In their latest batch of subway car advertisements, a sign clearly illustrates that it is “the right thing to do” when you get up and give your seat to a person with diabilities.  Plus, IT IS THE LAW.  Oooooo the law.

I think SUBWAYblogger’s policy on the whole seat issue has been well established.  However, to sum it up, if you are spry enough to drag your ass down the stairs from street level, stand in the 100 degree heat on the platform waiting for the train, and navigate the flood of people getting on/off the train, you’re good enough to stand.  If you failed any part of that scenario, you probably didn’t make it on the train alive.

There’s a very rare group of exceptions to this rule, so chances are you won’t see me giving up a seat.

But that’s not my point.

Back to the signs.

Is it not a bit presumptive that every person with disabilities wants a seat on the train?  If you’re sitting in once of those specially noted seats, you’re obligated to get up by L-A-W.  Doesn’t that cause a certain level of indignity to be bestowed upon these people?

It’s like asking the woman in line at the grocery store when the baby is due only to find out that she’s not at all pregnant.  Oops.

Isn’t getting up to let the guy with the cane sit down the same thing.

“Hey you with the gimpy leg, come take my seat so I don’t get a ticket from the humanity police.”

You actually see it happen a lot with old people.  A guy sees and old lady get on the train and dives out of the way so she can have his seat.  She is totally ok with standing, but now you’ve just pointed out to her that she clearly looks to ancient and frail to stand there on her own.

It’s all just a lot of politically correct bullshit.  If someone truly can’t manage to stand, all they need to do is ask for someone’s seat.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Get outta my seat old man

Not a shock.  The system is built on an ancient infrastructure running fairly modern trains.  So surprisingly, when a train goes by, it can hurt your ears big time.

Just to drive the point home, Columbia University did a little study to make sure.

They officially discovered that the subways have the highest noise level at 80.4 decibels.  Some platforms were over 100.  Just for reference, a chainsaw runs at about 100 decibels.

I know I’ve made fun of the people on the platforms that wear earplugs.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think it is really weird.  But maybe they have the right idea.  A decade from now, maybe those people will be the only ones in town that can actually hear.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Can you hear me now?

Click here to view the embedded video.

This app is freaking awesome.  Just another reason I have to get an iPhone.  I’ll have to steal my buddies phone and install it on there so I can play with it.

According to the website, it doesn’t look like it is out just yet.  It seems they are waiting for Apple to approve it.

You’ve got to watch the video to see how it works.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Holy Crap. That’s an Awesome iPhone App.

This little comedic gem was submitted by SB reader Kelsey. Thanks Kelsey!

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Sheeple

Warning: If you have not eaten your lunch yet today, you may want to wait until later to read this story. We promise that if you read this story now, you will not be able to eat another thing for the rest of the day. This story will haunt your dreams. You’ve been warned.

It was a typical weekday morning, on my way to work. I had to leave a little earlier than normal because I had an early meeting. It was just about 7AM when I got to the platform. At that time of the morning, it really isn’t that crowded yet. Actually, its pretty empty usually. By 7:30 though, it is packed. So when I have these early meetings, I try to get to the train by 7am.

Anyway, I was just minding my own business reading some emails on by crackberry when I heard a spraying sound. The sound a garden hose makes.

I looked down the platform and saw a water spray coming from the far side of a news stand. The structure was in the way, so I couldn’t see the person doing the spraying just the water jet itself.

I thought nothing of it really. I figured it was a transit worker spraying down the platform. The newsstand proprietors actually do that from time to time to keep the area around them at least somewhat tidy.

A few minutes past when all of a sudden I started to hear some gasps from the area of the spraying.

With that, the person operating the hose came out from behind the stand. It wasn’t a transit worker at all.

No, it was Dana.

Whos Dana? You may know her as one of the subway homeless people that regularly rides the train asking for handouts. She has all of three teeth in her head, and has had a festering leg wound for about a year now. If you’ve seen her, you’d never forget her mostly for her smell. Whatever is happening with that leg wound makes a smell potent enough to make paint peel.

