The opposing human tides slipped past each other on Newkirk Avenue this morning, heads bent, feet sliding, people in possession of bad news and people about to get it.  No Q train service. No B train service. No explanation. No excuses. No estimate on when the subway lines might run again.  The F train was reported to be functioning. It was a mile to its nearest station.  Perhaps if Cormac McCarthy had teamed with Jerry Lewis they might have done justice to the mix of cataclysm and comedy the journey held — “The Road” meets “Herbie Goes Bananas,” say.  But they’d have had their work cut out for them.  Coney Island Avenue, the great multicultural boulevard of Brooklyn, had at its intersection with Newkirk become a smorgasbord of vehicular misery: a Brink’s armored truck, a city bus, an 18-wheeler and a cab were among the defeated.  Cars were lined up on both sides of the standoff of the stuck. There was a narrow passage to try and shoot, and the drivers of the cars, like frightened sledders, closed their eyes and hit the gas.  The drivers, unlike frightened sledders, had no option to bail. The pileup grew.  The armed driver of the Brink’s truck was as helpless as the rest. No one was demanding the loot; no one was offering to assist. If the men inside were fingering the guns at their hips, it seemed only in contemplation of shooting the truck. Or themselves.  On 18th Avenue, the morning temperature and the rising frustration made for a discordant symphony of spinning wheels. The lack of traction fed the lack of hope, which fueled the r.p.m.’s, which splattered passers-by, which, well, escalated the generalized anger.  A newspaper delivery truck had fishtailed into a parked car, the latest setback for a troubled industry. It was impossible to tell the idling cars from the abandoned. Horns were honked, but, in truth, without much conviction. It was just something to do.  Into the buzz of inactivity, though, came children and parents, off from school or unable to get to work. They brought a bit of good humor, and some noise that felt like relief.  And they invited once again the age-old question: What is it about snowstorms that prompts people to go out in their pajama pants?  As one approached Ocean Parkway, one felt a tremble of excitement. Modest crowds were lining the six-lane thoroughfare. It was a sight to see: moving traffic.  People spoke in reverent language. They lingered. They seemed to long for their own cars. They sounded like residents of a police state, permitted to view but not touch the precious.  Indeed, Ocean Parkway was an eerie kind of wonder — paved and passable, an asphalt ribbon of reasonableness.  Half an hour from the Q station, the elevated tracks of the F train loomed, set against a brightening, broken blue sky. The storefronts of McDonald Avenue were mostly shuttered.  Pete’s Barber Shop, though, was open, a neighborhood joint that looked like it might attract a couple of holdout neighborhood heads in a good week. Its sidewalks were shoveled immaculately, cleared for people who would not come.  Why, Pete, one wanted to ask, why? Ask with admiration, of course. But bafflement, too.  Up on the subway platform, hope took shape in the image of an approaching train. And perspective found voice among the transit workers shoveling the snow four stories high. Shovelful by shovelful, they moved the snow from the platform edge to the middle of the platform, three feet per heave.  “This is ridiculous,’’ said one.  Very hard to argue with.
A morning's slog through Brooklyn from Flatbush to Kensington in search of a functioning subway station: a journey through the heart of the human urban condition.