Here’s a story bound to come to a Hallmark Channel near you: The man who set the Guinness World Record for visiting all 468 NYC subway stations in the fastest time is now racing trains from stop to stop.
Matthew Ahn, a “subway enthusiast” who is apparently more in touch with the outside world than most “enthusiasts” because he’s a lawyer and he clearly leaves the house, pulled off the stunt last week.
“The Flash” — which the eventual TV movie can’t be called, for obvious copyright reasons, not to mention unsavory memories of a New York City subway system gone by — did it by disembarking at the Chambers stop, running out of a station, dashing a few blocks above ground (cannily, not needing to negotiate red lights at all), then sprinting down into another station and running several more blocks underground. After all this, he tied the train’s arrival at the Park Place station. Total distance: five blocks.
Reddit users had some fun with the event, in the true New Yorker’s world-weary tone masquerading as “good humor”:
“Please swipe again
Please swipe again
Please swipe again
Swipe card again at this turnstile
Please swipe again,” wrote user chopper2585.
“How funny would it have been if … there would have been some of those slow people on the stairs taking up the entire stairs,” wrote lost_in_life_34.
“Race the D train, and you’ll have time to stop for a coffee halfway and still be waiting for it to arrive at the next stop,” wrote o2000.
This just leaves the matter of the TV movie’s name: “Train Man”? “The Loneliness of the Short-Distance Straphanger”? “Those Who Love Me Can Race the Train”? “The Taking of Chambers 1-2-3”?
As for Ahn, “Guys, I swear I’m done with train things for a while,” he wrote to accompany this YouTube video of his jaunt:
