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Just like the train it celebrates, the Miss G Train pageant was an underdog itself.
The Nov. 19 competition is back on — and thriving — after being postponed last week for lack of interest.
Though the pageant was announced to great fanfare two weeks ago, no would-be Miss G Trains applied, organizers said. Last week, they actually canned the contest as a result.
But they reversed their decision and now applicants are trickling in like a G train chugging through Brooklyn.
So far, Erica Sackin is the front-runner. In the essay portion of her application, she praised the train for its newfound versatility now that it can take her to see her best friend in Greenpoint and her boyfriend in Park Slope (what, they’re not the same person?).
“The G train is a brave train, serving people who other subway lines have all but abandoned,” Sackin wrote. “Who else could attempt so much, trekking from the top of Queens to the depths of Brooklyn, with just a few short cars?”
She concluded her submission with a poem about waiting for the infamously tardy train.
“How many nights have I spent at your mercy, G train?/How many hours have I craned my neck, hoping to see that warm green light crack your tunnel’s abyss?”
Such essays capture the spirit of the competition said Dave Herman, president of City Reliquary, a civic museum on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg.
“We chose the G train because it’s the underdog of the transit system, yet many people still call it home,” Herman said. “New Yorkers have loyalty to the train that brings them home.”
The pageant is being held to promote the museum’s exhibit on “Miss Subways, Past and Present,” a collection of beauty pageant images that adorned subway cars from the 1940s until 1976. For the exhibit, photographer Fiona Gardner tracked down the former “Miss Subways” and compares them to their pageant photos.
Today’s contestants have much more room for interpretation than their predecessors, Herman said. Participants will be asked to wear whatever they think represents the typical G train rider, whether it’s “hipster vogue or commuter chic.”
Miss G Train pageant at City Reliquary Museum [370 Metropolitan Ave. between Havemeyer Street and Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg, (718) 782-4842] on Thursday, Nov. 19 at 7 pm. Applicants can send their essays to missgtrain@cityreliquary.org — but they have to be in by Monday, Nov. 16.
©2009 Community Newspaper Group
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