You know you are a rockstar when your concerts cause the New York City subway to reroute in advance.
Apparently, there won’t be any C trains running along the Upper West Side. Concert entrances are at 72nd Street. Your ticket says which side (Central Park West or 5th Ave) you have to enter.
You can only enter the concert on the side on your ticket.
Photo orangejuicy. Story Gothamist.
I promise this is not an advertising plug. I legitimately think this think is pretty cool, so that’s why I’m posting about it. It just so happens, they are an advertiser this week.
Anyway, check out “Hero Reports.”
It’s by MIT about the people who “See Something, and Say Something.”
The idea is to track down the 1,944 people who “saw something” last year, and map out their instances of heroism. It turns out, the stories of these can be pretty interesting.
Some of the stories are legitimately security related, but most are stories of kindness. Strangers doing something to help other strangers. It’s worth a look.
You can also post you own stories. I have a feeling if SUBWAYblogger started posting stories there, the site would get overloaded.
Ever thought of just jumping the turnstile when your Metrocard stopped working for some unknown reason? You know you have plenty of cash/rides left on it, so it must be something wrong with the machine. So screw it, just jump over and move on with your life.
Well, that little maneuver is going to cost you a lot more if you get caught. The price of bouncing over the bar is now one-hundo ($100), and the new price kicked in Monday.
It used to cost you $60, but apparently that was too affordable for the homeless guys and neighborhood teens that just jump over without even a hesitation. So upping it to $100 ought to do the trick.
They even have a special division of court that handles fare jumpers, called the Transit Adjudication Bureau. Aka TAB.
Last week, we offered up some free ads to our readers. The response was greater than I had expected.
As a result, we plan to offer free ads every month from here on out. Well make a post during the first week of every month announcing that we are taking complimentary orders.
Ads will then be available on a first come, first served basis until all of the free ads are taken.
Thanks to everyone who participated.
Quite a debate about this.
[poll=6]
(Yes, I know this isn’t NYC)
In preparation for the summer Olympic games, Beijing has started security checks at all of their subway stations. No, they aren’t a joke like they are in the NYC subway system.
“It’s just as strict as the airport security checks.” [Source]
They have wands to scan passengers for weapons, and all large bags go through X-ray machines. Liquids are checked unless the passenger takes a sip from the container.
Compare that to New York City’s methods…the same NYC that is daily terror target every day of the year. In most cases, it could be weeks before you see any formal security procedures beyond an officer standing around the platform.
The bag inspection system is laughable. Quick survey, out of the last 50 times you’ve walked by one of the NYPD inpection tables, how many times have you seen someone having their bag inspected? Maybe 2 or 3? That’s what I thought.
Most of the time, the table is just there for show. They only inspect a handful of people.
After years of riding the subway and carrying a semi large computer bag, I’ve only been inspected once. I started to open the the bag, and the cop said, “Nahh don’t worry about those [smaller pockets]. Just open the large compartment.”
Ohh…ok. So those other pockets couldn’t possibly contain anything suspect because the terrorists would never think to hide a biological weapon in the smaller, hidden pockets. They just use the big one.
Anyway, just another example where the US is falling behind other nations.
So we have been kicking around the idea of expanding SUBWAYblogger to include other cities around the country and around the world. However, we would keep each city separate.
SUBWAYblogger.com would remain the New York City portal. However we would create additional subsites. For example:
dc.subwayblogger.com
boston.subwayblogger.com
london.subwayblogger.com
etc.
In essence, a network of SUBWAYblogger sites would be created, but you wouldn’t lose your local flavor.
There are some challenges, mostly having to do with money. We wouldn’t be able to pay someone to run the other sites from a content point of view. However, we could easily provide all of the hosting, technical space, coding, etc.
So we would probably want to find existing subway sites to absorb into SUBWAYblogger. The publisher could still have complete control over content and advertisement revenue.
It would be nice to find, for example, some Blogger.com sites that wanted to make the jump to WordPress and become a more legit player in the space.
Perhaps the idea is a bit too ambitious.
Clearly, that was just was just bullshit.
Remember way back when the news came out that the MTA planned to invest some $30 million on service improvements? Remember when it was “delayed”? Well, now it’s just not going to plain happen.
It is all based on the slow economy, and the lack of income tax revenue that the MTA receives.
I smelled BS from the get-go.
Just when I thought I was thinking a little too much about subway seating strategy, I stumbled across this site that went as far as making complex diagrams.
Now that’s dedication.
(but I admit I am a little jealous)
And you thought that ditch between the rails was there to collect water and muck (pictured here). Well, you should also know it is there to save your life.
An unidentified man fell onto the tracks today at Delancey Street while waiting for the F train. Luckily he fell in a way which allowed his body to fall into the cutout ditch between the rails. Lucky? Definitely, because an F train was just seconds away and ran over his body.
He was not injured from the train itself even though 3 cars rolled over him. He fit into that space in the tracks.
He was taken to Bellevue condition unknown but apparently alive.
SUBWAYblogger 