August 23, 2004

Underground

On the subway this morning I was in a car of Nader/Camejo supporters. One of them was wearing a t-shirt that said (in big letters), "I AM NOT IRRELEVANT!" Another had a shirt that said, "MY VOTE COUNTS!" They were handing out buttons and half heartedly chanting "Nader, Nader, Nader, no more Bush or Al-Sadr." One guy managed to spill his coffee on a commuter who was not amused.

I've been spending way too much time on the subway. Almost 2 hours a day. Things will get better once we're moved in. But being subterranean for so many hours a day makes you think about things... like why is it so darned hot down there? Heat rises and yet 50 feet underground it is often 10 or even 15 degrees hotter than outside. The culprit, I'll bet, are all those air conditioners on subway cars spewing hot air. Why not just AC the stations and forget out cooling individual cars? Or maybe just turn off the AC in the cars and see if the whole place cools down. Also, who is busy scratching all the windows? Every single car I've been in has windows scratched so badly you can barely see out of them. The scratches aren't even tags, just random angry hatchmarks. What's the point? I understand tagging. But this is just stupid. And what's the deal with the variety of color/tiling schemes going on? Why for example is 49th street bright orange? Why not paint the columns at each stop based on the color of the line they are on? Stations with multiple lines would have stripes on the columns. Easy & logical. Also why has New York never instituted route maps like the London Tube System which is regularly hailed for being well signed. Every day I see hapless tourists scrutinizing maps and getting on the wrong train. Sigh. I could go on.

Happily it was another day of perfect weather. I dealt with painters and spent some time exploring my new neighborhood.

posted at 04:13 PM by raul

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TAGS: bush (1) nader (1) subway (13)