east village idiot

“Bus Bunching” is a phoenomenon in which buses running on seemingly different schedules end up running on the same schedule. The result is a scene like this:

Except at 8:30 this morning, this scene was only a small part of what was going on with the M15 bus on 1st Avenue. When I stepped out my door, I saw a line of buses stopped in the middle of intersections (hey, MTA, don’t block the box!) and wondered if there was police activity or an accident further up the street.

After looking up the street, it became clear that this traffic jam was the result of the MTA’s incompentence. I gasped when I saw - in just a span of four blocks - eight articulated buses lined up to stop at 14th Street, creating a traffic jam that clogged 1st Avenue for several more blocks. Three additional buses were loading passengers at the 14th Street stop, but all of the trailing buses were almost completely empty.

A school crossing guard at 14th Street who witnessed this sight was quick to point the blame for the traffic. “Must be the fare hike,” she said. It’s a strange coincidence that the MTA finds new and exciting ways to screw things up on the first workday that they ask you to dig deeper into your pocket.

It’s nice to see that the extra revenue is going into crowding our streets with empty buses.

So, am I to presume that if I play Take 5 and have to go to the bathroom really badly on a subway platform, I can pee on this little guy’s head?

Wow, I should play the lottery every time I’m drunk.

You know those subway ads by law firm Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald? They list a bunch of awards they’ve won for clients in medical malpractice cases involving children and have that little boxing leprechaun as their logo.

Well, this might be the best vandalism of a subway ad ever:

TO THE STUPID LADY IN FRONT OF ME AT THE TURNSTILES - The screen says “insufficient fare.” It said it the first time. It said it the second time. And it still says it now. Swiping the same card over and over and over again at the same turnstile isn’t going to add money to it, idiot. Now get the hell out of my way!

Sorry, I just had to vent to somebody.

As you may recall, yesterday morning, I saw this sign on a stairway at the 1st Avenue L Train station.

Given the MTA’s track record, I was not at all surprised when two days after “2-23-08,” the stairway was still closed.

This morning, I paid that same stairway a visit, and was shocked by what I had found. Was the stairway open again? No! Of course not! But something had changed.

Why hurry up and finish the repair work when you can just move the goalposts with the help of a magic marker?

The MTA has been working on the staircases at the 1st Avenue subway station for the past couple of weeks, making our lives a living hell by forcing throngs of commuters to jam into half as much space as usual, and seemingly doing absolutely nothing to the stairs. In fact, I can’t even figure out what possessed them to do anything to these staircases. They seemed to be working just fine in getting everyone to and from the street before.

Unsurpisingly, I took this picture this morning - February 25th.

It’s been two days. Let’s see how long this goes on.

A sign above the escalator on the B/D/F/V platform at Herald Square:

Okay, look, MTA, I was willing to give you a break on the outlandishly expensive electronic sign system on the L Train. But my high school had these types of signs in the cafeteria. All you had to do was plug in a little device, type in a message (in this case, something along the lines of “watch your step as you leave the escalator” or “please keep away from the platform edge lest the platform crumbles beneath you and you get crushed by a train”), and hit enter. Bam! It’s done.

My high school lunch lady could figure these things out, but not the people who run the MTA.

Actually, it’s best not to dwell on this. Then we might start to think about the people operating the trains.

This is an ad in the 1st Avenue station on the L Train:

One clever vandal decided to provide some other warnings about skipping meals. And that’s when all hell breaks loose on this ad.

By the way, what’s the point of this ad campaign? “Skipping meals can cause headaches. Skip all the meals you want and use our product!” Brilliant.

 
1st Avenue station on the L Train, 8:30am.

And unfortunately, it’s only gone downhill since then.

Little to no content today, folks. I’d love to tell you about the ads for the menswear store in Utah that claimed to have over “8,000 missionary-tested suits in stock,” but it will have to wait.

TRY THIS DELICIOUS WAIFER - Remember that news story a year ago about how anorexics are wreaking havoc on our subway system? I found it hard to believe, but I finally saw one for myself this morning. This skinny blond chick stepped off the train and just collapsed onto the platform. Paramedics rushed to help and carted her out of the station in a chair, but in typical MTA fashion, our train sat in Union Square for several minutes at the height of rush hour due to a “sick passenger,” even though the girl wasn’t on the train.