Subway Brain Slap #2

Hey subway riders, if you thought that Radiohead bing-bong thing was totally crazy, see if this one moves ya:

To fully experience this brainslap, you'll have to take the 7 train over to the 42nd Street Grand Central stop. One notable aspect of the 7 train is that it runs about three stories below the Manhattan ground level, under all the other subway lines it happens to cross. When you get off the train, head over to the stairs in the center of the platform and make your way up to the surface. Climb a couple of flights and you'll see a longer than average escalator that'll take you up to the 4,5,6 trains and the shuttle. Get on this escalator, and prepare for some serious brainslapping.

For some reason, this ride totally warps the mind, destroys the balance, and succeeds in being TOTALLY AWESOME. At first, I wasn't sure how or why this works, but I think I've figured it out.

In short, the secret is in the tiles.

Normally, the tiles in escalator corridors look exactly as they would in regular hallways. That is, stacked perpendicularly to the actual ground level. But in this escalador's case, for some ungodly reason, all the corridor's tiles are slanted. As a result, all the tiles are perpendicular to the arm-rail of the escalator. Damn, I wish I could draw this out for you. Hopefully, this makes some sort of sense.

Anyway, soon you'll feel slightly dizzy, and if you look up towards the end of the stairway, it feels like you're leaning dangerously forward. Your first instinct is to lean backward, but you soon realize you've been standing normally the entire time, and leaning back would mean falling backward and killing yourself and probably some old woman who’s behind you. When you finally regain some composure and look back up the whole escalator, it all looks about fifty times steeper than you know it is in reality.

Apparently, I love things that make me feel weird, so I've thought about this long and hard, and here’s what I think is happening: Your brain is getting two different messages about which way is really down. Gravity is telling you that down is, well, down and there are no other downs than Gravity's down so calm down and shut up. The other message is coming from the slanted tiles. They’re all like, “Hey, there's a good possibility that down is actually not Gravity's down, but actually down is perpendicular to the handrail, which feels about 45 degrees slanted from Gravity's down.” Instead of choosing one message, your mind wavers back and forth and makes you go crazy until you feel all dull and happy. Or maybe you’re normal and won’t notice a damn thing.

So there it is, all longwinded and beautiful-like. For those of you who actually made it this far, my ATM pin is "camel." Enjoy. Be sure and check this whole thing out for yourself. But whatever you do, don't freak out. You might break the escalator. Like Geoff did.