not completely pave the approaches, causing a four-mile jam that delayed traffic for several hours.

Caltrans kept at least two lanes open as long as possible. At one point this morning, one lane of traffic flowed to the old bridge while a second lane directed vehicles to the new span.
But to complete the final wedge of pavement leading to the new span, crews had to shut down the lane to the 1927 bridge. They needed the space for equipment and to apply the asphalt material, Ney said.
The one-lane restriction was supposed to end by 8 a.m. at the latest. Caltrans also had counted on lighter Veteran's Day holiday traffic.
But vehicles backed up for miles on Interstate 80 past Marine World while Vallejo streets turned into parking lots. Motorists missed meetings, funerals and airplanes.
The gridlock prevented the contractor's asphalt trucks from reaching the site, where crews waited to apply the pavement, allow it cool, paint the stripes and glue down reflector tabs.

Two characters in search of a country song.

Massachusetts highway administrators are misguidedly installing taller Jersey barriers.

Mass. road barriers are getting taller

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 11/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff, 11/9/2003

America's highways are getting supersized, and Massachusetts is helping lead the way.

Along with plentiful lanes and longer exit ramps, taller ''jersey'' barriers are the latest in the trend toward bigness on the roads.

The 42-inch-tall concrete barriers, 10 inches taller than conventional ones, are needed to accommodate increasingly taller, bigger, and heavier sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, state officials say.

''It's keeping up with the changes,'' said Matthew J. Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which has decided to use the barriers any time a median is replaced. ''It seems like every other car on the road is an SUV, and they're getting bigger. They can

get airborne and clear the 32-inch barriers, so the extra height makes all the difference.'' Highway engineers and safety specialists say the taller barriers also help eliminate glare from traffic -- since headlights are getting higher along with vehicles.

The taller jersey barriers -- so named for their early extensive use in New Jersey, dating back to the 1950s -- are heavier than the 32-inch model: roughly 8,000 pounds per 12-foot segment, compared with 6,900 pounds. The new barriers, wide at the bottom and more slender at the top are also more expensive. They cost $500,000 per mile, versus $350,000 for the 32-inch barriers, turnpike officials said.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, and Oregon are the first states to use the bigger barriers.

Although the rationale for the upgrade is safety, state highway officials could not produce records of accidents involving bigger vehicles vaulting the 32-inch jersey barrier. Amorello said he recalled at least one such accident in the Lowell area when he was state highway commissioner.

And although Amorello said the turnpike was ''following new federal highway standards,'' the super-size barriers are not, in fact, required by the federal government.

''It's optional. There is no mandate,'' said Carl Gottschall, the Central Artery and Tunnel project administrator at the Federal Highway Administration's office in Cambridge. ''They've been crash tested, and they are safer. The states look at these things and make their own decisions.''

Major Michael Mucci, commanding officer of State Police Troop E, which is assigned to the Massachusetts Turnpike, said troopers are applauding the bigger barriers.

He called them a significant improvement over the old-fashioned metal guardrails that are in place along most of the median of the 135-mile turnpike.

The 32-inch concrete barriers are fine, Mucci said, but if they are being replaced in reconstruction anyway, or the metal guardrails are being replaced, the 42-inch barriers are an extra step for safety.

''My troopers love them,'' Mucci said. ''They're stronger, and can take a crushing, high-speed impact much better. This barrier will really hold [vehicles] back into the lane. It's the scariest thing we see, when a vehicle gets over the barrier, and the driver in the other lane just has no idea. That's when you have the horrific fatalities.''

New Jersey was the first to replace the 32-inch barrier, which started out in 1955 at 18 inches tall, with the 42-inch barriers, also known as the ''tall wall'' barrier.

The 42-inch barriers made their debut in Massachusetts when a short stretch of the turnpike in Auburn was rebuilt 10 years ago. But the outsized concrete walls are now being seen along longer segments of the roadway. They are in place along a 5-mile stretch through Grafton, Millbury, and Auburn. The 42-inch barrier will also be used along the turnpike from the Weston tolls into Boston as that median is replaced, officials said.

''If you drive the Pike the next couple of days, you'll notice it. Anytime we do reconstruction, and next up is the Millbury-to-Framingham stretch, that's the profile you'll see. That's what the turnpike is going to look like in the next few years,'' said Amorello.

Jonathan Carlisle, spokesman for the Massachusetts Highway Department, said the 42-inch barriers have also been installed on several other state roads. They are in place in segments of the median of Route 146, Interstate 290, Route 3 from the Braintree split to Weymouth, and Route 2 in the Leominster-Fitchburg stretch, Carlisle said.

The barriers are planned for the Route 3 lane-widening project nearing completion from Burlington to Tyngsboro, and the add-a-lane project on Route 128 from Randolph to Wellesley, he said. Taller medians are also in store for Route 2 between Route 128 and Lincoln, Carlisle said.

