with Steven
Scofield, Richard Spivack, Lawrence Danziger and Ray Marzoll
The following is
a account provided by Eliot Shulman on January 2, 2007
I looked up whatever
information I still had on the subway trip, where we stopped at
every stop in the subway system (over 400). Apparently, we did it
in December of 1968, since the article in the Glen Oaks News is
dated January 2, 1969 and I know we did it at Christmas. At that
time the records were kept by MIT (the university) and I know that
one of us, I believe Larry Danziger, submitted all of the
information to both the NYC Transit Authority, for verification,
and then to MIT. I'm not sure the Guinness Book of World Records
was around then. If it was I don’t think we ever notified them
since it wasn’t a big deal at the time. We always went to the
first car on the train, so we could record the car number for
verification purposes.
An interesting fact
is that, shortly after we broke the record, several stations were
closed forever. Since then, some lines have gone out of existence
(the Jerome Avenue elevated line being one of them), at least one
or two new lines have opened (Archer Avenue in Queens, 63rd Street
Tunnel between Manhattan and Queens) so by definition our record
probably was never broken, since the system is no longer the same.
I scanned the
article from the Glen Oaks News, as well as the schedule we
followed for our trip. This is the copy of the schedule I carried
with me. I did not record the car numbers on it, as you can see,
and I know we actually made earlier trains on several occasions,
so we ended up beating our tentative time by about an hour or so.
The schedule was put together by Larry Danziger in cooperation
with the NYC Transit Authority, who were more than happy to
cooperate with us and give us details about train schedules.
Remember, this was before computers, cell phones, PDAs, etc.
from the January
2, 1969 issue of the Glen Rose - Bellerose - Floral Park News
By the way, I know
we beat the existing record at that time by over an hour and a
half, because the previous record holder called Larry, after
reading about it in the paper (the Long Island Press, now defunct,
ran an article about us on the front page, I believe). He was
quite upset that we beat him!
Some things I
remember at the time:
-
We encountered
quite a few friendly drunks on the train, who were more than
willing to share their booze with us
-
The Myrtle
Avenue line still used wooden trains at the time, which dated
from the 30’s, I believe
-
We spent about a
half hour sitting at an elevated station at the end of a line
in Brooklyn somewhere, with the doors on both sides of the
train wide open, the temperature in the teens and wind
whistling through the train car. I thought we were going to
freeze to death.
-
By the end of
the trip I could care less if we beat the record or not. I
just wanted some regular food and a warm bed.
Scans and content
from courtesy of Eliot Shulman
