A couple of stops for cheap gags....

 

Fail-safe.

I used to drive to the office. The drive could be a hassle, but the place was pleasant. Good old-fashioned cubicles, none of this stupid and counterproductive open-concept office nonsense. You could actually get work done. The company seemed to like it. They had painted one of the conference rooms with custom-designed company images, and a couple of years later painted another to look like a forest. Really nice job, too. Painters worked on it for weeks.

A short while after the forest went up, a rumor started to swirl that we were pulling up stakes and moving closer to the main New York office, in midtown Manhattan.

"No way," I said. "They just painted a whole freaking forest in 7B!"

Six months later I started taking the bus to midtown Manhattan and riding a subway from the Port Authority to the office.

My commute became longer and more annoying and more expensive.

The forest did not save me.

Sometimes when you tell yourself there is an ace in the hole, a fail-safe, that you're protected and can relax. Probably the classic example is "The Germans will never cross the Maginot Line!" Well, yes and no....

Some fail-safes work very well. I've always admired the ingenuity and courage of Elisha Otis, in coming up with a simple but effective device to stop an elevator from crashing and for testing it in public with his own personal life. Even now, elevator mechanic is a risky job. It's like being an auto mechanic if the car has to be driving around while you're propped at the engine. I've seen an elevator crash from the lobby to the cellar while someone was working on it, but fortunately it was a short fall and he was okay. It's not always the case.

Other fail-safes are only so-so. We're told this year that the flu season is looking like a doozy, so get those flu shots. On the other hand, recent years' shots have had pretty poor effectiveness. It's easy to understand why, the flu vaccine being an annual guessing game, but it doesn't make us more confident in it. I may get the shot, but I'm not going to march onto a ward full of flu patients afterward if I can avoid it.

I guess the point is, safety measures are great, but we always must be careful about relying on them too much. In the case of the flu shot, other commonsense precautions like hand-washing, avoiding infected people, and not licking subway car handles are important to follow as well. In the elevator -- well, there's nothing you can do if you're on the elevator and it plunges like a rocket to the subcellar. Pray.

Of course, if the escalator gets stuck, stay calm and wait for help. Better safe than sorry.

Subway etiquette.

[Freditor's Note: Below is an entry I wrote for the old, defunct blog, edited and updated with more current information. The parts about stupid behavior by New Yorkers are, as they say in the trade, evergreen.]

Now that winter is in full swing and the holidays are over, the subways are more crowded than they have been in months. In addition to the working commuters we have the tourists, the city’s idiot students, the unfortunate homeless, and the full-blown pants-pissing bums (Alcalde de por Vida de Blasio's favorite constituency) zipping around our tunnels and bridges. Let’s all make an effort to improve our trip by following certain rules of etiquette. Ten, in fact, that seem to require a review.

1. No more garlic, people. We’ve talked about this before, but now I’m serious. Some of you are clearly scoffing garlic cloves like potato chips. And you may want to look at your cumin consumption as well.

2. Boys, the backpacks have to come off in the car. Ridership is calculated based on the number of people, and geared up like a one-man band you’re taking up the space of three. What’ve you got in there, anyway? A piano? No one is going to steal it, although if you leave it on I may open it up to dispose waste materials. Off with it!

3. While we’re talking to the boys, remember, guys, you do have to give up your seat for ladies, especially those who are old, pregnant, crippled, or carrying babies. Not just the ones that are cute. In fact, here is the hierarchy of who gets to sit:

Old crippled ladies with packages
Old crippled ladies
Old crippled men with packages
Pregnant ladies with packages
Pregnant ladies
Anyone carrying a baby
Anyone who looks sick
Old crippled men
Crippled ladies
Crippled men
Old ladies
Old men
Little kids
Ladies
You

Note, though, the trump card: Bums who have pissed or puked on themselves get the magic pass to go anywhere they want. They sometimes exude such fragrance that they clear out entire cars for themselves. You may find this enviable, but the side effects are grim.

4. One word: pants.

5. They’re not kidding about moving to the center of the car so that others may board. I promise you we will let you out at your stop. Grand Selfish Station, wasn’t it?

