Brian Diedrick, the L contributor who proposed the idea of the H(ipster) train responds to his detractors: "Before you try to Gopnick me, friend, take a hard look at yourself. Have you ever actually ridden the B61 any great distance? Well I certainly have. And if you have as well, then you can't deny that more than 15 minutes on the thing makes you start clicking your heels 3 times over and over again and wishing for that bus to turn back into the trolley it started out as.

Block out an entire afternoon sometime and take the 61 from Long Island City to Red Hook. Then perhaps you'll realize that the H train is an idea whose time has come. Or then again, maybe you'll enjoy creeping along through the Brooklyn neighborhoods so much that you'll sell the New Yorker a talk of the town piece about the quaintness of it all. Or would that magazine not be 'New York' enough for you, focusing as it does these days on foreign affairs and the like?"

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