Transcript of Episode 1: Nice to Meet You

New York is a monster of a city. The tallest, the biggest, the best, the worst, the most, as if it's constructed from superlatives. New York's power, for better or worse, has always rumbled across the country, across the oceans. Just the idea of it can be intimidating. But then you start talking to New Yorkers, and you realize their lives, their concerns, are regular-sized. Human scale. Like this guy I met, Christopher Santana. He works at Grand Central. Either you've been to Grand Central or you've seen it in the movies. It's the huge train station with the glorious painted ceiling of zodiac constellations and a lot of brass everywhere. I'd gone there with a photographer who was doing a project for The New York Times about jobs that only exist in New York City. Chris Santana's job is to polish the brass at Grand Central, a job That's unfinishable because the polish doesn't last. A brass handrail, forget it. Fingerprints. You're gonna kill the next person who puts their hand on this rail.

Oh God. I try not to look at the areas I did the next day 'cause then I'm gonna be really upset. Is that true?

Yeah, I don't.

I try not to.

But Chris likes this work. It's relaxing, he said. Gives him time to think. Because let's face it, polishing brass, It's kind of boring. Only slightly less boring than explaining how to polish brass.

It's like a lot of rubbing. It's a lot of, you know, it's cleaning. So it's a lot of rubbing and a lot of, well, we could say polishing. It's a lot of polishing.

I mean, what was I expecting? Though I will say, as someone who's polished a lot of brass myself, I used to work in an antique store, one thing did interest me, which is that he doesn't use a rag or anything to put the polish on the brass. He wears one of those thin surgical gloves and then rubs the polish on the brass directly.

Wait, you're using your hand?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got really strong hands, but funny enough, my handshake sucks.

What do you mean your handshake sucks?

I have a strong grip, but I don't have a good handshake.

Why not?

I don't know.

Christopher Santana, a son of Brooklyn, caretaker of one of New York City's grandest civic monuments. This is what he's worrying about while he's polishing brass at Grand Central.

I don't know what it is, or maybe I just don't wanna— sometimes somebody will catch me off guard and I have small hands, so maybe that, that could be it.

What?

That doesn't make any sense.

Doesn't justify it, no?

No.

No?

But what it is, if you got a guy with bigger hands, it's gonna swallow your small hand.

So yeah, you know what, it sounds like you have feelings about your hands and that's making your hands— making you insecure about your handshake.

Yeah, so I developed a little workout where I grab a broomstick and I turn it like this. And what it does is strengthens the areas around the wrist so when I— when you give me a handshake and I can get you before you get me.

I think of a handshake as a gesture of goodwill toward my fellow man. Chris thinks of it as a quick-draw contest, mano a mano. You gotta get to the grip before the other guy does.

If you don't get to the grip, you're screwed. Like, you wanna just show some type of— like, I don't know if you've ever seen President Trump, the way he shakes somebody's hand. He's a huge guy, but he pulls you right in. Like, he'll pull you in.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Chris mentions this a few more times as he works on the handrail along a side staircase. His little hands, his wrong handshake, how maybe the forearm workout he gets polishing the brass will improve the handshake. There's another guy who polishes at Grand Central, Alvin. Great guy, big forearms.

His forearms are huge.

His handshake?

Solid.

Once Chris is done with the handrail, we practice. Hi, I'm Sarah.

Nice to meet you.

Yeah, but no, you're doing that on purpose.

Doing what on purpose?

You shake me.

Let my body shake.

No, negative.

Wait, what?

Do it again.

Maybe— oh, oh my God. How you been?

How's everything?

Okay.

That's firm.

Yeah, I know my handshake is firm. It's his handshake that's the problem. Next, he tries putting both his hands on my hand. Overly intimate. That's weird.

And then—

no, but that's weird. We try a third time. All right, so if you're just like, hi, I'm Sarah.

Hello.

Nice to meet you.

And he does the Trumpy thing of trying to pull me toward him. No, but you wouldn't do that normally.

No, but—

Do it normal.

I'm saying do it normal. Hi. It's the finger.

That's what's weird.

Okay, let me—

I've ident—

there!

There you go.

He's extending his index finger along the bottom of my wrist instead of tucking it into the shake.

It's the finger.

Don't do that. I'm always shaking guys'—

men's hands.

You do that with your finger? Yeah, see, he has a first finger. No, don't do that.

Watch.

Nice to meet you.

Where's your finger? Oh, that's—

It's a strong grip. What happened?