6. I’m sure your text conversation is enthralling, but it’s a good way to have your phone stolen. And it makes you less aware of the people around you. Which is one of the reasons you’ll get your phone stolen. Look, it was bad enough in the old days when you just had your iPod Shuffle on and couldn’t hear anything; now you’re using your iPhone to render yourself blind as well as deaf. And people wonder why accidents happen on the subway.

7. Begging on the subway is illegal. Don’t do it. Has it ever occurred to you that you would be able to make more money for the same effort with one of those… what do you call them… jobs?

(Side note: I heard years ago that taking pictures of bums is illegal in New York. I am not sure if it's true, but don't let the cops catch you at it! And if you are a bum, don't take selfies.)

8. The rat and the cockroach you feed with your garbage today will send its grandchildren to your apartment building tomorrow. I know garbage is an issue, with the MTA recently giving up its dumb idea to remove trash cans from its stations, an idea that maybe got you in the habit of tossing your trash on the tracks in revenge.

New York, New York, it's up in your face
People throw crap all over the place
It's like they all quit the human race
New York, New York, it's up in your faaaaaace

Think of the broader issue and suck it up. (I don't mean physically suck it up, but on that topic...)

9. About food: Food? Really? You like eating in gym locker rooms too? Or on the can? Jeez. I once saw a guy carrying a full paper cup of soup, no lid (he was eating lunch), on a standing-room-only train, swaying with his messenger bag in the other hand, inches from me in my good suit. What country could he have come from where that would be considered a good idea?

10. Public displays of affection on the subway should go no further than a fist bump, handshake, or peck on the cheek. No one wants to see you get biz-zay on the D train.

Thank you, and let’s make this a better, cleaner, more polite year. Damn it.

Railway carriages.

Last week in rush hour I got on a subway car that was horribly crowded. I barely got on. We could have used the help of those Tokyo oshiya guys.

There were not too many smiling faces among those of who saw a woman on the car with a baby in an absolutely enormous carriage.

And I mean enormous. This thing looked like an Escalade. Not sure of the brand of the baby-toting device, but to give you an idea of the size:

Very similar.

I believe the carriage had fewer airbags and cup holders, however.

Probably no one without a baby could sympathize more than do I for the mom traveling with the kid. Nobody does this for fun. Sometimes you just have to go someplace, even if it means traveling at rush hour, and you can't just leave the kid at home with a bowl of water and some wee wee pads. But it's only in the last couple of years I've seen people bringing the kids in these humongous transporters on the train. You used to see kids only being shoved along in umbrella strollers, like this one:

They're called umbrella strollers because they fold up, not because they're as poorly made and likely to fall apart like those cheesy $5 street umbrellas that pop up for sale on rainy days. Although these strollers often do fall apart just that way, I hear.

The thing is, a kid in an umbrella stroller takes up no more deck space on the subway than would an average man. That's why they are, or were, the stroller of choice way back.

This may all be connected to the fact that many of us seem to be more and more inclined to bring tons of crap with us whenever we leave the house. Snacks, gym clothes, iPad, book, phone, floss, cosmetics, ever-present bottle of water... The woman may have packed along enough food for three days for all I know. Maybe she was running away to Mom's and taking the kid. But expensive as taxicabs are, sometimes you have to spring for one.

Then again, that stroller may not have fit in a cab.

I blame the Americans with Disabilities Act. In past years you wouldn't have even considered bringing a Buick-like carriage down to the subway because you wouldn't have been able to get the damn thing up and down the stairs. But now escalators and elevators are available at most stations in compliance with the ADA, and eventually will be in all stations. That's great for the wheelchairs, but now people bring huge carriages and shopping carts, and---not kidding here---cheapass companies send delivery boys out with hand trucks stacked with reams of paper, file carts stuffed with documents, even utility carts loaded with food for catering.

Hey, the subway is a people mover, not a people plus all kinds of crap mover. Get a truck.

Here's a button. Call someone who cares.

There are rather reassuring:

It's an emergency telephone. These have been popping up in the subway, and it's a capital improvement of which I approve.

There have been emergency telephones in the subway for a long time, but they were actual phone receivers that you had to pick up---consequently they were often ripped out of the wall. Probably people used to them try to order pizza. Then they had push-button emergency intercoms, but they were hard to find. They didn't have that calming blue cop light making them stand out.