So there she was with the hose in hand. Doing what you ask? (I’m sure many of you know where this is going already)

Ohh she was taking her morning shower of course.

‘ right. She was standing there completely topless giving herself a good rinse in full view of everyone on the platform. She was wearing a pair of mens jeans that kept slipping a bit. Thankfully, they managed to stay on.

But there she was in her droopy, hairy, smelly birthday suit just splish splashing around like the place was her own little birdbath.

So now picture if you will that vial smell now combined with water. Now it had a new damp, musty quality to it as well.

Friend, when I tell you I had that smell in my nose for 24 hours, believe me. I almost ended own life right there.

Thankfully, I was far enough away to not be caught in the splash zone. Others were not so lucky.

How in the world she got her hands on a hose is still a mystery. The only thing I can think is that the night cleaning crew forgot to put the hose away when they were done. There are water spigots on most platforms that will allow a crew to hose down a platform. The hose was clearly hooked up and turned on.

So I guess Dana just took advantage of the situation while she had the chance.

It is a sensory experience that will haunt me forever.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Most Disgusting Subway Story of My Life

As you may have noticed just about any time on Sunday, SUBWAYblogger was down for no apparent reason. The site was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t even like it was showing a 404 page or anything. Instead it was just a white page, no matter where you tried to go on the site.

Nothing. Just white.

So I’m chatting up tech support and the first guy “investigates” for about 10 minutes then comes back and says it looks like a problem with Wordpress. You’re going to have to check out Wordpress.org and speak with those folks about how to fix it.

Great, thanks for the help douche bag.

So I poke around the Wordpress support forums and the web in general for 6 hours. No joke. I must have tried dozens of things including reinstalling the entire thing from scratch. Nothing.

So then I fire up another chat session with D-bag #2. He pokes around for about 30 seconds and tells me that my server is under “high load” at the moment and the engineers are actively looking into it. I tried to explain to him that the load had nothing do with my site being down. I know this because I have (had) other sites on the same server and they were working just fine. So there was nothing he could do.

Finally, I fired in an email based ticket to tech support basically asking them to do a full restore from backup. I get a response saying that they have absolutely ZERO backups of my site. That’s fucking odd because it says right here that they do weekly backups: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/kb/index.php/kb/article/000166 . He then pointed out that the article says to check the terms and services. When you look at that, they say they are absolutely not responsible for backups and only do them from time to time! So the article says they’ll do it weekly. But if you want to dig through all the fine print, you’ll see that they’re actually not going to do it at all if they don’t feel like it. Wonderful.

That was the last damn straw.

In the 6 years I’ve been with them, I’ve had the hard drive crash and burn TWICE. Both resulted in total losses of the effected data. I literally dug through Google cached pages to dig out old posts and manually put them back. Of course, I told them after the first one that I would gladly pay a monthly fee to have them automatically run nightly backups of the site. They weren’t interested.

I’ve also had the site temporarily go down a multitude of times due to other “load” issues that had nothing to do with me.

In any event, I’m done with Bluehost for good. I’m moving on to the Cloud baby.

I’ve been wanting to move over to a more robust system like Amazon Cloudfront + EC2 or Rackspace’s Cloud files for a while now. This just gave me the extra motivation.

SUBWAYblogger is now officially powered by the Rackspace Cloud. (ooooooo ahhhhh).

Rackspace/Mosso has an outstanding reputation for quality and customer service. So far their tech people have been 1000x better than Bluehost. The hosting is more expensive, but you really get what you pay for. For $6.00 a month with Bluehost, what could I really expect? Crap.

So now the Cloud will mean that the site is infinitely scalable both in size and traffic. SUBWAYblogger can now pretty much take anything that can be thrown at it.

I’m supper pumped and glad to be back online once and for all.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

No More Bullshit Hosting

I’ve been waiting for this for years. Glad it is finally getting done.