Now I got the grip, and now I, you know, I could show you like, hey, I'm the man. I'm gonna hire you.

I'm boss.

Maybe you relate to Chris's testosteronic handshake problem. Maybe you don't. But if you don't, I guarantee there's some New Yorker in Grand Central right now whose worries you can relate to. Mathematically, that's gotta be true. It's what I love most about New York, and it's why we're making this new show called Metro, all about New York City. The sheer size of New York City means that every kind of person is here, every kind of American weirdness, every kind of American conflict, every concern. Check out the things New Yorkers talk about in bars, for instance. In Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, at the Tip Top Bar and Grill, the longtime manager is worried about the cost of living. The bottom line is, In 20 years, if you ain't rich, you ain't gonna be in New York.

No, that's right. It's going the whole other way.

At an Irish pub on the Upper West Side, the worry is crime.

That's my big issue— safety. New York Manhattanites, we're targets. Every day you read about something going wrong on the subway, somebody getting pushed. Somebody getting attacked, somebody getting slashed. If she pushes me one more time, I'm gonna punch her.

He's talking about a waitress who's trying to keep the aisle clear. Downtown in the West Village at Johnny's Bar, the owner is worried about the city changing around him. His customers seem younger, corporate. They talk about golf. Nobody even comes in till after 5 o'clock.

It's been weird in the daytime. Empty.

He tells my colleague Janelle Peifer the day drinkers have vanished.

But it's a dying breed, you know.

Is that bad that day drinking is happening less?

Um...

Gently, he sidesteps Janelle's question. Some people were just lonely, he says. You know how lonely New York can be. Yeah, Janelle says.

Right now, I would like to have more sex than I want.

At an ad hoc meetup in Tribeca, people are worried about how much sex they're having.

But in truth, I'm not really feeling like I want that much. And so, in reality, I am content with the amount of sex I'm having right now. However, I'm not content with the desire that I'm not having.

Or I guess they're worried about not being worried about how much sex they're having.

You want to want more?

Exactly.

Yeah. Yes.

I recently read Jonathan Mahler's book, The Gods of New York, about how a series of crises in the late '80s melted what he calls the city's civic glue. During the era that launched Spike Lee and Larry Kramer, Al Sharpton and Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, the city's common identity cracked apart. The promise of New York had always been the promise of America. It was, in aspiration, if not always in reality, the place that proved the value of the American experiment, a place where anyone belonged and could succeed. In the span of one generation, you could rise from tenement poor to Park Avenue rich. After the late '80s, Mahler writes, that version of New York withered. A city that had once aspired to provide a safety net and foothold to all of its residents became a gladiatorial arena for with the biggest appetites, the loudest voices, and the most outsized ambitions. Mahler, who writes for The New York Times Magazine, argues that what happened to New York in the late '80s foreshadowed the transformation of the broader nation. New York saw it all first. I'd argue that New York is again at a crossroads. It feels like something is happening here.

The Knicks won the NBA championship after 53 years.

New York! New York!

Murders and shootings are at their lowest numbers in recorded history. The town that brought you junk bonds and Donald Trump has now elected a socialist mayor.

I'm very honored.

Our mayor, Mayor Soyer, who wants to make buses free and housing cheaper.

The watchword of his campaign was affordability, a term that pinballed across national politics once it landed in New York. Over the next decade, city government will build 200,000 new affordable rental units. Are you a fan of the mayor?

Eh, I don't hate him.

Do the sex! Do the sex! Do the sex!

Whether the new mayor will succeed, whether New York can ever again become a place where a normal person can live a normal life on a normal salary, whether this really is a crossroads for the city or more just talking, I don't know. I got no expertise here. I'm just a second-generation New Yorker with a feeling. But what I do have is tantalizing proximity to people who are experts, the reporters who cover New York City for The New York Times, the Metro Desk. Serial's part of The Times. We work out of the huge New York Times building in Times Square. And so we thought, us audio people are sitting right here, those Metro reporters are sitting right over there, we should team up and make a show about New York, or really, about New Yorkers. For months now, we've been hanging around the Metro Desk and going out on stories with Metro reporters. Tagging along while they cold-called and door knocked, they brought us into all these different worlds.

Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Jan, and I'm a reporter with The New York Times. I was looking for Lamine.

Jan Ransom was working on the definitive story of Jeffrey Epstein's death inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, MCC.

Okay. And I just want to make sure I have the right Lamine. He was the former warden at MCC?

Yeah.

Lamine's not home. The woman at the door doesn't want to be rude, but there are dogs inside pawing at the door who will be all over Jan if she opens up.

