Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Wednesday 10-3-12 - By Allan Raible

1.  I actually left work today at the time I was supposed to, rather than stay late.  Partly due to the fact that I had a weather-induced migraine that was hellbent on killing me.  Usually leaving work an hour or so later, I noticed a difference in the level of train traffic.  Interestingly, since I was not feeling my best, I closed my eyes for a few stops.  When I opened them, I discovered the car was mostly empty.  I panicked for a second.  When did I miss the evacuation?  But then once I realized nothing major had happened, I calmed down.

2. At certain stops, crossing from train to train can be tricky.  There are people dead set on knocking you over.  These are people who do not wait for the other people to exit out of the subway car before shouldering their way in.  Rudeness. Even worse, is when you are trying to cross to a train and as you are crossing, trying to reach your goal before the doors close, people are coming in both intersecting directions towards you.  If everyone is in a hurry and everyone is oblivious to each other's movement, it's a real recipe for disaster.

3. There's a woman on the train reading Nylon magazine with the kind of stern, calculated focus economists would reserve for Adam Smith texts.

4.  Truth be told, I'm feeling pretty crappy as I wander out into the murky, foggy night.  As I go down the street, a cop-car passes, flashing its lights.  I cannot figure out why.  But because I'm not feeling well and perhaps due to the flashing, I trip on the sidewalk.  My glasses fall off of my face and I'm on the sidewalk, stunned.  No one pays attention, with the exception of an older guy who kind of glares at me with his mouth hanging open.  I pick myself up and declare, "I'm OK."  He doesn't even nod.  He continues to look at me with disdain and I continue my walk home.

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Tuesday 10-2-12 - By Allan Raible

1. It's really easy to spot tourists in the New York City subway system.  They always have glee-filled looks on their faces as if they see rainbows in all directions.  They don't look like they are being killed by the every-day grind.  I see a couple who are perhaps in their fifties.  I've decided that she is a tourist and that he isn't.  How do I identify him as a native?  He's wearing a Brooklyn College shirt and is taking everything with ease.  He looks around like he knows the place.  She, on the other hand seems like a wide-eyed innocent.  She musses his hair with her hand and loses her balance while not holding onto the pole. (For god's sake, hold onto the damn poll! ) This happens a good ten times.  And she always seems to keep her "We Are Not In Kansas Anymore" grin.

2.  A woman gets onto the train dressed in a flowing, navy blue shirt.  The sleeves even hang.  It is way too long for her.  As she enters, I make sure Pac-Man isn't following her, because there is something about her straight hair in combination with that ridiculous shirt that makes her look not unlike a ghost monster.  Yes.  It's Atari chic!  I heard next fall that the "Space Invaders" look will come back into style.

3.  There's a teenage kid standing by the door, shoveling fries from McDonald's into his mouth.  What's weird is that he is doing so at an alarmingly fast rate. It's a strange image, because the kid is strangely scrawny for someone pulling off this kind of movie.  He looks like he weighs thirty pounds.  His head looks like it is aiming to tip his body over.  Maybe this is his first bag of french fries ever.  Maybe he is trying to eat them all so quickly because he doesn't want anyone at home finding out.  Or, maybe like most growing teenagers, his metabolism is good enough to handle the shock of quickly consuming a large bag of fries.

4.  Is the glasses industry suffering?  It seems to me like it would be a rather self-maintained business without peaks and valleys.  I ask this because I have never known "Cohen's Fashion Optical" to resort to using such sexuality in their ads.  The woman in the advertisement has her head tilted to the side and her mouth slightly opened.  Her hair looks a little messed up. The ad offers up a deal on glasses.  I know that "sex sells" and all, but glasses seem to me to be an oddly utilitarian product to resort to applying such an adage.  That being said, they are, after all "Cohen's FASHION Optical" and thus are subject to the rules of the rest of the fashion industry.  I suppose it all comes down to way more than, "if you can't see and you need glasses, you will get a pair!"  They have to add a little spice.  And I suppose, since such an image immediately caught my eye, the ad was truly effective.

