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The Roosevelt Island Tram offers a singular cable car ride over the canyons of Manhattan and sparkling vistas of the East River, but it is also notable for one other thing:
It is the only place left in the entire city where you can still use a subway token.
The MetroCard has supplanted the token in every subway station and bus, but at the tram's Manhattan-side station on Second Avenue and 59th Street, you can still hear the familiar metallic clink of a token dropped into old-fashioned Perry turnstiles running on scavenged parts.
Token booth clerk Ionel Theodorescu still takes in cash and pushes tokens out with his fingertips through a wooden slot worn smooth by the passing of years. There isn't a computer in sight.
"It's part of the history of New...