This has an added benefit in that it has two buttons, one for emergency calls and one for information. So you could push the emergency line if you lost a child, and the information line if you're lost yourself. The emergency line could report a drunk fallen on the tracks or a suspicious package left on a train; the information line could help you get tickets to Phantom. (Not really.)

You might think that these days everyone has a cell phone so no one needs such a thing, but even if that were true, there are advantages. If you are in danger and you push the button, they know what station you are calling from instantly. (So don't get the idea that you can use it to pull jolly pranks on the 911 dispatcher. Remember, there are cameras too.) It's like a harmless, immobile Robocop.

Looks well-built. Probably really hard to rip out of the wall. And you don't have to hold a receiver up to your face, which was always the worst thing about public phones. "Hello, 911? I want to report Ebola. On my face. From this phone."

Crap track.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority likes to announce helpful things over the public address system, using the robovoice that they use now to alert riders to incoming trains (which actually is hugely helpful). One of the announcements we've heard a lot of down in the subway is that last year there were 563 track fires and 7,200 subsequent delays caused by littering. As you can see from the picture taken Monday morning, people are taking the message to heart.

Yum!

I've seen grown-up folks chuck soda cups and things onto the tracks. I've also seen rats down there on the tracks. Coinkidink? I think not, sir!

The track fire announcement is an attempt to show idiots the direct damage their own perfidy has to their schedules. Not sure if it works. No asswipe ever hears an announcement over the PA, then slaps his forehead and yells, "I've been such a foooool!!" He's got earbuds in, anyhow.

It's not who you might think, either. I always pictured the litterbug as being a Louie De Palma type, only bigger and fatter, but some of the most nicely dressed people just throw garbage around without a thought. A few weeks ago I'm at a bus stop in outer suburbia and a woman executive type yakking away with a young man chucked a banana peel into a bush. Didn't miss a beat. "Blah blah blah" Fling! "blah blah blah..." Yes, it's natural and it's biodegradable, but it's still garbage and it feeds vermin.

There are firefighters who work for the MTA specifically to combat these trash fires. Can you imagine charging into a burning garbage tunnel? I hope it doesn't involve that.

I couldn't do that job. Christian though I am, I think after the fiftieth time I had to put out a smoking pile of litterbug droppings, I would look at the people on the platform and think, Let 'em fry.

The people ride in a hole in the ground.

When schlepping around in the subway, you find yourself thinking about things. Thinking, lots of thinking. You certainly don't want to do any talking. That would mean talking to people. Or yourself. If you talk to yourself too much, the police will provide company for you.

Anyway, summer is the 100% worst time of the year to ride in the New York City subway system. The trains themselves are no worse than at other seasons, I guess, but the platforms and passageways (like the one below) are damp, gooshy, sticky, and heated by the exhaust from the air-conditioned cars.

But if you must be down there, you can distract yourself by thinking about things.

Like the ads. When I was a young tot-about-town, each subway car would have dozens of different ads. These days you usually see half of each car sold out to one advertiser and the other half to another. So, one side of the car might have different ads for a cable TV show, while the other side is all ads for a food delivery service. Or one side might have ads for Omaha Steaks and the other for PETA. You never know.

Sometimes you will be in a car with many different ads, though. The other day I stood in one, and at a glance the means of happiness available to New Yorkers was revealed:

Ad for Ripemoff & Soom, Attorneys: Sue the *%!#*(&! to happiness

Ad for the revolutionary Teeth Bleachzap: Smile your way to happiness

Ad for the SEIU, demanding healthcare for all: Odd, since the first thing SEIU did when Obamacare was passed (after fighting for Obamacare) was demand out of Obamacare; you don't suppose they might have some weird agenda of their own that has nothing to do with anyone else's well-being, HMMMMM?

Essentially, except for one trade-school ad, all the ones readily visible were about forcing other people to give you things or finding abiding and meaningful happiness by looking better. I know it's the nature of advertising to suggest that you simultaneously (A) deserve the best because you're so YOU and (B) are a low-down piece of scum unless you use Product X, but it all seems so especially feral down there in the subway.

Maybe it's just me. Being hot, miserable, and underground just makes you think about where Dante got his ideas.

The Black Rider.