THINK OF IT AS A '70S THEME PARK, BUT WITHOUT GANGS OR MUGGERS OR HOOKERS ROAMING AROUND ... VERY FREQUENTLY: Tom Scocca and Choire Sicha ask you to appreciate the
"delightfully ill-lighted, incomprehensibly organized, low-ceilinged, viewless labyrinth" which constitutes New York's Penn Station.
And the one major redeeming value, Manhattan's last remaining Krispy Kreme, is now gone. (Lost their franchise because they made overly crappy donuts.)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the authors. I don't understand the fuss about Penn Station. Is it beautiful? No. But it sure is functional. And the renovated NJ Transit terminal is really not so bad. It's a train station, not a museum.
ReplyDeleteOh, no! Must be pretty recent. They still have a Roy Rogers, however.
ReplyDeleteHaving been a Penn regular, it can be very difficult to manage. If you need to be there for any length of time, it's not comfortable. But, it gets the job done.
ReplyDeleteOr as my sister calls it - a food court with trains.
Yeah, it gets the job done. My favorite bizarre little quirk is the elevator to Tracks 11/12. Good luck trying to find that one on your own.
ReplyDeleteWithin the past 3-4 months. And the Roy Rogers in the station is also gone, though there's still one last one across the street on Seventh Avenue.
ReplyDeleteIt's not still back there with the Nathan's near the Amtrak gates? Damn.
ReplyDeleteThey rehabbed that space--I believe what used to be a Roy Rogers is now a Taco Bell.
ReplyDeleteI can't recommend enough The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station. Thank god some developer didn't manage to tear down Union Station here, though the current main hall of the Amtrak station in Chicago connected to it is a soulless mess (that's just as bad in terms of signage, by the way, not helped by how it's also the depot for our regional Metra train system).
ReplyDeleteSlate did a really interesting series on signage in the spring, and one entry focused entirely on Penn Station. The author walked around with wayfinding designers and discussed what works and what doesn't and how it could all be improved. Very cool (in that nerdy way that I appreciate so much, that is).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/id/2246104/
The problem with Penn Station isn't that it's ugly,* but that it's poorly organized. It's not a particularly good train station because it's not particularly good at getting you to the train you need to get to. LIRR or Amtrak/NJ Transit? The NJT/Amtrak area isn't so bad, except that when the board updates to let riders know where their train is going to be, that leads to a mad crush to get on that train.
ReplyDelete*and no one will argue that it is ugly. u-g-l-y, no alibi ugly.
That Penn Station manages to be as useful as it is shows just how important it is and how good New Yorkers are at self-organizing. And I'm also sure that whatever replaces Penn Station is going to be no more functional and will probably be less functional, but it could be much better.
Finding my way off amtrak and out of Union Station here is always followed by a moment of, now where EXACTLY did I come out of the building? Oh! Ok, find the 151 stop.
ReplyDeleteI truly felt like a Manhattanite once I knew which entrance to the building led to which kinds of trains, and how to get from the LIRR to whichever subway line I needed (and vice versa) by instinct, rather than stopping every ten feet to get my bearings.
ReplyDeleteI feel about Penn Station the same way I felt about Shea Stadium - it's a dump, but it's *my* dump.
I don't know if it's possible, but I could do without the NJ Transit stampedes. (s/Shea/Veterans/)
ReplyDeleteWas in Penn Station today- on the old Krispy Kreme, there is a sign that a Krispy Kreme is coming on December 1st.
ReplyDelete