Added: 11 months ago
From: RailroadPacific
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  • Oh man :( I miss the graffiti-ed trains of the nyct

  • idk they had a K train

  • film is better than vhs

  • This a great capture of time and place.

  • OMG I could understand the guy on the loudspeaker!!!

  • amazing pictures and sound. thanks for posting! I have a D6C but not those expensive sounding mics you mention!, great stereo audio you've captured too - stereo really makes the footage come alive. I didn't see your music version but I would probably like it better the way it is now - unadulterated. I kinda like all the graffiti too, I think the location might look rather bland and dead without it. a real film art journal entry!

  • Fantastic video

  • WHAT-A-DUMP!

  • miss the graff on trains nowadays....

  • awesome

  • It was such a different city, than these days!

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  • THANK YOU! I've longed to see this classic NYC.

  • OMG how dirty those subways are...

  • NYC back then looked so classic!!

  • Why NY subway is SO DIRTY??

    I'm from Moscow, Russia. Just take a look on our subway (Metro) stations and sparkling clean trains.

  • @130513Patrick That was back in the 1980's. The subway today is much more cleaner than it used to be.

  • @130513Patrick in soviet russia you Don't drive car, car drives YOU

  • Even I was never in NY (by now) I have to say that I love the old NY, the city I saw in movies, back in time.

    Thank you for this video.

    Greetings from Romania.

  • Priceless footage of a long gone era. Well done!

    P.S. It's "Times Square."

  • nowadays nyc is full of ANNOYING YUPPIES AND HIPSTERS and frozen japanese yogurt stores!!

  • Subway sat not as safe as today back then

  • @rectorman1 I rode the subway a lot back in the 70's 80's and 90's and nothing happened to me....... EVER!!!! YOU JUST HAD TO BE STREET SMART.... yuppies / hipsters ruined NYC

  • so much graffiti lol

  • Wow. I remember riding these trains when I was kid. Especially, when the red birds were once painted white and also green. I remember riding a green train once or twice, but never again did i see one.

  • This is WILD! My first time in NYC was 1998 ... and I moved here this January. Cannot believe how graffiti-ed the trains and on the inside too. I'm in this station on an almost daily basis, so its amazing to see it in "another life". The signage is all different, yet I still recognize it. Thank you for this!

  • K Train?? CC??...WOW THIS MUST BE OLD

  • This is the TRUE New York (as well as the eras which preceded it). BEFORE politically-correct behavior, ridiculous store-chain monopolies, monotonous radio (Clear Channel) and ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OVERCROWDING the subways, buses and cities. People weren't scared to say what they mean and mean what they say (I still do this, in public) without hiding behind computers and ranting. Times Square was still XXX rated and not owned by DISNEY. Now, everyone tries to copy this era, but inauthentic.

  • @2conscious what are u smoking? there has been illegal immigration in America, since America was born!!! it started with the english who sneaked into Indian land illegaly, it continued with irish, italians, jews til nowadays mexicans.... god knows who'll be next.

    DONT U KNOW YOUR HISTORY?

  • @TheYaom Oh, my lord. Stick to the subject of NYC over-crowding. Because, as an African-American male, If I were born in North Africa, I could easily commit a crime and go on a rant in the courts about "the Arabs invaded and slaughtered the ORIGINAL, dark Africans and mixed with them and made the remaining a lower class". The question the judges would still ask: did you break an existing law? Yes or no. I know the history of the Americas and Africa, I'm talking about overpopulation

  • Lets see the hipsters survive this

  • It's 2:45 in the morning and I'm doing the same thing. I live in Texas

  • I'm up at 3:30 in the morning, watching clips of trains coming into the station in new york in 86, and I don't even live there, live in friggin Sweden, youtube's crasy

  • one question: Have the redbirds ever been so targetet of graffiti? Seems like they were always clean.

  • @mightyflux Graff artists try to write on trains even to this day. It's only because Transit has been so vigilant in keeping their subway cars buffed that you rarely, if ever, see it from the late-80s-present.

  • @mightyflux They were in the Clean Car Program. The Redbirds, Green R10s, The 24 R27s painted in the redbird paint scheme, and both the rebuilt and unrebuilt red R30s. Same with the stainless steel cars. If graffiti was spotted on them they were removed from service. 1 R17 car and 1 R21 car both painted green and 16 R17s painted in the redbird paint scheme were the only other single cars cleaned up except for the R33WF cars. The were retired in February of 1988 on the 5 line.

  • I am not stupid. Somebody got a time machine.

  • i can smell the crackheads

  • WOW i remeber the trains where White and then there was graffiti everywhere Now most of the trains are silver and the citty has cleaned up alot

  • D: I wouldn't ride the subway back then...

