The roar of the city can often obscure its gentler, more melodious side. If you're looking for that, you'll want to head — perhaps counterintuitively — into the heart of Manhattan: the S train.
"It's like a concert hall on wheels, for everybody," self-proclaimed S train "ambassador" Akil Dasan Baker says in a recent New Yorker short documentary on the musical train line.
"I've seen people in a business suit break dancing ... opera singers singing along to hip hop," Baker adds. "The shuttle is a laboratory for human happiness."
Elapsing just three minutes, the S train takes riders from Times Square to Grand Central Station, making it the city's oldest and shortest train line.
Given its duration, location and acoustics, the train has also become what Baker calls "prime real estate" for local musicians — such as Audible Chocolate, Zeus Taylor and Fluffy, among others — to perform.
For these musicians, an S train car is their office, with other performers serving as their colleagues, Baker says.
But the S train is more than work. The train "creates a magical environment...where everybody can tap into what it is to be in the soul of New York," Baker said.
Experience that "soul" by watching the video below: