You know what they say about Second Avenue, don't you? Lose a deli gain a subway. (Not too elegant but it beats that ol' Avenue A axiom: Lose a cyber-cafe, gain a diaper-changing station). Like the 2nd coming, the 2nd Avenue subway brings the shimmer of eternal underground salvation to millions and, also like the 2nd coming, the 2nd Avenue subway is so rarely delivered. But there's a new sheriff in town by the name of Eliot Spitzer and dude supposedly means business about the subway that doesn't really get you from anywhere good to anywhere else good.

As the Times breathlessly reports, big excitement next Thursday:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a host of dignitaries will descend through a sidewalk hatch at Second Avenue and 102nd Street, a block south of the spot where Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay held a groundbreaking in October 1972. They will go into a never-used section of a three-decade old subway tunnel, stretching from 105th Street to 99th Street. The governor will give a speech, hoist a pickax and take a few cracks at the concrete wall, symbolically beginning the construction where it left off in the 1970s.

Yes indeed. Second Avenue has been drilled by more politicians than Marilyn Monroe.

One might imagine that the gross type of people who actually take the subway would greet the 125th to Hanover St. scheme with elation. But it seems some Debbie Downers are bent out of shape. Take Giorgio Costa, a 61-year-old Upper East Sider whose apartment will be demolished to make way for the line. Costa, who pays $605, Daily News reports, is among the 400 people whose homes will be demolished by the time the subway is complete in 2013. Hey, at least they're not trying to put a Nets stadium in your living room!

Railroaded From Their Homes [Daily News]
Is That The Sound of the 2nd Avenue Subway? [NYT]