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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  • Cranky

    I noticed the smell and it’s pretty bad. Seems pretty recent too.

  • my2cents

    Joale-man, there is one big big difference between NYC’s subway and those of every other major city: Ours never closes.
    Every other city closes late at night if only for a few precious hours for cleaning and maintenance. I think this is the cardinal reason why our subways are filthy and we are constantly inconvenienced by track work on weekends. Any comparison of our Subway to another must take that fact into account. Ours runs 24/7. Theirs doesn’t.

  • othersideofthebridge

    One time the elevators for the R train at the Montague Street entrance wasn’t working so I decided to take the stairs… I’ve never smelled anything like that before in my life. And although the elevator ride seems really short, I almost passed out holding my breath walking down that neverending spiraling staircase. I was greeted by a bum masturbating at the bottom of the stairs.

  • epc

    The other major cities you list actually fund their metro systems and don’t play a hysterical game of Idontwannapay every six months. In NYC no one wants to pay for the subway, and the result is self–evident.

    You want the subway cleaned up? Challenge Squadron & Millman for per-capita parity in transit funding. Otherwise you’re just sniffing fetid air.

  • http://www.yucknuts.com yuck

    the court st. stop mentioned here has an 8-flight stairway you must use if you want to avoid the elevators. homeless people are using it for a restroom and the city is nowhwere to be found.

  • harumph

    I guess I don’t get everyone’s attitude that if you live in a big city you just have to deal with stench and filth. As mentioned before, at one point the attitude was, if you live in a big city like NYC just get use to graffiti filled subways – it is all about perception and expectations. Court street station is decaying from pure neglect. It doesn’t have to be this way and shouldn’t be this way. The MTA cut backs clearly make a difference.

  • Bartmann

    I take the Court Street R train every day so I’m well acquainted with the odor from the stairwell.

    During the winter the stairway serves as a homeless shelter. One homeless African-American in particular actually lives in the subway stairs from about November to April. I see him every morning when I walk down the stairs and he’s there in the morning when I walk down the stairs and in the evenings when I walk up the stairs. He has a big black shopping back that he keeps all his stuff in. In the stairwell he only urinates, normally he not defecate in the stairwell unless he has diarrhea. He usually defecates on the platform behind the stairs closest to the tunnel. To pass the time he plays dice against the walls of the stairway. On occasion he reads comic books and smokes cigarettes. Somehow he has managed to get one of those MTA vests: orange mesh vest with flourescent strips. So this allows him unlimited entry into the subway because he looks like a subway employee.

    When a token booth clerk was at the station, a sanitary engineer would clean the stairs about once every five weeks. So a least the homeless man was forced to vacate until the next cleaning. However, since the MTA closed that token booth, the stairs have been cleaned only once since November. As a result the he has been there all winter non-stop.

    One time while I was waiting on the subway platform I saw sanitary engineer collecting garbage. I walked to him and asked, “Excuse me sir. There’s a fellow who lives in the stairwell and has made quite a mess.” The sanitary engineer was not amused. He turned his back and went the other way.

    It can be tricky passing him while he sleeps on the stairs because the area right around him is oily. One time a girl was walking ahead of me and as she tried to pass him she slipped and landed on her ankle. I helped her down the rest of the stairs and she seemed shaken but fine. It is strange to pass by him because I feel like I’m walking through his studio apartment. He seems harmless but if I were not big, strong, and agressive man, I would be scared of taking the stairs every day.

    When the weather gets warmer he makes his his lair outside by the Appellate Court on the corner of Monroe and Pierrepont.

    The stench of urine and defecation will only get stronger as the weather gets warmer.

    Bartmann

  • othersideofthebridge

    I’m all for exercise but you seriously walk up and down those stairs everyday and deal with that smell???

  • Arch Stanton

    Has anyone called 311?

  • http://inklake.typepad.com Peter

    FWIW, I use that stairway regularly, and in fact there was a guy there today – but he was busy writing a letter or something. I just try not to touch them.

    Those puddles though, are usually bleach that the maintenance people pour there every day.

  • http://www.wizardnuts.com gross!

    bleach? what are you smoking? that’s piss!
    the whole reason i posted this yesterday was to encourage people to call 311.

  • jorale-man

    Harumph, well put. I realize that it’s not practical to compare NYC to European capitals in particular, where there is adequate funding and a general support for maintaining public works projects. And yes, DC’s and Toronto’s systems are much newer, without the creaking infrastructure of New York’s. That being said, I do think one shouldn’t somehow equate urban living with filth. We wouldn’t accept people urinating in our apartment buildings, in our offices, or in the restaurants and stores we patronize. Shouldn’t be any more acceptable in the way we travel.