  • lol @ the guy at 5:10 missing the train

  • Wow, great job on this video. Not many videos out there of the subway system from the 70's and 80's. Wish there were more out there. It's what I grew up seeing and not ashamed to say that THIS is what gave N.Y.C. character. Otherwise, it probably would have been another boring big city.

  • U mean New York City (the most famous city in the world) ? When i look to this movie i see a garbage subway and durty stations, for many peoples NYC represent USA, the richest and most modern country in the world, how could the gouvernment leave the city like this ?

  • Truly excellent footage! I remember taking the subway for the first time as kid in 1988. Compared to the Metro here in Montreal, it was kinda scary with graffiti and lights flickering on and off. Imagine how lucky I felt to have rode on a couple of Redbirds in 2003 just before they mostly sunk or scrapped.

  • wow the subway train filled with graffiti inside and out looks creepy.

  • you got more subway footage from the 80s and early 1990s

    redbirds and R62s

  • i was there in 84. when America was great.

  • WOW! 25 YEARS LATER! WHAT DID I DO SINCE THEN IN MY LIFE TO IMPROVE MYSELF AND BE A BETTER PERSON, THAT IS THE QUESTION I MUST ASK MYSELF.

  • real ny

    

  • i came here to look at the graffiti lol

  • R.I.P the real New York City...

    Now it's for the rich only and you have very little rights and freedoms.

    A special thank you for the person who took the time to film and upload this...

    thank you...

  • @mtanyc wow, you are a poet!! You took what was in my heart and mind and put it into written form. People now don't understand that this is the reason NYC was so admired and feared. It was real, now it's like Disneyland.

  • @mtanyc Yeah.Surveillance everywhere, insane rent and housing prices, unique businesses closing, and a tyrant mayor :( If the person who made this video were to attempt this today, the transit police or the NYPD might beat him and hurl him into the nearest dungeon for the paranoid fear he was a terrorist spy. On the bright side, the subway cars are cleaner and more modern now, but the fare has gone up several times, probably double the fare, if even more by now, what it was in 86.

  • @mtanyc Yes, it's really fucked up that the city is much safer and cleaner now, what a shame, right...?! Dumbfuck.

  • @tokemarton go toke your marton again a get cancer you waste of life..

    you must have gotten gangbanged by a bunch of bikers and caught aids..hahaha dumbfuck

  • I was born and raised in NYC. I was a kid in the 80's and I always remember that there was a graffiti problem back then in the subways. But to actually see it again makes me realize just how bad it was. Wow. It's good to look back though, to see how it compares to present day. Thanks for posting your video.

  • i see the 2 always had newer cars than the 3

  • it might be a lot blander today - but the squalor is quite shocking from this perspecitive - I remember being quite unerved on my first subway ride in 1984 - and that was in the CBD area.

    Poor lighting also.

    Cant have been much fun being an employee in those days , spending all day in a vandalised environment.

  • Not sure if anyone else asked but do you have any footage of using the 8th ave crossunder using the LL platform? Never got to make it down there before they demolished it for this 7 extension.

  • wow i find this so astonishing :O Ive lived in New york my whole life (i was only born in 93 lol) so my earliest memories were on the redbird trains. Its crazy how much the subway as changed in 25 years!

  • I love this video. So much an open freeier time in New York, a person could be a street artist without being harasses, or a street vendor without going through bureacratic hell to get a license. I would love to have been there then. I'd rather be mugged than lose my precious liberties (;-

  • This is the subway I know and love! Great memories! Thanks for posting this!

  • I guess they only had black spraypaint in those days...

  • nice pieces

  • let the paint spray. real NY subway steezy

  • i'm kind obssesed with this year 'cause i was born in 1986 and i was looking for something interesting on you tube and i found your video, it is amazing i loved it so much!

  • @madgirl1986 oh man you're old.

  • love it!

  • Twins at 3:14??

  • The best film I have ever seen of the NYC subways, fantastic thank you for posting

  • I remember when R27 and R30s use to run on the J trains.

  • I was 3 when I saw these trains.

  • Wow, this is absolutely incredible. Thanks for providing it.

  • Thanks! I enjoyed it alot.

    That's how trains should look =)

  • This is so cool!!, I can see how the things were back in those days!! the graffiti marks the difference from those years n today!...I was born in the Bronx (april 86) but living in Dominican Rep since 10!

  • It's astonishing to me how DIRTY the subway was compared to now! (not that the MTA is sparkly clean or anything, but it's definitely an improvement). And the graffiti, it was out of control.

  • The subway looks crazy! No wonder everyone makes stereotypes.

  • CRACK ERA ... mets world series winnaz....

    ALPO... PREME TEAM... BOY GEORGE... KILLER BEN....

    i wish nyc was this violent again.....

  • i like trains.

  • wow.

  • This is great, if you have anymore besides the four you posted please post them.