Now I can better control the site while riding the subway.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Wordpress for Blackberry

So now that we have a $2.25 fare, your pants just got heavier.  How so?  Well, if you buy a single ride with a $5 bill, you’re going to get back two dollar coins plus 3 quarters.  Awesome.

God help you if you paid for it with a $20.  That’s 17 dollar coins plus 3 quarters.

$20 bill goes in, 20 coins come out.

Granted, even a few days ago, it still would have been 18 dollar coins…but still.  It’s pretty insane.

The bigger problem is going to be the little old ladies that have to break out their coin purse full of nickels to get up to the 25 cents.  You know there ain’t no damn way grandma is going to break another dollar if she doesn’t have to.

At least the machines don’t take pennies!

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Is that 17 Sacagawea’s in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

At 28th Street, my train was stuck in the station because of a door problem. Perhaps some of the motormen that read this blog can chime in on what can cause this.

Clearly it was not something that was going to raise a red flag on this insanely crowded train because they managed to get it fixed after about 15 minutes of waiting.

I was about 3 train car lenghts away from the door that had the issue, so I could see them trying to fix it.  It consisted of one guy hitting the door close button over and over again while the other physically pushed the doors together with his hands.

From what I could see, the doors were closing just fine on their own.  I’m not sure what pushing the doors together by hand was adding to the equation.  I guess he was just trying to get the sensor to engage or something.  If you stepped back and looked, you would have no idea something was wrong with the door because it closed all the way by itself.

After the threee stooges finished slamming the doors together over and over again, we got back on our way.  Of course, we were so far behind that we immdediately had to start skipping stops to get caught up.

A frustrating way to start your Monday.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Broken Subway Door?

That happened to me this morning thanks to the damn rubber gaskets on the subway doors.

Of course, it was all because of a damn baby stroller.  I have railed and railed against open baby strollers on the train before, and many of you have said I am being to hard.

Well, first let’s just get the facts straight.  The MTA says that strollers are supposed to be folded up and closed when riding the train.

Anyway, the train was somewhat crowded this morning.  We came to a stop, and this mother started to get off the train.  She got a bit of a late start in her move for the for the door.  I was standing near the door, so I took a step out half way onto the platform.  I was blocking the door open so she could get off with the stroller.

Just as she got clear of the doors, they started to close.  Right into my back.

For the rest of the day, I had a very straight, very neat black line down the left side of my back.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Back to the dry cleaner

I was talking to a friend today that claimed to have one of the best subway stories ever.  I’m hoping there’s a SUBWAYblogger reader that can backup his story because I’m finding it hard to believe.

He claims he was on an A train down near the Village late one weekend night when two girls got on the train.  They started to dance around the poles like strippers.

This is by no means unusual.  I’ve seen girls and even some drag queens do the dance on the train before.  I’ve even seen dancers that bring their own boombox so they have a good beat.

Well apparently these girls took it to the next level.  The crowd started to egg them on during their performance.  Before you know it, off came the tops.  The dance then continued (topless) for two more stops.

That’s where I started to not believe his story.

Has anyone seen this before?  If so, don’t hold out.  We need to ride that train immediately.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Naked Girls on the Subway

For example, the prerecorded female voice says, “You can transfer to the 1 or 9 train.”

9 train?  Uhhh hello.

And it seems on the older announcements, the male voice was virtually nonexistent.  Wonder how long those will run before someone from the MTA notices.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Odd Announcements on the 2 Line?

It’s your last chance to sign up and receive the very first issue of SUBWAY Monthly.

Sign up and read more details here

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Last Chance!

I truly hate that bullshit.  Get the damn sick passenger off the train and let’s get moving.  I don’t understand why an entire line has to come to a screatching halt because someone pukes on a train.  Even if the person had a heart attack, wouldn’t you want to get them off the train and upstairs as quick as possible?

That morning, my 2 train terminated at 42nd Street Time Square.  Are you kidding me?  That’s the biggest stop in the system and that’s where you are going to terminate?  The kicker was the sick passenger was all the way down at Chambers Street.