  • othersideofthebridge

    I’m not sure if funding is an MTA issue rather than a homeless shelter issue. Regardless of how new DC or Toronto systems are, I’m venturing to bet people aren’t shitting in the middle of the platform in the first place for there to be a need to clean it up.

  • ratNYC

    I don’t mean to justify the condition of the NYC subway stations, but whoever said the Paris Metro is clean and does not smell has clearly never been in Paris long enough. I’ve never smelled a subway station in NYC which smelled as bad as some Metro stations smell in Paris. Period. And did I mention the poodle poop all over the city, and human feces at open air on Place des Vosges, just outside of Victor Hugo’s Mansion, Place Royale?

  • nabeguy

    I can’t believe how many people have related tales of subway dumping, and the complacency towards it. The one and only time I witnessed it at the West 4th Street Station (the person had a roll of toilet paper, no less), I was so offended that I found myself screaming my head off at the person, to the point that they almost fell backwards into the tracks. I’m sorry, but accepting this kind of behavior does not make you a true New Yorker…complaining about it does.

  • AEB

    OK, cross my palm with pastry and I’ll tell you an experience I had in the local subway that out-grosses anything related so far.

    Teaser: it involved a deranged woman and menstrual blood.

    Hers.

    Do I have any takers?

  • yourmom

    i walk the stairs at court R twice most days, once in the morning and once in the evening. i’m in complete agreement with bartmann, the man living in the stairs seems to be harmless, but since they aren’t cleaning the stairs as often the stench is getting bad. i too have said something to both the person who occasionally clears the trash, the booth clerk at the 2/3 end of the station (the day there were three people sleeping on the stairs), and a random cop hanging out on the platform one day. none of them seemed to care.

    honestly, this could be a potentially dangerous situation; this man seems harmless but the way things are anyone could be living there.

  • WillowtownCop

    AEB: you will never top the story of the time someone threw a colostomy bag at me.

    In re: saying something to the cop and him not doing anything, you have to remember that smelling bad or being homeless is not in and of itself a legal reason for ejecting someone from the subway system. They have the same rights as everyone else. They have to be actually observed by the officer violating a transit regulation. It is not enough that a witness saw it; the cop must have seen it himself.

  • nabeguy

    Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have read this thread while eating lunch. Thanks for the image Willowtown!

  • ForTheGirls

    Boys boys boys!
    This is all fine and nice, those of you that pass by these scary homeless men on a daily basis. But have you thought about your daughters, wives, sisters, moms? One of these little encounters could be something much more serious. Please don’t just put up with it because you think it’s the ‘New York way of life’, it’s a serious problem that can lead to serious consequences if someone doesn’t make it clear to the MTA.

  • WillowtownCop

    For The Girls: who are you calling a boy? I guess sexism is alive and well on the BH blog. Anyway, women especially need to learn how to defend themselves (including avoiding problems to begin with like not walking down the street totally oblivious to everything but your iphone); I’m sure I could do better, even unarmed, that some of what passes for “men” these days …

  • Joe

    I once saw a woman breastfeed her child on the subway. Normally I wouldn’t bat an eye at this but she was screaming curses at the other subway riders, glaring at everyone and cocking her finger like she was shooting a gun at everyone’s head. And did I mention the child she was breastfeeding looked like he was 4 yo? The boy had pulled her entire shirt up so you can see her exposed breasts which resembled two crinkled oily prunes. She had 3 other children with her who were all unkempt. The oldest boy looked so embarrassed he kept looking at the floor. When she left the car, a guy in the car yelled “What the f**k was that!” Surreal everywhere else but just a NY moment here.

  • nelson

    Joe….Yikes! Say, how about getting the “preacher” who yells dooms day on the Court St. platform to clean up the urine. And yes, there is a strong stench of urine at this station which has become more noticeable since the booth has been closed.

  • harumph

    the stench has become more noticeable even since this thread has started!

  • George

    Thanks to this thread, I know that I can take advantage of the lack of enforcement to use the Court St. station as a public restroom. I guess I’m not the only new user!

  • nabeguy

    Thanks for the laugh, harumph.

  • WillowtownCop

    Am I the only person who can’t smell it? I guess I spend too much time in project elevators.

  • nabeguy

    Not for nothing willowtown, but that last comment was uncalled for and not worthy of you. And you know it.

  • WillowtownCop

    Perhaps my comment was not PC. But in the context of a group of people who live in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in one of the most expensive cities on the planet sitting around on their Mac Books whining about a homeless person who might or might not (to my knowledge no eyewitnesses have come forward) be using “their” subway station for a latrine when the man literally cannot afford a pot to p@#$ in, and the fact that the police have done nothing to run him out of town, I think my comment was quite tame. And you and I both participated in the discussion.

  • Arch Stanton

    WillowtownCop,

    Touché… You can’t always be PC when you are speaking the truth…

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