  • thank you.

  • time machine

  • Do u have a video inside World Trade Center Station1980s-2000?

  • @Romerjon17

    I think I have some slides from this decade & location, -´I´m scaning my archive of slides in the next years...

  • @RailroadPacific Great :) I love to see 80s videos in America :) Sooo interesting :) Also did u record inside the Twin Towers :) Anyway I gonna subscribe you :)

  • Man Love the 70s and 80s and 90s :D

  • So ugly and untidy :S

  • I use the trains almost everyday, like any New Yorker who doesn't own a car and I have to say I'm so appreciative that the city cleaned up the subway system the way they did over the years, makes all the troubles MTA is currently having like degrading stations, budget issues, increased fares, seem insiginificant in comparison.

  • This is fucking classic, I was born this year. And yeah, NYC used to be dirty as fuck, it was even worse in the 70's.

    This was when my grandfather was still a train driver before he became a road track inspector and then a car mechanic supervisor.

    I think the new trains still have similar HVAC systems according to him, the outside just looks sleeker and shinier lol.

  • no cellphones......feels good man

  • nice, they really cleaned those things up since then, I think it still smells like 1986 though...

  • This is wonderful!

  • nope so ugly

  • Tokens!!! remember those? I remember lookin on the floor because I didnt have enough for token and some lady was nice enough to give me one...now we have these defective metrocards lol

  • Cool videos man

  • I love how nobody cared they were being filmed then, just goes to show how times have changed, and how society sucks now. 

  • oh they were painting on trains now they are more civilization

  • 1986: the year i started attending the high school of music & art in manhattan, which meant a daily subway commute from brooklyn. this is exactly how i remember it!! (except for the sounds of XTC, queen, elvis costello and squeeze in my walkman headphones.) thank you for your foresight!

  • do this type of filming today and they would call u a terrorist. its all good, nothing interesting to see in nyc today anyways. u filmed it in its prime.

  • I think it was worth it to add in the original sound - just makes it feel "whole", especially for someone like me who wasn't around in '86 yet.

  • watching this video i feel like i can smell and feel the atmosphere of the NYC subway

  • i was born in 87

  • wow it was dirty even when it first opened up ?

  • Not a laptop, earbud, or cell phone ion sight. :)

  • The subway totally looks like it does in "The Warriors". I love NYC (been there twice) and I love this video, many thanks for sharing.

  • omg that's awesome

  • A lot of good movies came out in 1986. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Top Gun, Pretty in Pink, Little Shop of Horrors, Labyrinth...

  • The state of the trains looks like something from a post apocalyptic movie!

  • this is awesome. man ppl tagged everything up back in the day.

  • now i understand why my mom hates the subway

    thank god they've cleaned that shit up

  • @DanaPaige22 It was the late 70s to mid 80s that it was noticeably that much graffiti. They might have cleaned it up, but everything now is still shitty. Announcements on all subway trains were audible and understandable (unlike nowadays). There might have been grafitti, but today there are more assholes bringing food and drinks and spilling it all over the floor then walking away.

  • @Schwhat Oh, the newer trains have recorded announcements now, they're even better!!

  • I was six then, funny how nothing ever changes. Its all go, as they say. Happily I've chosen a different path.

  • Olha o piche da minha avó aí

  • i can smell the urine.

  • mmm these warm analog colours...

  • time is such an interesting thing

  • This is great footage and certainly brings back a lot of memories

  • Isn't 42nd abondond now?

  • @NeverlessNintendo Not hardly.

  • shoulder pads!! i just saw shoulder pads

  • Damn, I was just a little nut stain in my daddy's underwear when this was record.

  • this is good no narration just the feel of the city

  • yes it's definitely an '86 the graffiti is the giveaway

  • No jeans?

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  • wow

  • Reminds me of The Warriors

  • Lol is it bad that the first thing i thought of was that "sarah palins alaska" didnt exist? hahaha that mustve been nice

  • Sorry lol.. meant to say that your camera gave you awsome results. looks like a real 70s hollywood film

  • WOW.........................O MY FREAKIN LORD.

  • Amazing video. Brought memory when I was young and riding the trains looking like this. Not to mention in the beginning at 42nd street you see the staircase which are no longer there to access lower level. Watching trains in the late 70's and early 80's was so much fun.

  • Looks like a thriller video.

  • very eerie and unsafe.

  • @all

    I have added two new movies, same style, unspectacular , the typical perspective of a tourist in this June of 1986.

    NYC Chinatown market @ youtube.com/watch?v=wXURd-5U9Y­c

    NYC WTC outlook @ youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6UDT8p1R­E

    I´m very happy to see how much fun this videos give to you! Thank you for the big feetback from Munich!!!!!!!!!