5.  In the eighties, the subways were messy and filthy and covered in graffiti.  In the years since then, they have really cleaned themselves up.  It seems really odd to me to think back and remember that people used to be able to smoke on subway platforms.  The cars used to be full of trash and dirt.  That usually is not the current case, today.  However, I look down and the subway car looks like it has been through hell.  There are random pieces of trash everywhere.  A box which once held gum.  An empty bag of fruit snacks.  Random pieces of paper and receipts.  Who was here before me?  Why didn't anyone teach them to clean up after themselves?  Why, further down the car does it look like the end result of a newspaper being ripped apart section-by-section in a wind-tunnel?  Was someone training a dog, here?  I always find it odd when people leave their newspapers on the seat.  I guess the thought is, "Well, I'll just pass it along so someone else can read it."  It seems, when framed in those terms to make sense.  But the truth is, when I see a newspaper lying on a seat I want to sit in, I view it as annoying trash someone left behind that I now have to clean up.  Couldn't you have taken it with you?  Usually after someone has sifted through a paper, too, it is oddly rearranged.  So, the idea of someone leaving a read newspaper behind as a sort of selfless form of paying it forward doesn't really work.  The reality says, "Hey!  Why don't you toss this?"  So many people, too, end up picking up the newspapers on subway seats and placing them under the seats.  I'm guessing the paper strewn across the end of the car began life that way and then as the crowds grew, it gradually moved itself further out into the center and went rogue.  Think about it this way.  Most people who want to read on the train provide their own reading material.  So you should clean up yours when you are done!

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Monday 10-1-12 - By Allan Raible

1.  I am not sitting anywhere near the map, having learned my lesson on Thursday.  However, there is a woman leaning down over me as if she is looking at the map.  I suspect she is checking out her own reflection in the window.  From within the confines of the dark tunnel, the light gives the window a strong, definitive mirror-like quality.  I only look at her for a brief second, but I get a pretty good view of her.  She's forty at most, but her face looks weathered.  What causes this?  Smoking?  Too much sun?  It could be the fact that she's probably a bit thinner than she should be.  In a few years, the weathered look that has given her face character may spread down to her neck.  Whatever the cause, whether outside or simply genetics, it makes me think about how it's all a crapshoot.  We end up aging the way we do because of a simple luck of the draw.  That's how some people at fifty still look 25 and others look like they are 75.  She wears a pair of those ipod earphones. Have you ever sat next to someone wearing those?  Noise leaks out like crazy, reducing everything to a tinny static.  And usually, when that happens, they don't even have to be very loud!  It's crazy.  

2. Another woman down the way keeps catching my eye.  I don't know why.  I look at her.  She looks back.  Then we pretend we aren't looking at each other.  What is this?  She's probably ten years younger than I am and it's probably just that we just happen to be in each other's eye-line.  Interestingly, she, too is wearing the stock ipod ear-buds.  Did I miss something?  When did people stop buying decent headphones for themselves?

3.  It's a bumpy ride and it gets a little surreal as my music switches from the Bees' "I Really Need Love" to "Washed Out's "Feel It All Around."  As the latter track's woozy beat thumps us each that much closer to our chosen destinations, I watch the bodies sway back and forth from my seated viewing position.  It's as if they are all passive victims of gravity, moving at the train's will.  

4.  We are living in a very ugly time, fashion-wise.  Not that I have any fashion sense, myself, but I've never seen so many ugly plaid shirts as I do during my daily commute back and forth.  There's one guy in a somewhat reserved, but still heinous red and white number.  He's wearing Dockers and conservative business shoes.  I have no idea what he is listening to.  Judging from his look, I'm guessing it could be anything from the Dave Matthews Band to Michael Buble.  He seems to be doing a rather spastic neck dance, so I'm thinking it might be something harder. Perhaps some Slayer or maybe even some Ice Cube.  As I'm noticing his neck movement and subconsciously mocking him for it, I realize that I'm doing the same idiotic move, myself to my music!  People is glass houses.....   Then I wonder, what kind of music do I look like I should be listening to?  If people were to guess would they be right?