''When we go in and reconstruct a limited access roadway, it's our practice to use the tall wall,'' he said.

The ''tall wall'' has not been greeted with unanimous praise everywhere. In Pittsburgh last year, a plan to put 42-inch barriers on the main bridge into the city was rejected, after criticism that the super-sized concrete barriers would obstruct the view of the skyline and the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers.

A new style of barrier was proposed, consisting of concrete up to 24 inches tall, capped with steel guardrails with large see-through openings.

Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.

Meat is a felony.

Drinking scotch and wandering through the Mug Shots section of The Smoking Gun (motto: "Paving the paper trail"), I found this unappealing mugshot and amusing vingette:

Meet Lindsey Blackledge .... arrested in July 2002 for possession of a stolen, 14-ounce tri-tip steak ... a 38-year-old San Andreas woman ... called cops after discovering her meat was missing ... a trail of "meat juice" leading from King's grill to an upstairs apartment ... where they found the purloined sirloin hidden in a cabinet below the sink. Blackledge--who was found in the apartment--was charged with a felony.

Al Zampa bridge brigade.

The Al Zampa bridge opened today:

"I've climbed halfway to heaven and fallen halfway to hell," Zampa was quoted as saying. "Neither place wanted me, so I just kept on working."

Uh-oh, I got a little problem.

An F-Market rolled down Church Street today, probably heading back to the Geneva / San Jose yard for the night, and tore through a line of cars. Since the car was heading back home, it probably didn't have any passengers.
This probably blocked J-Church traffic heading on the same line -- MUNI does not have a crossover that would permit the outbound J to travel the inbound tracks for the stretch along Dolores Park.

The wire report read:

Out-of-Control Streetcar Leaves Three Injured

San Francisco Muni has suspended the driver of streetcar that rolled out of control Thursday night.
The driver apparently stepped away from the antique car at a Castro Street stop, and the car slipped away, rolling down to Church Street. About five cars were hit, and three people were hurt.

Muni will reevaluate the driver's status after a full investigation.

Taking out the trash.

Literally. After years of waiting (and numerous phone calls to Sunset Scavenger), my neighbourhood finally received its own shipment of the colour-coded recycling bins.
The mandate that San Francisco recycle 50% of its garbage by 2001 is slowly being met; San Francisco city government is patting itself on the back for htting 40%.
The California Integrated Waste Management Act (AB939) required all cities and counties to recycle 50 percent of their waste stream by January 1, 2000.

As part of the agreement the city has with the Altamont Landfill, San Francisco must also recycle as much of its waste as other contributing counties.

Between the two units, we have three curbside recycling bins:

Even if San Francisco and Sunset Scavenger are running late with the project, they're in better shape than Dade County, FL.

His name was Stampy, you loved him very much.

After 20 years at the Baltimore Zoo, Dolly and Anna are becoming orphans. As a result of budget difficulties, the two African elephants must seek new homes -- or new mates.

¡Voto temprano, voto a menudo!

I wasn't first at the polling place this morning: two other young men were waiting at the door, breath steaming in the early air. The election official opened the door, we charged in, connected the arrows, and found that we got to vote a bonus round.
Since the fancy Eagle-brand tabulator wasn't correctly aligned with the stars, our precinct used the manual override. We got to dump our second set of ballots into a big ol' bin beneath the Eagle, while the first set of ballots were marked "SPOIL" by the election official.

Redbirds return to nature.

Straphangers no more, New York's MTA ran the last Redbird subway cars, on a 7 Local run to Willets Point - Shea Stadium.

You can buy bits and pieces of the scrapped Redbirds, at least the ones that haven't been sunk off the Jersey Shore as artificial reefs.

November 4, 2003
Let Go, Straphangers. The Ride Is Over.

By MICHAEL LUO

For Edward Murphy, 21, all the hubbub on the No. 7 train to Queens yesterday morning was hard to fathom. Clad in a jacket and tie, he stepped into a subway car at Grand Central Terminal, expecting an uneventful ride to Woodside, where he had a job interview.

But Mr. Murphy had unwittingly walked into a historic moment — for some at least — the final run of a "Redbird" train, with those 1960's-vintage subway cars, painted Tuscan red, that are beloved by subway buffs everywhere.

Over the last few years, New York City Transit officials have phased out these trains, the last ones that had actual straps for subway riders to cling to, in favor of computerized, stainless-steel replacements.

So Mr. Murphy found himself surrounded by a motley crew of buffs, New York City Transit workers and officials and reporters, enjoying the train's final run through Queens.

"It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever," Mr. Murphy said, as a train conductor crowed over the public address system that the riders were experiencing the final run for "this type of train."

"But whatever," Mr. Murphy added, watching as buffs eagerly made their way forward. "If that's what they enjoy, that's what they enjoy."