There has to be a better way to deal with this crap.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Sick Passenger Terminates 2 Line

Fleet week sailors with girls in the village.

This past weekend is the only time I ever actually consider joining the Navy.  Everywhere you go on the subway all weekend long, it is nonstop sailors with hot women on their arms.

Getting done up in those dress whites is like some sort of magical hot-girl catnip or something.  They have to fight them off with a stick.

The best part is when you see them riding around in neighborhoods no where near the tourist areas.  Seeing them in groups down in the Village or Time Square is one thing.   Seeing them riding around the East 90’s is another story.

Without fail, every year I see a lone sailor riding back down to the ship from waaaaay uptown.  It’s the arm forces walk of shame, yet there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

I’ve never done anything close to any kind of military service.  I’m curious about what it is like on board those ships the day they find out they’ve been selected to come to NYC for Fleet Week.  It must be like Christmas for the single, 18-30 year old men on board.

Keep up the good work boys (and girls).

Photo credit.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Sailors Travel in a Sea of Women

I know I have ranted in the past about germs on the subway, but this is taking it to another level.

Personally, I think the whole swine flu insanity is a lot of hype.  Yes, those people died, and that is sad.  The fact still remains that good old fashioned regular flu kills far more people both in raw numbers and percentage.  Almost every case of swine flu in NYC has been reported as mild.

However, even being a super intelligent person such as myself, I have found myself being extra aware of the “germs” around me on the subway.  I know it is crazy.  As I’m standing there thinking it, I’m saying to myself, “You’re being a f*&%ing idiot.”

What’s even crazier is seeing how other people are reacting.  Now when someone lets out a big sneeze, people literally get up and walk away.  They move to another part of the car or go stand on the other end of the platform.

It’s getting pretty crazy.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Swine Flu Snot on the Subway

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are more iPhones out on the subway than ever.  All of a sudden, everywhere you look, someone is rocking out on one.  They’re either listening to music, watching a video, playing a game, or all of the above.

So we decided to put together a master list of our favorite iPhone Subway apps.  We’re calling it SUBWAYblogger’s iPhone App Cheat Sheet.

We’ve tried all of these apps, and like them all.  Only the good ones made the list.  Luckily, many of the developers hooked us up with free demos so we didn’t have to buy all of them.  So the ones that made the cut are here.

The Cheat Sheet is exclusively available via email, and is completely FREE.

You will receive a two part series.  Today, you’ll instantly get our list of favorite subway utility apps.  Then tomorrow, we’ll send you our favorite subway/transit related iPhone games.  In the first issue, you’ll also get a link to a free subway map application.

Sign up anytime, and you will instantly receive Part 1  in your mailbox.

We hate all that bullshit spam as much as you do, trust us.  Every time we put up a new email address on this site, we start getting spammed like crazy.  It drives us insane.  So we promise to never SPAM you.  Your information is safe and will not be sold.  You can unsubscribe if you change your mind at anytime.

Sign up today!

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

SUBWAYblogger’s iPhone App Cheat Sheet

Jeanie Colberg was on the 4 train with her young daughter on the way to the hospital yesterday when her water broke.

Luckily, a good samaritan was there to comfort her and calm her down a bit.  At Union Square, EMS workers were there to handle the rest.  She ended up giving birth to a 7 pound baby in the back of the ambulance.

She even gave the baby her middle name, Rochelle, after a transit worker that assisted her.

I don’t know for a fact that she was on the way to the hospital because she was in labor.  If not, it’s a pretty freaky coincidence.

So let’s assume she was in labor, would you really take the 4 train?  I’m personally gonna go with NO.  It’s either 911, or take a cab.  Even if you’re a bit light on the cab fare, I’m pretty sure they’d let you get away with it.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Baby Almost Born on Subway

With that comes the lowcut tops, short shorts, and micro skirts. This is truly one of New York’s greatest treasures, IMHO.

Today, there was a young lady sitting down in front of me.  I was holding on to the bar above where she was sitting.   She was wearing a sundress type thing with little straps.  I guess the dress was a little big on her or something because one strap kept falling off her shoulder.

