Special David Bowie MetroCards Get Released in New York City

Some pret­ty famous faces ride the New York City sub­way. Was David Bowie’s ever among them?

If so, he suc­ceed­ed in dodg­ing the cam­eras of the curi­ous.

His home stop would have been SoHo’s Broadway/Lafayette—close to the Ange­li­ka Film Cen­ter, Hous­ing Works Book­store Cafe, and an upscale men’s cloth­ing store that opened on the sacred ground of CBGB, where Bowie and Bian­ca Jag­ger once arrived by lim­ou­sine to see Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

From there, it’s not exact­ly a straight shot to the David Bowie Is exhib­it at the Brook­lyn Muse­um, but the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty will get you there for the price of a sin­gle $2.75 sub­way fare.

Giv­en that the MTA stopped accept­ing tokens 15 years ago, you’ll also need to cough up $1 for a Metro­Card. You may want to even if you already own one.

In cel­e­bra­tion of all things Bowie, the MTA has teamed with Spo­ti­fy to cre­ate 5 lim­it­ed edi­tion Metro­Cards, avail­able in vend­ing machines through­out the sta­tion for a New York minute—about as long as it takes Bowie fans to descend en masse to snag the instant col­lectibles of their hero in some of his many guis­es:

Zig­gy Star­dust

Aladdin Sane

The Thin White Duke

Scary Mon­sters’ Pier­rot

and, most touch­ing­ly, the teenage David Jones, aka Bowie, sax­o­phon­ist for the Kon-Rads.

Under­ground Bowie mania extends way beyond Metro­Cards. Until Mother’s Day, the unusu­al­ly lofty sta­tion is fes­tooned with Bowie—everything from fan art to giant repro­duc­tions of pho­tos from the cur­rent exhi­bi­tion.

Many of the images are accom­pa­nied by a scannable Spo­ti­fy code to trans­port rid­ers to a rel­e­vant sound file, a nifty echo of the pro­gres­sive audio muse­um-goers expe­ri­ence through their head­phones.

The glob­al exhib­it has Lon­don roots, but the MTA is focused on Bowie’s ties to New York with pho­tos and video stills from such loca­tions as Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Madi­son Square Gar­den, and the late, lament­ed Mag­ic Shop stu­dio.

Civic pride is also on dis­play in the form of city-spe­cif­ic Bowie quotes post­ed through­out the sta­tion:

I have a great time here: we can go where we want, eat where we want, walk out with our child, go to the park, ride the sub­way, do the things that any fam­i­ly does.

Ah ha! So he did ride the sub­way here, as well as in Japan (below).

Accord­ing to a fan on Bow­ery Boo­gie, he also popped up at the New York Pub­lic Library’s Mul­ber­ry Street branch, just around the cor­ner from the subway’s entrance. To find your way there, con­sult the bright orange “Bowie’s Neigh­bor­hood Map” before leav­ing the sta­tion, where your loca­tion is denot­ed with a light­ning bolt.

See rid­ers’ pho­tos of the sub­way takeover here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

The Peri­od­ic Table of David Bowie: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Sem­i­nal Artist’s Influ­ence and Influ­ences

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.