I’ve just been in New York for the first time in two decades. It’s a young person’s city, it has to be said, but my view was slightly darkened by being far out in Brooklyn and having to spend a lot of time on the subway, perhaps the most depressing public transport network on earth.

Aesthetically horrific, incredibly dirty, full of madmen, unusually uncomfortable and bumpy (the only train service where one can actually experience turbulence). Worst of all, it stinks of weed, almost everywhere. You could pump in the urine smell of the Paris Metro and it would be a vast improvement.

On one particular occasion the subway stunk of weed because some young men were openly smoking it in front of everyone, but more often it was because someone was rolling up a joint, or they just permanently sme

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