NYT Metro Diary: Lament for a Live Subway Voice

"My New York wasn’t lost with the gentrification of the East Village — a once edgy, tattered, soulful neighborhood turned into a massive food court."

Or with the closing of CBGB, or the morphing of SoHo into a shopping center, with crowds to rival Times Square.

It was with the audio automation in the subway — that voice, like a computerized Verizon operator, intoning the stops. You could be in any city.

Where’s the man at the wheel who tells you it’s his birthday, gives a thumbnail history of Astor Place or barks, “Let’s Go Mets!” as he’s pulling into Willets Point?

Couldn’t they at least have given the robot a New York accent?

Is Spike Lee upset that longtime residents, like Trooper, might be choosing to leave the neighborhood?

"Speaking Tuesday night in Brooklyn, blocks away from his company headquarters and his father’s apartment, Spike Lee went off on how the neighborhood has changed. The filmmaker, wearing a Knicks beanie, orange socks, blue Nikes, and "Defend Brooklyn" hoodie, was at Pratt Institute for a lecture in honor of African American History Month, surrounded by locals, when he was nearly asked a question about “the other side” of the gentrification debate."

Partial transcript link.

Here’s the full audio, including the man’s response and Lee’s rebuttal: