Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at a former subway newsstand that is becoming a transit-themed entertainment booth.
What would you do with the shell of a long-shuttered newsstand on a busy subway platform in Manhattan?
Rather than trying to bring one back as just another miniature convenience store, Al Mullen, a comedian and writer, is attempting a more whimsical transformation. On Saturday, he plans to reopen a newsstand in the West Fourth Street station as a subterranean oasis of diversions.
As my colleague Winnie Hu explained, Mullen is channeling his love of the subway system into a transit-themed booth whose only purpose will be to amuse and intrigue New Yorkers and visitors. It will contain specialty items like trading cards that highlight fun facts about retired subway conductors and operators and key chains with a fake rat’s foot for “good train luck.”
Mullen, 37, also plans to offer live entertainment, including puppet shows, and he’s installing a photo booth with a subway pole that commuters can grab to find out “their inner train line.”
The items and experiences will be offered for free at the stand, which received a $10,000 philanthropic grant. The newsstand is an outgrowth of a free zine, Public Transport Magazine, which Mullen started in 2022 from his Brooklyn apartment and gave out in the subway.
“Everyone’s on the subway,” Mullen said, while fixing up the newsstand on a recent afternoon. “It’s a place where I can meet all kinds of people and see if they’ll be delighted.”
He worked with Art on the Ave NYC, a nonprofit that displays art in vacant storefronts, and the David Prize, a philanthropic initiative of the Walentas Foundation, to secure a one-year license for the shuttered newsstand from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
As his publication gained a following, Mullen met Erika Augustine, the executive director of the David Prize, which awards a total of $1 million annually to five New Yorkers who are working to make the city a better place. He applied and, though he did not win, he made an impression.
“His love for the transit system, I think, is so uniquely New York,” Augustine said.
Mullen is not, it turns out, a native New Yorker. He grew up in the coastal town of Scituate, Mass., and studied film at Occidental College in California. He moved to the city in 2011 and worked as a film and video editor. In his free time, he wrote and performed stand-up comedy.
Last year, Mullen reached out to Augustine with his idea for a transit-focused newsstand. She connected him with Barbara Anderson, the executive director of Art on the Ave NYC, which had converted a newsstand in the West 81st Street station into a sound booth where riders could drop by to sing, D.J. and play the piano.
Mullen received $10,000 in initial funding from the David Prize to develop and open his stand. The structure was licensed rent-free through an M.T.A. program started in 2023 to activate former retail spaces in the subway with public art exhibits. Currently, there are 17 sites, including a former retail unit that became a bodega for dinosaurs at the Grand Army Plaza station in Brooklyn.
Mullen spent $4,200 on a whimsical mural of trains, buses and people to wrap around the newsstand. It was designed by Edward Steed, a cartoonist whose work has been featured in The New Yorker. He plans to pay $100 each to other contributing artists and writers, including those creating travel guides to the city’s 472 subway stations, which will be handed out at the newsstand.
Mullen, who works as a writer for a game show app, has not paid himself. He said he saw the newsstand as a space where he could collaborate with more people.
“The New York thing is being in company with people, being in community,” he said. “And this is definitely an extension.”
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms, and a high near 79. Rain is expected to continue tonight as temperatures drop near 68. A flood watch is in effect.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I’m just happy to support her dream of living and launching a career in New York.” — Jeanette Williams on renting out the first floor of her three-story house in Astoria, Queens, to her niece who, after college, wanted to move to New York.
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METROPOLITAN diary
Morning ritual, interrupted
Dear Diary:
January is always the coldest month, and this one was no different.
As I rushed to school, kicking up that familiar New York City sludge-sleet-snow combo behind me, I passed a line of people braving the cold and camped out on the sidewalk for tickets to “Spring Awakening.” Must be a good show.
I checked my phone. “Yup. Definitely going to miss first period.” My second time this month. Fourth this year. One more, and there went the dean’s list. At least it was Friday.
And then I had the thought: “If I’m already late, I might as well get breakfast, right?”
I stopped at the bodega for my morning ritual: orange juice, a bag of chips and a bacon, egg and cheese on a blueberry bagel. Sweet. Savory. Perfect. In this city, breakfast orders are not taken lightly.
“Ayo, Papi — bacon, egg, n’ cheese on a blueberry bagel, please,” I said.
“Lo siento, Papi,” the counterman said. “No blueberry bagels hoy.”
I paused. Confusion first, then disbelief. In my three years of coming to this corner spot, they had never run out of blueberry bagels.
What now? Not a roll. A hero felt excessive. And an everything bagel — too much personality for 8:30 a.m.
“For real? What you got?”
He listed every type of bread imaginable, then ended with: croissant.
A croissant? I had never seriously considered it. Some of my friends swore by them, but because they cost 50 cents more, my allegiance lay with the blueberry bagel.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll try it. Toasted, por favor.”
He wrapped it up. I paid and hurried out. School was just steps away now.
Outside my second-period class, I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite.
I never ordered a blueberry bagel again.
— Monét X Change
Ms. X Change is a drag queen, singer and podcast host.
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — P.M.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Transforming an Old Newsstand Into a Celebration of Subways appeared first on New York Times.
