New York on a Tuesday
So it’s cold. Damn cold. And I’m standing in a queue in the Meatpacking District of New York…not, however, to pick up my weekly pork (although judging by the salacious looks I’m getting anything is possible). I’m queuing to see a concert. Of a band. Called Razorlight. You may have heard of them. Most New Yorkers, on the other hand, haven’t. Which explains why there are only 45 people in the queue, and the show is due to start in 10 munutes.
Just enough time really for a few pithy thoughts hammered out on my nice new phone, and one keystroke away from your eyes.
Isn’t technology wonderful? I can be here. You can be there. All it takes to connect us is a gorgeous, fluid stream of bits and bytes, from my Nokia to my mailbox to my blog to your browser and, at the same time, to my Facebook page. It renders me almost speechless. And it causes me to wonder, then, why oh why do subway stations the world over smell of piss, sweat and soot? Surely in an age where the human brain can conceive of all this magnificent technology someone, somewhere could spend a bit of money figuring out how to keep them clean?
I love New York. In fact only today I bought a cigarette lighter with that very sentiment on it. I’m also a fan of public transport (no, before you ask, I don’t have anything with that written on it. It’s not as cool as the NY thing to profess anything more than a passing nod to the wonders of subways, tubes, busses and trains. I know my limits). But New York’s subways are the worst I’ve seen. Yes, even Prague, Budapest and Bangkok have better ways of getting from A to Wherever. And there are some things common to all of them.
They all have the hooded subway lout slouching in a corner, ipod headphones jammed in deep, but not deep enough to curtail the slippery diarrhoea of whatever they’re listening to to seep out and drip onto the lap of whoever is sitting close to them. And all subways have resident perverts, wearing trenchcoats, about 5 foot tall, balding, chubby and with glasses. They look up at everyone, lick their lips and fumble for change in their largely empty pockets. Or something. No, New York subways are the worst because not only are they damp, smelly, erratic and noisy. They’re confusing too. Whoever designed and planned their routes did so while on an acid trip. And, after sticking each finger into a different coloured pot of paint, they simply dragged their hands back and forth across a large piece of paper. And that was it. Subway routes planned.
Ok I could milk this some more but any moment now me and my 44 new friends are going in to the concert. Please let that last sentence be true. I’m so cold I long for the warmth of the subway. And my thumbs are tired because, despite all this great technology, Nokia’s keyboard is designed for midgets. Which I am not. More later.