Oh, Lord, I don't want that. I'm just gonna— well, I don't want it to blow away, so I'm just gonna put it under the mat.

She leaves a note and her business card for the former warden. Maybe he'll call.

Hi, Father Mann.

Reporter Nicole Hong is on the phone with a Catholic priest in Queens.

I'm here with my colleague outside your door right now. We're just—

The priest is a friend of Donald Trump's. He's rumored to have helped secure clemency for a private equity executive convicted of major fraud.

Please leave.

Well, we—

I just wanted to—

I'm not interested.

I'm not interested.

Yeah, I understand. I just, um, wanted to let you know—

Okay. Well—

Dionne from The New York Times.

Hi, how are you?

Sorry to bother you.

Nice to meet you. At an art gallery, Dionne Searcy's schmoozing at an event put on by a fashion magazine.

Hey, so I write about wealth and power in New York. And so I just kind of come into the event just to see who's here and see what people are talking about, really.

I just bought a huge house in Newport, Rhode Island.

You did?

Yeah.

Oh, that sounds really nice, says Dionne.

That's great.

I have a lot of great houses. I have a castle and Great Baring kidnap.

You own a castle?

By Stanford White.

Wow.

That's incredible. What do you do in the castle?

1880. Decorate, live, enjoy it. It has 80 acres in the middle of town.

That must be nice for creating art there.

Big national stories about crime, politics, corruption, extreme wealth. In New York City, those stories often happen to be local stories. Metro stories. Other times, a metro story really is just local, with its own specific New York smell.

Are you looking for a company called Super Plumbers?

Super Plumbers?

Yeah.

Meher Zaveri is logging serious hours traipsing all over the city.

Looking for a mysterious plumber who has worked a truly mind-boggling number of overtime hours for the public housing system. And—

And Mihir cannot let it go. This one plumber put in for more than 2,500 hours of overtime last year, more than any other city employee. That's something like 7 extra hours every single day. The guy's making a mint. What is going on? Maybe Mihir's just about to find out.

This is the moment I've been waiting for, for, I don't know, like a few months here.

Me too.

This right here is my dream beat. Use this extraordinary city to tell stories about all sorts of people and what they're going through right now. Every other week, I'll be here with interviews, investigations, essays. We're gonna go all over town and get the people who know this city best to show us the ropes so we all feel like locals. Back at Grand Central, Chris Santana's done for the day. He's polished an ornate brass litter box, a brass panel inside the central information booth, the long handrail. He gathers his stuff and we walk to the main concourse.

Just drop it here, partner. Just go upstairs, wash up a bit.

Photographer Juan Arredondo is there too. Juan and Chris say goodbye.

Juan. Okay, man.

See, like what?

Wait. See?

See?

But I was—

They had a spontaneous farewell shake and it didn't go well.

He got me though.

Chris claims he was unprepared. We try one last time.

That's good.

Bingo.

That's good. I think that's good for me. I don't think you have to be shy to do it stronger.

Yeah.

I think you're worried about you're gonna like—

No, no pulling. No.

Don't do the finger thing.

Yeah, that's weird.

No, I think you have a really good handshake. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, I think you're good. Oh boy.

No fingers and no pulling.

No.

That's bad conversation.

No.

I swear I have nothing to do with this song starting. It was an all-natural gift from the jazz man who'd set up down the concourse. So here we go. Let's shake on it. Put her there. I'm boss. From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is Sarah Koenig and our new show, Metro. Episode 2 is out now. You can hit play right away or listen to it later wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Metro, the very first episode, was produced by Janelle Peifer and edited by Julie Snyder. Nikita Stewart is editor of The New York Times Metro Desk, and I just want to give her a quick bow. She's a big reason this show exists at all. Special thanks this week to everyone on the Metro Desk who helped us put this episode together. including the reporters whose names you didn't hear, but who let us tag along on their reporting. Christina Carone covered the sex debate. Anna Codé wrote about dive bars. Maya King did a story on Black-owned businesses. And Emma Goldberg covered a heated congressional primary. Special thanks also to reporters Mark Bonamo, Stephanos Chen, Maria Kramer, Emma Fitzsimmons, Andrew Kay, Winnie Hu, Benjamin Oreskes, Dana Rubinstein, Chelsea Arroz Marcias, Dodie Stewart, Michael Wilson, and Eve Edelheit.

And to Felice Bellman, Alex Blumberg, and Ira Glass. Metro is a production of Serial Productions and The New York Times.