Louie Visone, a comedian, spent January approaching New Yorkers as his alter ego, Turntis Stilewa (a play on “turnstile” and “Curtis Sliwa”), handing out flyers for a Turnstile Jumping Competition at Morgan Avenue Station. Dressed in a green mask, green gloves, a green beret, and sunglasses, he looked like an eclectic subway busker. According to Visone, the “weird” costume fused the former mayoral candidate’s “iconic look” as a “fun revolutionary” and the vibrant, faceless style of Keith Haring, who was “part of subway culture.”
“That’s my hope,” Visone said of his Turnstile Jumping Competition. “To make it into this cool punk show that also celebrates the city.”
Despite inviting New Yorkers to hop turnstiles, Visone wasn’t trying to encourage anyone to break the law. “This is all fun, and we are kind of exploiting the rules, but again, ‘pay the fare; jump with style.’ I want that to be clear. That was the seed of the idea,” he said. “We are all paying the fare. No one is jumping illegally.”
Visone invited several performers—Kiing Spiider, a parkour freerunner; LoganX, a rapper; Cunning Stunt, a drag king; and “A Guy From The Bronx,” an anonymous stand-up comic—who he referred to as “The Avengers of New York.” He arranged live pre-show music from a band called Fare Evasion. He learned hip-hop dance choreography. He had a rehearsal, a call sheet, and a set list. He also prepared for the worst: He chose race bib craft supplies that couldn’t be used as weapons, compiled a list of nearby hospitals and urgent care facilities, and made plans to pay a fine of up to $2,000 and bail money in case of arrest.
On February 7, they were ready to “jump up and get down,” as Cunning Stunt said—but the MTA and the NYPD had plans, too. With L train service from Lorimer Street to Broadway Junction suspended, they sent dozens of police officers to Morgan Avenue Station and taped its entrances shortly before the event’s start time to prevent public entry. The Turnstile Jumping Competition sparked large-scale excitement on social media for several weeks leading up to the event, amassing roughly 1,200 interested spectators and prospective competitors on Partiful, which may have provoked the police officer deployment.
“I think maybe the logic is that if we make turnstile-jumping look a little bit too cool, then more people are gonna want to do it,” Adeline Sauberli, a spectator, said.
At Morgan Avenue, nine police officers told Visone and the performers they couldn’t enter the closed station, so performers and spectators shared taxis to the “Plan B” location, West 4th Street-Washington Square station. As a crowd gathered in the West 4th Street subway station, a group of police officers said that anyone who jumped would receive a court summons—even if they paid the fare—and told the crowd to leave.
“I’m here to show up for the competition, or at least I was gonna try to, and now I’m getting threatened with a summons when I go over, even if I fucking pay, which is a little bizarre,” said Vincent Vinciguerra, a prospective competitor.
According to a statement from a NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information spokesperson, “Paying the subway fare permits one legal entry into the subway system to utilize its transportation services. Paying the subway fare does NOT give a person carte blanche to commit other unlawful acts that obstruct passenger flow, or cause a nuisance or hazard for fellow riders. The subway system is a means of transportation, not a playground.”
For “Plan C,” Visone moved the Turnstile Jumping Competition to the sidewalk above the station, where there aren’t any turnstiles. “We are going to jump over the embodiment of the turnstile. We are going to jump over a hero, a New York icon, a revolutionary, if you will,” he said. “We’ll be jumping over myself, Turntis Stilewa.”
Above-ground, Cunning Stunt collected signatures on Turntis Jr., a fluorescent street safety alert sign, to commemorate the event. Fare Evasion performed—until they were quickly shut down by multiple police officers. After telling the band to stop, an officer unplugged the lead singer’s guitar cord from his amplifier. “I didn’t commit a crime,” the musician said, refusing to present his ID. The crowd oinked in protest, despite Visone’s repeated directives to “respect the authorities.” No one had an opportunity to jump over Turntis Stilewa.
“I was gonna rock climb over the turnstile, so I brought my equipment for that,” Parker Sublette, Visone’s friend, said. “But unfortunately, we got turned away at Brooklyn, and we got turned away at Manhattan, and they sent out so many fucking cops.”
With the MTA recently raising its fares to three dollars, installing new subway gates, and retiring the MetroCard, the Turnstile Jumping Competition was clearly a tongue-in-cheek act of defiance. “We disagree with the MTA, and we don’t want to give them our money, because they don’t deserve it, and as riders, we’re disappointed,” Cunning Stunt said, calling the envisioned event “silly and defiant, but also political.”
But Visone said that the Turnstile Jumping Competition wasn’t intended as a protest; it was intended as a party. “Yes, the trains suck. Yes, I’m not a fan of OMNY. Yes, it should be significantly cheaper. Yes, everything about the MTA sucks—but this ultimately is a celebration of jumping the turnstile,” he said. “We’ve been jumping the turnstiles since they were first invented.”
Visone also said that the competition would have benefited the city. “I’m having people pay the fare, and they’re not even taking the train,” he said. “This is an MTA fundraiser.”
His “fundraiser” didn’t work out. Visone wasn’t arrested, but the police broke up the party before it could begin, and the crowd disbanded. They didn’t have a permit, the officers said. Though no one had a chance to jump, Visone still considered it “a punk event.” He closed with a dance, and LoganX performed a concluding rap. Visone plans to host the Turnstile Jumping Competition next year—with a permit, if he can get one.
“It sucks that the NYPD and all that stuff got involved, but we still got to come out here and make a scene. Have a little fun. It’s cold as fuck, but it’s still a good time,” LoganX said. “It’s all about community, and you can see the people out here in the fucking freezing cold. It’s amazing.”