5.  As the train heads out of the tunnel, I attempt to take a picture of the sunset against the deep, blue sky, thus momentarily freaking out the woman sitting next to me until she realizes what I'm doing.  I take this picture too quickly and it comes out blurry.  (See side exhibit.) Not wanting to freak the woman next to me out anymore, I stick with it and put my phone away.  

6.  There's a woman across the way from me who is listening to something funny.  I know this because she keeps laughing to herself.  I've been there.  Listening to comedy albums while you ride the train can easily make you seem like a crazy person.  She gets off of the train the stop before me, being followed by a guy who for no reason seems to be giving me the stink-eye and a guy who looks like Butch Vig's straight-laced yuppie older brother.  

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Friday 9-28-12 - By Allan Raible

1. Several people sit next to me through my ride home. The first is a woman who gets up at just about the second I sit down. She is replaced by a guy who is way too large to fit in the seat. He also has no idea how much space he takes up. As he gets up, he brushes my ear with the strap at the end of the umbrella handle sticking out of his back p

ocket. (Thanks, bro! Good lord!)

Upon his exit, he is replaced with a woman who is miraculously rocking both a faux-hawk and a leather jacket. It takes a special person to pull that off, but surprisingly she does.

A teenage kid with a skateboard and a backwards baseball cap sits down next. As someone with balance issues, I've always envied skateboarders. (I wonder if he can do an ollie!)

The kid gets up quickly and is replaced by I guy wearing really ugly black and white plaid pants. He crosses his legs almost entirely (Ouch, man!) and puts his arm over his face away from me. (Is that a relaxed position?)

2. The guy sitting across from me looks like an even cross between Charles Barkley and Yul Brynner. He's got really expressively cartoonish eyebrows that point upwards, so he sort of looks like Mr. Clean's evil twin, too. He's texting as we exit the tunnel. Given the fact that I've decided he looks like a (slightly jovial) super-villain, I'm wondering if he's texting Dr. Octopus about their next plan to attack Spiderman.

3. I have so many questions for the disheveled hipster guy with the bad, bright orange seventies-porn mustache who is holding what looks like an opened Amazon box with little stuffed animals peeking out. He's also carrying an umbrella, a backpack, the kind of canister one would use to house a a rolled poster. In addition, he's carrying countless other items. He's got a blackberry that he is glued to. He's got a pained look on his face, as if he's a human game of Blockhead ready to be knocked over.

4. Why aren't the digitized signs synced. One sign on one end of the car says the next stop is Fort Hamilton Parkway. The other sign on the other side says the next stop is Queens Plaza. I imagine as if the car is going to divide itself in a minute and I look around for any attractive women in my half of the car. No. The car is virtually empty. Just my luck. It would be me, the plaid-pantsed freaky guy and Mr. Clean. Oh no!

Well, at least it is Friday...

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home - Thursday 9-27-12 By Allan Raible:

1. When you sit in front of the map, you will have strangers leaning down, invading your personal space. (This includes their B.O.)

2. If the woman and man who were standing in front of me and arguing passive-aggressively with each other are a couple, my guess is that they very soon won't be. She's very attractive but seems like she's on her last

 nerve and he comes off as a smug self-absorbed and self-satisfied jerk. He keeps coyly smiling at her, thinking he's funny and making cracks. She keeps saying, "Enough. Shut up!"

3. The older gentleman sitting across from me obviously dyes his hair. That shade of yellow does not exist in nature, sir.

4. Somebody will always step on your feet when you are sitting on a crowded rush-hour train.