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!