I had a 7AM call time for a shoot in Chelsea, which meant catching the 1 train at 6AM from 137th Street, which meant setting three alarms and betraying all of them.
But here's the thing nobody tells you about the 1 train at 6AM. It's kind.
The car isn't packed. It's a scatter of people who all look like they'd rather be anywhere else. A nurse in scrubs. A man asleep with his forehead against the pole. A woman doing her eyeliner with the steadiness of a surgeon, and honestly, respect.
Nobody makes eye contact but nobody's cold either. We're just tired together. There's a solidarity to it, like we all signed the same unspoken treaty of we'll get through this Monday somehow.
The city outside is doing its slow yawn. Bodega gates half-rolled up. A guy hosing down the sidewalk outside a deli on Broadway. That specific blue-grey light that only happens before the sun fully commits.
My Ba back in Ahmedabad wakes at 5 every day. She'd love this hour. She always said the morning is when God is still listening, before everyone starts asking for things.
I used to think mornings in NYC were a punishment. Now I think the 1 train at 6AM might be my favorite version of this city. The unposed one. The one that isn't performing for anybody.
By the time we hit 96th Street the car filled up and the spell broke a little. Suits. Earbuds. A phone playing a video with no headphones, which is a crime that should carry jail time.
But I'd already had my quiet. Already stolen my forty minutes of a New York that felt like it was breathing slowly, just for me.
Got to Chelsea with a coffee too hot to drink and a heart weirdly full.
The early city is the honest city. Set the alarm sometime.
Love,