Los Angeles’s metro system is better than this famously car-reliant city would have you believe. It’s rarely crowded, and though its reach is limited, it is relatively fast and well-maintained.

Still, the operative word is “relative.” As with most public transit in late-late-capitalist America, riding on it is a soul-suck; your free will stripped away the minute you descend down into it so that you can be shuttled and herded about underneath an indifferent metropolis.

Beauty is the last thing you expect to find down here. When you do, it forces you to stop take note. A police officer’s phone video of Emily Zamourka singing opera on the platform, the transcendent notes of Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” echoing up and down the tunnel, gave us a peek at how it might feel for this buried urban space to feel more human.