  • @RailroadPacific wow... this takes me back, i was 5. all i could remember was how loud it was then, the rumbling shook your whole body. it felt like the ground was sliding and moving..

  • @RailroadPacific omg i love u !!

    sooooooooooo tuffffffffffffff

    reminisces about the CRAK DAYS " my 86 style Now "

  • The graffiti at 5:51 could be an animation :)

  • @copilot7777 Can it you proto-fascist fucktard

  • the subway looks so empty! and it's full of graffitis

  • 42

  • The R32 had door chimes?

  • its funny how the a train still looks the same

  • When my friends were telling me that they believed in America and it's population i always told then to go visit New Yuck (aka the city of ghetto rats) They did and all hated it. It's not worth losing your life to some baboon-looking Afrikanoid over a few "attactions"! Wow. "the capital of the world" is just another example of yanks inventing their own american dictionary. NY never had any class I feel sorry for a few hard working blacks and whites

  • @copilot7777 lol if you hating on the greatest city in the world where are you from

  • @DaKillerBizcuit nyc hasnt been a great city in decades

  • @Love4SK well everyone is entitled to their opinions

  • @copilot7777 What made it the greatest city? - The hard working people from all over the world, not the welfare addicted underclas that we call "underprivileged". Lets tell the truth - too many people of color who don't have any education and skills; too many undereducated whites; too many ghetto criminals who terrorize the streets. Because of colored criminals and their crime rate, huge resoursed are diverted to police and big areas stay UNDERDEVELOPED cause no one wants to move in

  • @copilot7777 This is exactly how most empires have crumbled - from within. This time it gonna be the libtards-ghetto people's fault. No one believes that NY can be turned into Hong Kong, and this is the problem - people have no faith, just knowledge and that is not enough. You need 1000 Rudy Giulianis to rebuild this city's crumbling infrastructure and to clean brooklyn, Bronx and Queens of it's criminals, even if it would take forced relocation of these subhumans. NY has cancer - treatment?

  • Its funny to see people get all nostalgic about graffiti now but back then, most people hated it. It seemed like the only ones who liked it were the ones who were doing it. By 1986, all the graffiti looked terrible to me. That's one part of "old New York" that I don't really miss that much.

  • This video is hilarious with the 1911 filter.

  • @bblasphemous what is the 1911 filter ?

  • you can actually hear the loudspeaker!

  • I remember the squealing used to be so loud and the sparks use to fly on the tracks as well. NYC subways were the pits back then... how much was a token in 1986? It must have been 75 cents... i remember there was an uproar when it went to a $1.00

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  • i live in nyc and it seriously looks the same, just washed off the cool graffiti of the trains

  • @ ghostdein1,

    I lived through those times, I was a NYCTA Conductor. They were, despite the look of things, our finest hour!

  • @inE5C4P3able are you kidding me, how is that? i was born in the early 80s and i have too say i never heard a day go by with out hearing something bad happen in the subway back than, rapes, murders, robberies, all at a all time high than it was so bad my parents didnt take me on train rides anywhere for years, i hated the smell of the trains and subways back than and not one ever cleaned anything ever it stayed that way for over ten years untill the 90s than i saw a big change, i

  • @chrisjct

    I should have been more clear; it was incredibly difficult to operate 40 year old, poorly maintained equipment. The railroad itself in terrible condition as well. Our finest hour meaning, for we, the crews who daily performed feats of amazing mechanical skill. It WAS pure hell for the passengers, but again; something of a miracle a train got down the road at all. 

  • Weird seeing people on a subway platform with nobody looking down at their phone or with headphones in their ears...

  • Amazing. Simply amazing to see what the subway was like when I was a kid, and remember all of this, to where it is now. It's night and day. Thank you so much for taking me back to my childhood with this video.

  • First time I visited US was in 86 : ) wow I remember and NY does not look anything like this now lmao!

  • So Love this, The graffiti just adds so much character to the film, Today the trains just looks so clinical.

    The Graffiti will never die, it still gets done, I Hope it returns again in force,But I don't think it would be as magical has back then in the day with the styles

    Thanks for uploading, Its a great help to me, I'm painting a series of paintings about the NYC Subway of the 80's.

    With portraits etc, of the writers as they look now.

    Great Ref for my work, of the Subway back in the 80s.

    pZ

  • This is amazing. just a few years before the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority implemented a “clean train” policy which removed all trains featuring graffiti tagging off the tracks for good. 

  • Clearly, things have improved. The trains today are all clean and graffiti free for the most part, the brakes are not noisy on today's trains for the most part and things are generally cleaner and brighter in the stations. What hasn't changed is people - they were just as dour then as they are now. In the summer of 1986 I was 21 and worked in Long Island City. I used to ride the 7 train from 33rd/Rawson to Times Square all the time to make deliveries and pick up checks.