While watching a rerun episode of “Tosh.0” recently, I saw this video of a man falling asleep at a bus stop and then falling to the ground as the glass door he was leaning against opened to allow passengers on and off the bus.
I wasn’t repulsed by the man who stepped over him, because honestly, I’m not touching someone too out of it to realize he just hit the ground, either. And I didn’t celebrate the guy who immediately ran over to aid him, because I figure that guy was the friend who got the falling guy drunk and allowed him to wear those socks. All I could think was how much I wanted to see glass doors like that on the subway platforms.
Just imagine it: a barrier ensuring you could never be hit by an oncoming train after some crazy person bumps into you and knocks you onto the tracks. No one leaning out over the tracks to see if a train is approaching and blocking your view. No trash on the tracks catching fire and causing traffic to stop. Sure, it’d mean no more endless amusement from those videos of mothers letting go of their strollers for just a second and having to jump onto the tracks to save their barely-loved babies, but I’d be willing to deal with that.
In NYC, when you want car service, you usually stand at a streetcorner with your arm in the air and engage in physical warfare with anyone who attempts to steal your yellow cab. It’s certainly convenient to be able to step out the door and into a cab, but try to find one when your flight is actually on time or when you have fifteen minutes to make it to your dinner reservation and suddenly every cab in the city is off duty.
There are two main companies providing call-ahead car service: Dial 7 and Carmel. Dial 7 came out with this commercial featuring a way-too-friendly driver years ago:
And Carmel thought, “My, what a classy ad. Let’s strike back with this really creepy one in which these pathetic women replace male companionship with a car”:
People talked about it. People balked at it. But we all eventually moved on. And so they released this one next:
I tend to fast-forward through commercials on my DVR, so I hadn’t really seen this one when my boyfriend made me stop on it one day. “Watch the guy in the black tie,” he said. “Did they purposely hire the worst lip-syncers in the world for this?”
This morning, a polite young man let me into a packed R train first, even though there was a chance he wasn’t going to fit in after me. I flattened myself as much as I could to allow him in, too, and as he tried to squeeze between the doors at the last minute, the sleeve of his leather jacket got caught. I stared at the fabric, pressed into the crack between the doors so tightly he couldn’t pull it out, and remembered a time when the same thing happened to me.
I was wearing a plaid cape and flew into the 4 train, superhero style, in the last seconds before the doors closed. One side of the cape got caught in the doors, and in the moments before I knew the train would begin to move, I had all of these terrifying daymares about what might happen as we moved through the tunnel:
I’ve had this picture waiting on my hard drive in my special Things to Eventually Post on UM folder since 2008. That was the last time I saw one of these deconstructed “wet paint” signs. And probably also the last time the MTA did any repairs on the subway platforms!
Jack, Nik, and me as photographed by Kamran on the Long Island Rail Road (or Railroad, in my opinion) on the way to our friend Anthony’s house two weekends ago with our friends Eric and Christine for cheeses, habanero vodka, and fun times in the schoolyard pretending to be cast members from The Breakfast Club:
I’m not sure I remember the scene where Anthony Michael Hall gets a titty-twister from Judd Nelson, but I’m sure it happened.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
