morrigirl | The Artists Underground

Back on June 15th, while riding the 1 train up to my mother's house after my visit to Dr. Marin's office, something wholely unxexpected occured.

I was sitting in one of the seats right next to the car doors. At 66th Street (the stop closest to Lincoln Center, Juilliard, and Laguardia High School AKA the "Fame" school), this young woman, who could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old, wearing a pretty pink dress got on the train and immediately hugged the pole next to my seat. She had a shy yet flirtatious grin on her lips, as though she had just come from really fabulous first date. I tried to ignore her but she kept sighing dreamily, and her damn elbow was in my face so it was kind of hard to. I noticed that her eyes were fixed on some point at the other end of the car. The car wasn't crowded but there were enough people that I couldn't see what she was looking at.

Suddenly, from the other side of the car this very handsome young man about the same age as the girl hugging the pole, launched into the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet! It was fabulous! What made it even better was that they were actually good. They started at either end of the car and slowly worked their way to the middle. The two played half the scene before stopping and announcing "We are Shakespeare in the Subway! Any donations would be greatly appreciated." Now I've never been a fan of Shakespeare, but I just found the entire thing so lovely, so original, and so fun I gave them a ten.

I'm also giving them the award for New Yorkers of the Month for the month of June 2007.