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Listen Up, Bee-yotch!

I witnessed NUMEROUS heinous breaches of etiquette on the subway yesterday. This kind of behavior really pushes me RIGHT over the edge, and though I cannot believe I have to do this, clearly it's time for a primer on how to behave in the subway.

How To Behave in the Subway:

1. Listening to a walkman or ipod is fine. Even if everyone can hear the tinny songs leaking from your headphones, it's okay. not ideal, but okay. What is not okay is bringing a boombox onto the train and forcing everyone to endure listening to Mariah Carey. NOT OKAY. Did this happen? Yes it did. What kind of people do this? Don't ask me, yo, because I don't know.

2. Chewing gum? Okay. Enjoy your gum. Don't chew it in a job interview, though. But smacking/cracking your gum in an otherwise silent car is just rude. I could not concentrate on my New Yorker essay about the Aryan Brotherhood because you, you teenage husssy, were smacking your gum like it was a firecracker. You know how you look when you do that? Gross.

3. It is NEVER acceptable to trim your nails anywhere but the privacy of your own room, preferably when your mate is at work. Why would you trim your nails on the train? It is because you're disgusting? Yes, it is.

I had to change cars yesterday because SOMEONE was very passionately clipping his nails and I was fighting the urge to stand up and clip his entire hand off. But when I switched cars, I soon came across violation number 4.

4. Do not ever, under any circumstances, pull out your genitals in front of a woman and start yanking on them. Just don't ever do this, no matter how much you might want to. Very bad manners.

Rules of Conduct

I have a few things to say to the New York MTA.

This is a company that insists on jacking up the fares while engaging in some deliberate book-cooking and hiding a budget surplus. They now say they're going to take away the unlimted rides deal because of a deficit (yeah, right), and their service continues to plummet. The MTA is the most corrupt, remorseless organization since the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and the only reason they get away with it is because they have a stranglehold on this city.

And now this! For the past week, I have seen the following posters and fliers all over the subway:

MTA New York City Transit subway and bus rules make everyone’s ride better.
Failure to pay the fare or violation of any of the rules can result in arrest, fine, and/or ejection.

Please do not:
- Damage subway or bus property – that includes drawing graffiti, or scratchiti
- Litter or create unsanitary conditions
- Smoke anywhere on NYC Transit property
- Drink alcoholic beverages
- Panhandle or beg
- Play a radio audible to others
- Use amplified devices on platforms
- Use more than one seat
- Block free movement
- Lie down
- Engage in unauthorized commercial activity
- Enter tracks, tunnels, or non-public areas
- Carry open bulky items likely to cause inconvenience

Okay, this all sounds fine (though why they fail to mention biochemical weapons is beyond me). But today I was riding the train in the early afternoon in a virtually empty car, and when we pulled into a station, two cops came on and pulled the girl (18 years old, maybe) sitting across from me off the train. They told her they were giving her a ticket for taking up more than one seat. I was deeply confused, because she had been sitting there just as prim and dainty as you please......and then I remembered that she had placed one of those tiny Godiva bags on the seat next to her.

Yes they did. They gave her a ticket. So very GRRRRR!

Going underground!

The New York Times is reporting that the police confiscated over $2 million in counterfeit merchandise on Canal Street yesterday. Cruel timing. You can all forget getting any Christmas presents from me.

So if a "Kate Spade" handbag goes for $20 dollars, why, that's like.....one hundred thousand purses! (Not to mention belts, sunglasses, and chandelier earrings).

from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/nyregion/03RAID.html):

Said Captain Kevin McGowen: "It looks like this was the distribution center. We've got nine rooms; they were all secreted under there. We've got a lot of stuff to bring out." The items were to be loaded onto a tractor-trailer.

Stairs beneath the two small showrooms led to twisting hallways and cramped rooms stacked with handbags wrapped in white tissue, from the large leatheresque bags marked with Gucci labels to the tubular Burberry Hobo purses in trademark plaid. [FYI: Burberry = so over]

The most fascinating feature of this is not the bust or the goods, it's the underground network. I have long heard rumors of a web of tunnels and rooms under Canal Street, and a little research this morning bore this out.

First off, Canal Street used to be a canal. It was filled with the hills of Soho to bring further development to "northern" Manhattan. Apparently, the lack of bedrock on Canal Street there has made it the perfect loci for extensive underground construction. After all, there is an abondoned subway station down there (the Worth St. stop) and, according to a 1995 book by Jennifer Toth, "Mole People", an entire colony of, well, mole people living down there.
And now rooms upon rooms of tubular Burberry Hobo purses in white tissue. Sounds kinda decadent to me.

I've got to figure out a way to get down there.