[Editor's Note: PubliCola's D.C. correspondent is taking a break from the politics beat. He's spending the summer in America's real capital city, Brooklyn, NY.]

All the magic of the subway is pretty much gone now that I actually have to use the subway to get to work everyday (a tragic development in my Brooklyn life I'll leave for another post). It's kind funny how fast the L can change from "that train that took me to that weird cemetery in New Lots" into "the train that is really fucking late every day." But hey, as short-lived as it was, I can't recall any other time in a my life I've had a for-real love affair with a public transit system.

I'm serious. First, I couldn't get over my enthusiasm for the history of the subway. For example, did you know you can tell whether a wall-mounted tile-mosaic station sign was made in 1904 or 1934, based on the pattern of the background, and whether or not the typeface has serifs? There have been generations of subway signage and route maps that have evolved throughout the years. I could spend all day reading about the transit blueprint of New York City and the 1972 Massimo Vignelli subway map . I'm in heaven.

This sign was made in 1928.

I live about a block from Morgan Avenue on the L train. At some point this stop must have served a thriving industrial community of leather manufacturers and brewers, but now the station looks like a bombed out leftover from a forgotten time. The fact that it even exists feels like a blessing, because Bushwick (my neighborhood) is essentially a row of cheap lofts converted from old factories, a cluster of "cold beer and cigarettes" convenience stores, and towering subsidized housing complexes branching from the spine of the subway tracks.

My hood. (Photos by Michael Fehrenbach.)

The first time I took a Sunday train ride to the end of the line, it was an uncharacteristically sunny day in a June full of March days. I had about 100 beers the night before at a bar deep in the fuzzy beard of hipster Williamsburg, and I was feeling a little worse for the wear. I boarded a number 1 train (which, in case you were wondering, was once owned by the Interborough Rapid Transit Companies, one of two pre-WWII subway companies eventually purchased by the city), and headed uptown.

There's something comforting about being ten feet under the ground with 50 strangers in a 30 foot train car. People board and others leave. The further you get from the stations in the financial district, at the tip of Manhattan, the more the look of people changes. By the time you get to the end of the line, in Brownsville, Brooklyn or Jamaica, Queens, you could be in a totally different country. This train was going to Kingsbridge, Bronx.

After getting elevated at the Bronx border, the train dropped me off at Van Cortlandt Park, which according to Wikipedia is a whopping 1,146 acres, and its only the fourth-largest park in New York City. It was beautiful and sunny.

I rode on to Canarsie, back in Brooklyn, and its main drag Rockaway Parkway.  I felt a weird cognitive disconnect with the whole area. For example, a store front with a sign that said "Beauty Products + Human Hair + African Movies." (I'm guessing "human hair" was the common denominator there.) The language of the landscape changes so often during one 15 minute ride it's impossible to keep track of what you've  seen. Like it could go on forever, horizontally and vertically.