I looked down, and oops…there’s your boob.  Nice to meet you.

Unfortunately, she was not terribly attractive.  Wasn’t quite to the point of being offensive, but it did give me pause.  So I turned away.

It’s like forcing yourself to not look at a car wreck.

Anyway, I got a seat at the next stop more or less across from her…a slight angle. I thought everything would be safe now because I was now at her eye level instead of looking down over her.  How wrong I was.

She was reading people magazine or something and was totally focused.  Whoops, there goes that strap again.   Only this time, it really went.  There’s no way that people sitting next to me couldn’t see her entire boob hanging out.

It was easily the entire length of one stop to another before she picked up the strap.  But she did it totally casual without even taking her eyes off the magazine.  I don’t think she “felt the breeze” at all.

I kept waiting for another woman on the train to say something to her.  There’s no way in hell a guy is going to say anything.  For one, it is against our DNA to do so, and secondly that is a line we never cross.

I just assumed it was part of the “girl code” to tell each other when your boob is hanging out, regardless of being strangers.  Right?

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

I Can See Your Boob

For the first ever SUBWAY Monthly newsletter, I’m thinking of creating the greatest list of subway riding tips ever.  I’m not sure how I’m going to aggregate it just yet.  Or even how it will be arranged.  Luckily, I have a lot of ideas.

For one, I’m going to reach out to as many transit experts as I can to see what they have to say.  I’m hoping I can get some pretty big names.

Secondly, I’m thinking of aggregating great tips from riders like you.  If you’ve got a good tip, let me know using this form.  It will send an email directly to the SUBWAYblogger team for review.  If we like your tip, you’ll get full credit in the newsletter.

These transit tips can include things like maximizing your MetroCard usage and bonuses.  How to time the perfect ride and hit all of your transferrs.   Where’s the best place to wait on the platform for the train?  Are there such things as “free rides.”?  Etc.

Use this form to submit your tips for SUBWAY Monthly. If you’d like your name or website linked to with your tip, be sure to include your info.

If you’ve got the scoop, we’ll make it known and give you full credit.

Anyway, that’s just one of the ideas we’re working on.  I think it could turn out to be pretty awesome.  Of course, only subscribers (free) will get a copy!

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

The Greatest List of Subway Tips Ever Created

I’m predicting that we get our first sustained heat not this week but next week.  This week will be the last week of the nice mild weather.   I’m just going on a hunch that next week is going to be the official beginning of the balls hot weather.

Of course, I have absolutely no scientific data to back that up.  It’s just a feeling.

As with everything on the subway, I get really jumpy when things go too well for too long.

Being able to leave home without a jacket and not sweat my ass off on the platform is delightful.  But I’m used to only being able to do that for a few days a year.

Now, remember SUBWAYblogger’s three day theory.  It takes a full three days for the temperature underground to totally catch up to the outside temp.  One day of 98 degree weather won’t do anything down below.  We need three back to back days in the mid eighties for it to become totally unbearable underground.

I’m really not looking forward to the heat in the subway this year, not that I would any year.  This year particularly though.  There’s a really distinct smell of urine ripening at my stop that just gets worse by the day.  I can only imagine what the heat is going to bring.

There’s clearly some homeless guy that keeps making a daily deposit there because there’s no way that one quick piss could be persistent this long.  That ammonia smell is getting pretty ridiculous.  It’s almost to the point where you can taste it.  I’m considering walking all the way to the other end of the platform from now on.

Anyway, mark my words.  Heat’s a comin’.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Predicting the Heat’s-A-Coming

On the newer trains (like the 2 train), they’ve added some more public service announcements.  They aren’t especially new, but they seem to be playing them a lot more, and they’re starting to piss SUBWAYblogger off.

For the longest time, you only had a couple basic announcements from the voice in the ceiling.

“Backpacks and other large containers are subject to random search by the police.”

“Please do not block the doors while the train is in the station.”

