This past Thursday I went into the city for our biannual meet-up, and I knew it was going to be a long day. Up at 5am, on the train at 7, then at work by 9:30 since I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and feel like I still have to work a full day even though it's not my normal hours since dinner reservations were at 5:30pm. I made it back to Penn by a little after 8 only to see my train is boarding NOW so I run for it, and make it back home by 10:45pm.

I loved seeing everyone again, and really do genuinely like my coworkers so it was fun, but exhausting. I also took the E train to the office in the morning and back to Penn at night and could see how the city has changed. There were cops and National Guard in the subway stations, so I didn't feel unsafe, plus I know how to always keep aware of my surroundings, but the amount of homeless sleeping on the street, in the stations, on stairs, and in Penn was unfortunate to see. There's so much that needs to be done to bring the city back to what it was when I left in 2019.

During the Great Recession the numbers of homeless I saw almost doubled, but that was relatively short-lived over about two years of the worst of it. This has been four years now since the pandemic started, and while there has been improvement, it is not the same place I left. In addition to the cost, I don't think I could move back, honestly, at least not the way it is. I felt at home on the subway, I miss the enforced exercise of walking everywhere (I made 10,000+ steps Thursday just doing regular commuting), and I miss just being able to be part of the daily chaos. But the trade-off wouldn't be worth it, especially knowing that it would be a more dangerous version of the city I would be coming back to.

I also was disappointed in NJ Transit, even more so than usual. The trains were on time, but were dirtier than usual from the floors to the windows. On the way back home, since I had to literally run to make the train, I found the car with the lavatory and...ew. I don't expect much, it's a train bathroom, but there was no TP, literal shit piled in the toilet, and no water or soap. Thank god I carry tissues and hand sanitizer nowadays. If I had to deal with that on a daily basis I would be looking for another job since it was worse then the Penn Station bathrooms used to be.

Things could be worse, of course, in so many ways, but I was mildly horrified. I'll have a low bar to cross next time I head to meet up with my coworkers though and hope that NYC and NJ Transit can surmount it and improve, for everyone's quality of life.