On Friday morning, a tip started circulating among the city's reporters: Mayor Eric Adams would be giving a subway tour to the Trump administration's Transportation Department secretary, Sean Duffy, the former reality TV star from Wisconsin who recently called the New York City's public transit system a "shithole," and threatened to defund the city's transit system over crime (which is down) and end congestion pricing (while demonstrating he has no idea how the tolling plan actually works).
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According to the tip, Duffy and the mayor would be at Brooklyn's Borough Hall station, which is currently in the midst of a makeover.
So I headed to the station shortly before 11 a.m. The mayor and Duffy were rumored to be arriving on a Brooklyn-bound 2/3 train from Clark Street as part of their sweeping, one-stop "tour" of the system.
The first sign that no one knew what the fuck was going on? When I got there, a MTA media liaison was also lingering on the platform, hoping he was in the right spot. "This is the mayor's thing," he said. "We're out of the loop, not part of it at all."
As we waited, I talked to some straphangers. What did they think of Duffy's "shithole" comments? "I take it with a grain of salt," said Jim G., while waiting for his train. "I don't think it's a shithole. Aspects could be improved, but it's not a perfect world."
Members of the advocacy organization Transportation Alternatives were also there, hoping to confront Duffy themselves. "When someone calls our transport system a 'shithole,' we turn up to tell him to go fuck yourself," the group's Steve Flack said.
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