“If you see a suspicious package or activity, do not keep it to yourself.  Tell a police officer or an MTA employee.”

Those pretty much summed it up for years.

Now there’s these obnoxious ones that say, “If you see an elderly, pregnant, or handicap person near you offer your seat.  You’ll be standing up for what’s right (pun intended).  Courtesy is contagious and it starts with you.”

First of all, lay off the “jokes.”  Standing up for what’s right?  Hey here’s an idea.  You hire staff that knows how to speak English when using the PA system.  That sounds “right” to me.  It’s not to much to ask to be able to hear and understand the more critical announcements.

If you want to stand up so that Mrs. Preggers or Grandma can sit down, fine.  If you don’t, who cares.  That’s life.  We don’t need you’re little reminders.

It’s almost as infuriating as President Obama having to hold a press conference to remind people to wash their hands in order to avoid swine flu.

Gents, let’s just stick to running the trains.

Your thoughts?

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

“Courtesy is contagious…”

We here at SUBWAYblogger have decided to offer a monthly newsletter product just for true subway riders.  There’s really nothing like this out in the market right now.  So instead of bitching about it, we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands.

Sign Up Now!

SUBWAY Monthly will be a…wait for it…monthly newsletter with tons of insider tips, stories, offers, deals, comedic out-takes and more.

What the heck does that mean?

Well for example, did you know that SUBWAYblogger gets sent dozens of emails from companies every month looking to give away their stuff on SUBWAYblogger.com?  Most of the time we tell them to take a hike.  If they want to buy some advertising, we’d be happy to feature their stuff.  If we put all of it up, the site would soon look messier than Billy Mays’s underpants after snorting lines of Oxy Clean.

On the other hand, some of the stuff is actually pretty good.  So we’ll make those offers (only the good ones) to SUBWAY Monthly subscribers.

Some stories are a little more vulgar colorful than even we would publish.  I know, you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait, they actually have worse stories?”   YEAH.  You can’t even imagine some of the submissions we receive.  So we’ll pick the best of the bunch to include in the subscription only version, SUBWAY Monthly.

You may or may not know that the SUBWAYblogger crew has a life outside the tunnels.  As a matter of fact, most of us are pretty well connected.  So we hear about things from our political connections all the time.  Elliot Sander resigning?  Ha…old news.  Unfortunately, many of our sources frown upon us publishing the gritty details on the site.  So we either have to find creative ways around it, or not publish it.   Those little gossip nuggets will also find their way into SUBWAY Monthly.

So those are just a few of the things that you can expect to get each month.  We’ll also throw out ideas, previews, and surveys via the main SUBWAYblogger site all month long to find out what you’d like to see in the next issue.

Is it safe?  Yeah…it’s safe.  SPAM is a bitch.  If I could reach out and throttle every spammer that sends me emails about erectile dysfunction…I’d have to quit my day job just to get to them all.  So your email address will never leave here.  You’ll be joining an elite private group.  You’re info will never be sold to any of those bastards.

Quick FAQ:

What is it?

The best damn thing you’ll read all month.

How do I get it?

Sign up above.

How often is it sent?

Really?  Nevermind…this isn’t for you.  Just go away now.

Who should sign up?

If you’re from Idaho or some other worthless flyover state, don’t bother.  None of it will make sense to you.  SUBWAY Monthly is for true New Yorkers.  True subway riders only.

How much is it?

FREE.

What if it sucks?

Well then just unsubscribe.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

SUBWAY Monthly Newsletter

This morning was no different. I boarded the R train that goes from my house in Midtown to my job in Soho. It is a fairly quick trip, but even on the quickest of trips, you can catch a glimpse of a myriad of interesting things.

Today was probably the most shocking of all.

Across from me was a black man about my age. He was all ghettoed out, wearing baggy pants, a puffy ski parka, a Sean John sweater and a ski head pulled menacingly down on his eyes. He had chains around his neck and bright bling on his fingers and in his ears. He had a big bag on his lap and was shaking his head in time to the gangsta rap he was listening to that filtered into the rest of the car in staticked beeps.

