Pennsylvania Station, in west midtown, is the busiest railroad station in the Western Hemisphere. It is also a shabby, haunted labyrinth. I was there recently with Vishaan Chakrabarti, an architect and city planner who has been involved for decades in efforts, most of them futile, to improve the station. We entered from Seventh Avenue, going down a narrow escalator with so little headroom that I flinched and ducked. On our left, a man was wrestling a baby carriage up a staircase, bumping step by step toward the street.
“It’s the architecture that tells you where to go in a train station,” Chakrabarti said. In Penn, the architecture generally tells you to go away. The area where we had entered resembles a dingy subterranean shopping mall, dominated by fast-food joints—Dunkin’ Donuts, Jamba Juice, Krispy Kreme. Three railroads and six busy subway lines converge in Penn Station, but from where we were it was hard to find your way to any of them. “Down here, the signage has always been a huge issue,” Chakrabarti said. His tone was equal parts earnest concern and professorial detachment; he was a professor at Columbia for seven years, worked as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s director of city planning for Manhattan, runs a global architecture studio, and lives with his family about a mile from Penn Station, through which they are often obliged to travel. Chakrabarti is fifty-six, tall, with a well-trimmed white chin-strap beard.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.