The challenge was set: each week my husband or I had to find a semi-cheap new thing to do in NYC. With a flip of a coin, he had to go first.

As a cruel measure, my face seemed to erupt into one large zit on my forehead. This was one of those groundbreaking pimples; the kind that prompted remarks from my father, such as “wow, your zit now has a face.” I had several client meetings the same week, making me extremely self-conscious about the red mountain.

My husband was pretty excited about our first date night, exclaiming he had found the perfect one. I met him after work, at the Union Square station for the downtown 6 train. He had a small pack of papers in his hands that I was to read on the subway.

Riding the 6 train to Brooklyn Bridge by Raúl!

It was sweet he had done research and as I read, I found out we were on the train to see an abandoned subway stop. If you stay on the 6 past the Brooklyn Bridge stop, you can see old City Hall stop, as the train loops back around to go uptown. The former stop is now open for tourists and New Yorkers to see.

According to Jonah Green at The Huffington Post, the station was built in 1904 and closed in 1945 because only 600 people used it per day and the loop made an unsafe gap between the platform and the train. Recently, the MTA will let people stay on the train and see the abandoned stop.  (To see images, please go here or here.)

After catching the short glimpse of it, you are left wondering of other NYC abandoned spots that are probably just beneath our noses.

As we headed back uptown, my husband said, “well, that was cool, huh?”

“What? We’re going back home now?”

“Yeah, I thought this perfect. You’re so self-conscious about the zit on your face, our date night was to take a subway ride. No one cares what you look like on the subway.”

About 10 minutes later, we were having a drink at Asselina, the Italian restaurant at the Gaansevoort Hotel on Park. (Asselina, by the way, has really soft lighting so it’s also condusive to making you look good.)

To my husband’s credit, the date was cheap, interesting, and you learned something. I just didn’t expect a subway ride and a 10 second glimpse of an abandoned subway stop as my date night. He was right, though, it’s a great place to go with a massive zit on your face.