He reached into his messenger bag and pulls out…. what I can’t quite see it…I squint my eyes to discern…it’s long and pointed…is it a knife?…is it a needle….

No, it’s a crocheting needle. He promptly pulls out a half-made green sock and continues on looping and connecting, his hands working wildly. There he sat from 42nd St., to Prince, pulling bright green wool from it’s skein and jabbing his number 7 crochet tool in and out, crocheting his little heart out.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Knitting “Terrorist” on the Subway

The post-work subway ride uptown on Friday is my favorite of the week. I can always get a seat from the Wall Street stop, as people tend to leave their offices earlier. Because we get to sleep late the next day or have fun weekend plans too large for a cubicle, everyone tends to actually look at each other and even smile.

I don’t consider my workweek over until I’ve tutored my last student, Jing, on Friday night. But I do feel lighter. There’s a zip of camaraderie among passengers, like we’re all in on the same joke or headed to some surprise party someone very high-strung doesn’t know about.

A few Fridays ago, I was sitting on the train, listening to music and feeling good. A couple boarded with their toddler, the human equivalent of a sticker burr, a few stops after mine. He clung to his exhausted mom and howled when put down in his own seat.

I locked eyes with the woman sitting across from me. She was coming from a workplace somewhere near mine and had an easy smile barely hidden by Stranger Face, the public “Just get me where I need to be” face. Neither of us needed to say anything to verify a wavelength. If that kid didn’t shut up, our Friday evening buzz would be seriously harshed, man.

The mom and dad bent over the toddler to shush him. Strangers shot knowing glances as the boy kept screaming. “Just hold him already!” every passenger silently chided. A 2 train hath more judgment than the pearly gates.

Once on his dad’s lap, the squirming child vine fell into a short-lived hush, the calm before the snotty, whining storm. Then he started to scream and thrash like the lead singer of a death metal band.

The woman across from me sent a blinking grimace my way, which I recognized from my days of teaching. In English, it translates to something like, “Do we really need to keep this one alive?”

Does it also take a village to properly beat a child’s ass?

The mom looked ready to throw herself from the train. Meanwhile, the dad whipped out a book and started reading aloud.

Saved! The boy stopped crying, I turned down the music pumping from my headphones, and the woman across from me breathed a sigh of relief. Our subway car was collectively proud of this glorious moment in family literacy.

I was just considering letting myself doze a few stops, when the book’s plot dissolved or the animal characters became unsympathetic or maybe, maybe the boy was just the spawn of Satan.

Face-clawing, opera-singer-birthing-a-large-breech-pony cries.

Now good friends, give or take never formally meeting, I rolled my eyes at the woman across from me. She rolled hers back. The dad acted quickly and gave the toddler an apple, which he promptly bit into.

“Awww… He was hungry,” the fickle audience of passengers realized.

The train surged on in peace. When the boy dropped the apple, everyone braced for the din, but nothing happened. He was curious to see where it rolled and giggled in delight when a girl stopped the fruit’s flight with her foot.

The dad took it from her and here’s where it became really hard not to talk to strangers. The mom retrieved a tissue and some Purell, gave the apple a cursory wipe, and returned it to the boy. He started eating it. Greedily.

Everyone in the car turned against the parents then. Many people avoid touching the subway pole, which is about 3,000 times cleaner than the floor. Ewww! I’ve seen vomit, urine, tracked-in animal waste, and garbage on subway floors. I’d never seen anyone eat off of them.

The woman across from me agreed. She wrinkled her nose. When I mirrored the expression, she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

Where better to be disgusting than NYC public transportation? For this family, it was no big deal – just another big, dirty apple.

I shook with laughter until I transferred to the local 1 train at 96th Street, where the woman and I sat across from each other again.

In addition to looks, I almost wish we’d exchanged names.

For these adventures and more, visit SUBWAYblogger.com.

Does it also take a village to properly beat a child’s ass?