The real fans had piled aboard in Times Square, where the run began at 10:30 a.m. There was Koi Morris, 32, a chemist from Plainsboro, N.J., whose extensive collection of subway paraphernalia includes a Redbird "roll sign," telling riders a train's first and last stops, two car-identification signs, and four subway straps. A veteran of numerous "rail-fan trips," special events for devotees, Mr. Morris was among many who took the day off from work for the final journey.

And there was Daniel Clemente, 19, a police studies student at John Jay College, who rides different subway lines for fun several times a month and regularly buys seats in the upper deck at Shea Stadium just so he can watch the trains go by.

"It's a little weird, I know," he said.

Also on board was Chris Rivera, 18, an architecture major at New York Institute of Technology, who once rode the subway with a friend for 24 hours and stopped at every station in the city.

All three eventually crowded into the first car, where fans jostled to catch a glimpse out the "rail-fan window," the front window through which a buff can imagine himself piloting the train. The newer trains don't have such windows, and fans have to deal with staring out the back.

As other riders looked on with amusement, the buffs snapped picture after picture, swapped lore about the Redbirds and showed off their souvenirs.

Peter England, 41, a transit worker for 18 years, brought along an M.T.A. annual report from 1963 with pictures of the original trains to show people.

"This is so awesome," said Mr. Rivera, paging through the report as others craned their necks for a look.

Mark Wolodarsky, 22, who fulfilled his childhood dream when he became a subway conductor three years ago, showed off a model of the original Redbird, painted blue and white. His model train collection includes more than 100 cars, he said, and cost him more than $16,000.

Mr. Wolodarsky, along with other buffs, were a font of subway trivia yesterday, eager to impart Redbird lore to the uninitiated. The trains used to run on all the city's numbered lines. They were assigned to the Flushing line in 1964 and were painted blue and white for the World's Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. They became silver and blue in the 1970's, then all white in the early 1980's, when they became a preferred target for graffiti.

Finally, in the mid-1980's, they were given their distinctive red coat, as a statement that transit officials were going to war against the vandals.

"It was the line in the sand, if you will," the New York City Transit president, Lawrence G. Reuter, said yesterday.

Over the last few years, the transit authority has spent more than $2 billion in new high-tech subway cars. As a result, the deteriorating Redbirds have slowly been taken out of service. Even though their walls are laced with asbestos, hundreds have found new homes off the east coast, where they have been sunk to become artificial reefs.

From this last train of 11 cars, some cars will become reefs, others will be used in movie productions and one will be converted into a work train.

At the controls yesterday was Michael Rubino, 46. Mr. Rubino, a 13-year transit veteran, and conductor Daniel Wrynn, 39, were handpicked by subway officials to handle the Redbird's final voyage.

The older trains were much trickier to operate than the new ones, Mr. Rubino said, but they also allowed train operators to demonstrate their skills. In order to bring a Redbird to a stop, an operator needed to apply both a manual brake valve and a power switch. The new trains only have a power switch, and all lurch to a stop identically. But a skillful Redbird operator could deftly bring the train to a coasting stop every time.

Mr. Rubino said he was a little nervous guiding the train, packed with transit officials, through its final passage, especially as he came down a slight incline for the stretch run into the Willets Point-Shea Stadium stop. If he went too fast, a sensor could have been tripped, causing the train to come to a sudden stop.

"Put it this way," he said. "I worked up a sweat."

In the end, however, the No. 7 train rumbled down the track and came smoothly to a stop. From inside the train, a cheer went up.

The Redbirds' run was over.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Only the king has a jester.

Aram asked me where "majesty" comes from. I quipped to cover that I didn't know:

OE. magestee, F. majest['e], L. majestas, fr. an old compar. of magnus great.

I do know that one addreses royalty in the ablative. And that Poe wrote the best story about a deformed midget jester getting revenge on a tyrant.

The Visual Thesaurus describes spatial relationships amongst synonyms.

We have met the enemy.

Mobile Infrared Devices, or MIRTs, allow non-law-enforcement to arbitrarily control traffic lights. While this was an entertaining plot wrinkle in The Italian Job, it doesn't really scale for the antics of commuters.

4 November 2003 UPDATE: This is all over the news right now.

And the antics of a commuter stopped the Metro-North commuter railroad:

The man was on a suburban train from Grand Central Station on Wednesday night when he went to the bathroom to make a phone call, dropped the phone into the toilet bowl and then his hand and arm became stuck trying to retrieve it, officials said.
Metro-North Railroad staff could not help the man, so they stopped the train and called police officers and firefighters to extricate him, a process that took 90 minutes using "jaws of life" rescue equipment.
"The toilets are made of aluminum so I imagine he was down on hands and knees with his shirt rolled up and hand and arm down inside, trying to flush out his cell phone," said Jim Cameron of the Connecticut Metro-North commuter council.

You can build your own gyroscopic human transporter á la Segway or Ginger or the "IT" thing or whatever.