Stench in Court Street Station?

By on February 16, 2010 4:45 pm in Environment, Transportation

We’ve received a reader complaint (I’ve deleted the comment, because it was off the topic of the post to which it was appended) that the Court Street subway station (M and R lines) “smells like a latrine.” Has anyone else noticed this?

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  • Peter

    The city must just be trying to keep the smells of the Court Street and Fulton Street stations uniform, that’s all.

  • x

    maybe some one pisses there at night.

  • GHB

    What do you expect? It’s a subway station, not a rose garden…

  • my2cents

    I was contemplating this general topic last week as I watched a woman step in what appeared to be human feces on the High Street A platform. I have never been so glad to see a train arrive…

  • Jason

    This morning was awful, definite urine stench.

  • Arch Stanton

    Aw, someone needs a wahambulance…. if you can’t take the smells of the big city, go back home.

  • jorale-man

    It’s comments like Arch’s ^ that keep NYC on the par of third-world country and not a first-class powerhouse city. You don’t find people treating the DC or Toronto or Berlin or Paris subways like a bathroom. New York’s should be no different. Basic cleanliness should be a top priority of the MTA regardless of its economic problems.

  • nabeguy

    It’s winter and some homeless people prefer the subways to the shelters. Given the MTA cutbacks, you better get used to the smells.

  • my2cents

    Arch, just watch your step, my friend. You might be the next one to be scraping excrement off your loafers.

  • x

    On another note, why do people eat peanuts or other shell-nuts and just toss the shells on the subway floor?

    How is that acceptable? Do they toss garbage on the floor of their own home?

  • Arch Stanton

    Jorale-man, Oh, you mean those cities with public restrooms in the stations? LOL

    I think, New York is a “first class powerhouse” city… However, the populace of NYC was once “tough-as-nails”… This city had an edge that set it apart from other places and dealing with it made us special… back in the day real New Yorkers wouldn’t let something like a bad smell become an issue… Fighters & survivors we natives are and that is a great attribute… Alas, the times have changed and much of the new wave of transplants are a bunch of wimpy, whiney, metrosexuals who are spoiled beyond belief…

  • HeightsDiva

    I agree. The other day I was looking around to see who had pooped there pants next to me. I didn’t really think the upscale looking man would do that, so I figured it had to be a station thing. :)

  • bornhere

    Arch — New York has been a big city for decades, and I would bet that many of us who were born here or have lived here for a lot of them find nothing noble or grand about how dilapidated and disgusting some aspects have become. There is nothing elitist or wussie about not wanting to embrace (for want of a better word) the filth and other pitiful conditions that plague the subways. When I wait for the R at Union Square and see tourists commenting on the track rats, I don’t feel particularly proud or tough or survivor-esque. And I sure don’t think that those of us who are turned off by really disgraceful subway conditions are spoiled. Really. Get serious. That the beautiful mosaics are almost obliterated by dirt does not fill me with pride, and neither does the fact that I can just about get from the R-train elevator to my office without gagging a badge of survivor-ness. Why some think it’s so cool to see how much ugliness and crap they can absorb in routine, day-to-day activities is beyond me.

  • nabeguy

    Arch, you’re such a tough guy. As a life-long New Yorker (going on 54 years), I get where you’re coming from. However, that doesn’t mean that my olfactory senses have gone dead. Your “back-in-the-day” reminiscences probably include riding on subways where you couldn’t tell what stop you were at because the windows were covered by graffiti. When Curtis Sliwa felt the need to fill he gap in subway security by forming the Guardian Angels.
    Yeah, I miss those days. These transplants don’t know how lucky they have it. “Just step over that pile and hold your nose, it’s New York after all!”

  • HeightsDiva

    Hey you boys haven’t seen anything until you’ve had a homeless perv follow you around trains with his d*ck out jacking off at you. I’ll take smelly any day.

  • nabeguy

    Bornhere +1

  • AEB

    Stale piss is stale piss–a (usually sudden) olfactory assault. As New Yorker, we like to think of ourselves as seen-it-all; still, my twice daily subway journeys, though by and large efficient, are often a kind of obstacle course of the aforementioned odeur, beggers, hostil fellow-riders, stalled trains…etc., etc.

    Not fun–and not character-building, either.

  • Teddy

    Arch has a point. As a native, I seem to have some “immunity” to the ills of the city that some transplants don’t.

    You have to be realistic here as nabeguy pointed out, it’s winter and some homeless people prefer the warmth & “shelter” of the subway. There are some things worth complaining about, this ain’t one of them. By the way, a few years ago I was in the Berlin subway (U-Bahn) and I saw a couple of drunks urinating on a wall. “Stuff” happens everywhere, maybe just a little more in this city.

  • WillowtownCop

    I know the general policy is a lecture or a ticket, not both, but that’s one I feel deserves both. Don’t be so quick to blame the homeless- 99% of them are drunken yuppies.

  • SCB

    It wasn’t stale piss, it was fresh poop.

  • xy

    If I see poop in the subway I look at it and study the curls and consistency with a passion, then try to figure out how it was done with all the foot traffic.

  • Arch Stanton

    xy, seen as a true New Yorker… a silver lining in every cloud…. aye

  • Arch Stanton

    bornhere, you said “nothing noble or grand about how dilapidated and disgusting some aspects have become” are you kidding me? “have become”… the city is so much cleaner and safer than it used to be, across the board nothing has become “more” dilapidated or disgusting, certainly not in my lifetime…. now Im not saying that’s a bad thing, sure I’d rather not have some olfactory assault when I’m out on the town… but at the same time the waning “hard edge” of the city has decreased it character… which I miss….

  • No One of Consequence

    The solution is so obvious… Drive!

  • David G

    I walk down the “Emergency Exit” stairs at the Court St stop because it’s faster then the elevator. Last week I ran past the homeless guy who was taking a piss against the wall. There are always puddles there and I wouldnt be surprised if it is all urine.

  • clark

    I saw a man pooping in the middle of the Clark Street station at 4pm on a sunday afternoon in october. No hiding, bare ass in the air and all… made me really sad for humanity.
    Funny thing was on the elevator ride up no one seemed to be phased that they just passed someone taking a dump.

  • Teddy

    Maybe the people on the elevator were not phased because most of them have probably seen it before (or something worse). When you live here long enough, you expect to see “something” every time you walk out your door. In other words, people are “prepared” to a certain degree.

  • x

    People have to go somewhere.. there is never an open bathroom in the subway stations. God bless those smelly bathrooms in Port Authority, Penn Station, and Grand Central, because when you gotta go, you gotta go!

  • jorale-man

    Again, I go back to my previous comment. Other major cities are able to keep their subway stations much cleaner. They all have their own problems with homelessness but they also staff their transit systems with enough workers to clean them regularly, and they don’t let them devolve into such a sad state in the first place. I guarantee you that if NYC’s subways were maintained like Stockholm’s or Paris’ or DC’s, there wouldn’t be the sense of permissiveness that it’s okay to relieve yourself in public there.

  • Arch Stanton

    jorale-man, clearly you haven’t been around this city very long, when you say the transit system has “devolved” It is much cleaner and safer than it was 20-30 years ago….
    As Teddy and WillowtownCop pointed out people do relieve themselves in other cities transit systems and it’s not always the homeless…. Furthermore, it is hard to make a comparison with other transit systems NYC”s is much larger and older than other cities… Also, this city is not as homogeneous population wise as Stockholm or Paris… That being said, it would be nice if the public bathrooms were reopened in the subway….

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