Main Character Energy

It’s peak drama to sit in a Tang subway car crossing from Brooklyn to Manhattan. You leave the DeKalb Avenue station for the darkness of the tunnel, before the playful surprise of Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope installation emerges. In a few short minutes you are transported from the cinematic underground to the outdoors, 100 feet above the East River, Lower Manhattan slowly coming into view. It might as well be the opening credits to a rom-com. But New York City subway cars are about to get less romantic. It was only a matter of time. The roughly 1,700 model R46, R62, and R68 subway cars with seats the color of a range of orange drinks (Sunny D, Tang, Tropicana), and the L-shaped conversational seating arrangements are soon to be gone. At the end of 2024, the MTA announced it would be phasing out the cars, which have been in operation since the 1980s.

Investing in infrastructure is a love language (acts of service), but what I wouldn’t give for some romance or whimsy in the aesthetics of our public projects. That might be too much to ask (perfunctory but reliable subway service would be great). Still, there is something special about these sun-kissed quinquagenarians. Color theory tells us that orange tones make us feel happy and warm. When they were first introduced, the Tang cars marked a shift from a palette that skewed towards cooler shades of blue. Inescapable in the late 60s and 70s, orange signified transformation and vitality. The rising popularity of earthy tones like avocado green and burnt orange coincided with the birth of the environmental movement. The increasing availability of synthetic materials made it possible for designers to push the limits of plastics in furniture and appliances. The Panton chair wouldn’t look out of place on the Q or B. To ride in the rare wood-paneled car with orange seats today is to fully experience a retro-futurist modern basement suspended over the East River.

Trains need to run on time, be clean, and be safe. Anything less than that and the deficits, the lack of care, and potential failures (leaky ceilings, broken escalators, flooded stairwells) command all your attention. While it doesn’t fix anything, riding in an orange subway car, sunlight trickling in — bouncing off the scuffed-up chrome walls, casting a warm glow on the seats — at least provides a nice visual backdrop for whatever internal monologue or main character performance you’re playing out. You’re J.Lo in Maid In Manhattan making your way to the city to eventually fall in love with a future senator. Or maybe you’re Hannah Horvath from Girls, asleep on the subway only to wake up at the last stop in Coney Island, your purse gone, but still with a slice of wedding cake wrapped in tinfoil on your lap.

“Sitting in the two-person seat with someone you’re in love with is one of the top experiences New York has to offer. I’m outraged on behalf of all lovers,” read one of the many Tweets that poured in when the MTA first made the announcement. New Yorkers aren’t just mourning the loss of color, but the loss of intimacy. Your head on your lover’s shoulder, looking out into the distance. Your eyes falling on the telephone number scratched onto the edge of the seat perpendicular to you or the mysterious liquid pooling nearby. You’ve had a rough day at work that makes you question your life choices as you gaze out of the window from your own personal contemplative nook. As Charli XCX reminds us, “everything is romantic” in a city where the unspoken rule is not to make eye contact with strangers. The L-shaped seating arrangements are the transit versions of the ’70s conversation pit. How sweet that the designers of these subway cars thought that New Yorkers might want to talk to each other during their commute!

I will miss seeing the Tang seats in Subway Creatures clip roundups, music videos, and outfit-of-the-day posts. A neon green two-piece set will always look better against a citrus-colored backdrop. A touch of color in a subway car can make the mundane feel moodier, more atmospheric. Maybe that’s what these subway cars did best, injecting a sense of optimism in the drudgery of public transit. Even though you fell asleep on the subway and got your wallet stolen, possessed by the spirit of the “girl who is going to be okay,” you will ride back 15 stops on a Tang two-seater, gazing out the window, grounded in the knowledge that you have survived challenging things and that you will survive calling your bank, your credit card company, and a trip to the DMV.

The cool tones and harsh lighting of the MTA’s newest subway cars inspire no sentimentality in me. But I am excited about the performance art possibilities of open gangways. Imagine the “Showtime” crews flipping from one end of the train to the other. I’m sure an up-and-coming designer will stage a guerrilla New York Fashion Week show where models strut up and down the cars, posing for photos in the accordion bridge. The dark-blue fixed benches and yellow ADA flip up seats offer a subtle reminder that the MTA (and subway maintenance) is the responsibility of New York State. The cars are clean and will hopefully run on time by the grace of congestion pricing and a fully funded MTA capital budget. But I could do without so many screens. That the orange trains are analog means you get to skip the viral recipes, but don’t expect to be able to hear the conductor.

New Yorkers will eventually get over the loss of the orange seats. For devotees or industrious furniture designers, salvaged subway seats could be transformed into dining chairs, creating new citrus-colored spaces for conversation. I remember when the MTA phased out the Redbird trains in the early 2000s. If you’ve looked at a photo of tagged subways from the ’70s you’ve probably seen one. In fact, the trains were painted a bright brick red in the 1980s and ’90s as a way to deter graffiti. This crime deterrent provided a much-needed pop of color during my train rides to Brooklyn Junction as a kid. I have yet to find the romance in the newest MTA subway cars, but maybe love will find a way.