HOME |
RSS | 
New York is the kind of place where anything can happen at any moment, and although that comes with plenty of bad, this video shows that there are also many instances of spontaneous goodness going down, even on public transit.
These strangers on a train, who both happen to have their instruments with them, break out in a soulful song, much to the delight of their fellow riders.
Whether this chance meeting was truly by chance or not ceases to be an issue once you watch them play, and feel that energy that seems to be in the air that New Yorkers breathe.
–via AnimalNY
You know your city’s subway station is clean and vandal free when awesome works of art, like these 8 bit artworks made out of tile, cover the walls without fear of being defaced.
This subway station in Stockholm, Sweden is full of cool pixel art featuring Pac Man, Space Invaders, and other designs that show the Swedes appreciation of pixel art. There are lot more pics of this neat station art at the link below, don’t you wish your local subway station was this bright and cheery?
added per request:
source for this post: http://emulate-su.livejournal.com/504166.html
Original photos by: http://white-noizz.livejournal.com/
The daily commute got a lot more interesting recently when life sized lightsaber hand rails that actually light up were installed in Tokyo trains to promote the Star Wars: The Complete Saga DVD release.
If they’d been installed in trains in America’s major cities, they would have been summarily ripped off and sold on craigslist Ebay, so I doubt we’ll see a promotion as cool as this in the U.S. any time soon. Head over to the link to see what Japanese commuters thought of this bold promotional gimmick.
Link -via DesignTaxi
Comments Off
To promote their Prohibition Era show Boardwalk Empire, HBO has brought some vintage trains back to select subway routes in NYC. If you’re in the Big Apple in the month of September and find yourself in need of a ride, try to check out the express 2/3 track in Manhattan from 12 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Laughing Squid writer Scott Beale just happened across one on the inaugural weekend and took the above video. Vintage features include rattan seats, ceiling fans (!) and drop sash windows. Pretty sweet.
Link via Laughing Squid
Imagine a fancy luncheon -served on a subway train! That’s exactly what happened in New York City on Sunday, aboard the L train bound for Brooklyn. The guests only knew they were there for an “underground dining experience.” What they got was an experience, all right.
The event was the work of several supper clubs, and the menu they devised was luxurious: caviar, foie gras and filet mignon, and for dessert, a pyramid of chocolate panna cotta, dusted with gold leaf. All of it was accessible with a MetroCard swipe (Michele handed out single-ride passes) and orchestrated with clockwork precision. The six-course extravaganza took only a half-hour.
It wasn’t rush hour, so seating was easy. The tables (lap-width black planks, with holes cut to fit water glasses) were tied to the subway railings with twine. Tucking in behind them felt something like being buckled into a roller coaster. At 1:30 p.m., a few minutes ahead of schedule, the train lurched off.
It was a lovely meal, but it was, after all, illegal.
Paul Smith, a CUNY professor, encountered the meal on his way home to the East Village and was invited to join. “I had this fantastic lunch,” he said, “very exquisite. And then I thought, am I going to get arrested?”
There was no sign of the police or even a conductor, but officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, reached on Monday, were not amused. “A dinner party on the L train?” said Charles F. Seaton, a spokesman for the authority. “No. Subway trains are for riding, not for holding parties.”
In deference to the authority’s rules, the hosts did not offer alcohol. This did not assuage Mr. Seaton. “No beverages at all with open containers,” he said.
After clean-up, the organizers called it a job well done. They had spent over $1600 on the stunt, but the publicity for pulling it off was well worth it. Link -Thanks, Bill!
(Image credit: Yana Paskova for The New York Times)
Penelope, the snake, spent a month riding the rails. Now her owner is being asked to pay $650 for snake retrieval and clean up.
Melissa Moorhouse was riding the subway when her pet boa, Penelope, went missing. Melissa notified the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the car was searched. No Penelope!
Fast forward one month. A commuter spots Penelope on the red line. The train car is taken out of service and searched. Penelope is found. Yippee! Snake and owner are reunited!
Melissa’s happiness, however, doesn’t last long. She is now being billed $650 for the expense of searching the train and sanitizing the car.
“To rid the subway car of any traces of germs such as salmonella, which may have been left by your snake, MBTA maintenance crews had to scrub and disinfect the Red Line car in which your snake was found,” wrote Wesley Wallace, MBTA Treasurer.
Alexander Chen took Massimo Vignelli’s iconic 1972 map of the New York City subway system and turned it into a musical instrument. The routes are treated like strings, and whenever a train intersects a string, that string is plucked:
Length determines pitch, with longer strings playing lower notes. When a string is in the middle of being drawn by a subway car, its pitch is continually shifting. The sounds are cello pizzicato from the wonderful freesound.org, a set recorded by corsica_s. A complete chromatic scale was too dissonant. Ultimately I settled on a simple major C scale but with the lowest note as a raised third E, which keeps it from ever feeling fully resolved.
(L) The L Mighty Wallet (M) The Underground Mighty Wallet (R) NYC Subway Map Mighty Wallet – $14.95
You’ll never be lost at the subway with these Mighty Wallets from the NeatoShop! The clever and super-strong Tyvek-made wallets are printed with maps from various subway systems, like the ‘L’ in Chicago, the London Underground, and the NYC Subway.
As an added bonus, you’re camouflaging your money and cards inside what looks like ordinary ol’ maps: Link
Comments Off 
New York City got such a snowfall that it even accumulated underground -in the subway stations! Link -via Fark
(Image credits: @dwag29 and @caro)
If you want to go to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you’ll have to board the train at Platform 9 3/4. Some prankster decided that New York City’s subway system should offer service to Hogwarts, and so put up a sticker for that platform on a sign at the 14th Street Union Square station:
The number is visible on the south side of 14th St., just around the corner from the Regal Cinemas Union Square 14, which shows the seventh installment of the wizard films based on author J.K. Rowling’s books, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” at least 16 times daily.
The charmed sticker is slapped in the slot that featured a “W” until June when that line went out of service. The design mimics standard Metropolitan Transportation Authority signage and at first glance could pass for a relic from the defunct No. 9 line.
It’s such a close match, in fact, it might lead wizard fans to suspect an inside job. An MTA spokesperson said the agency had no ties to the subtle Potter promotion. More likely, it was the work of a design savvy fan.
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Johnson/New York Daily News
The City Hall subway station in New York City was built to be beautiful, as a showcase for the entire train system. But it was closed in 1945. However, passengers on the 6 train can see it if they don’t disembark on the last stop -the train turns around in the closed station. If you’re not in New York, you can see it in pictures at Jalopnik. Link -via Evil Mad Linkblog
(Image credit: John-Paul Palescandolo, Fred Guenther)
Comments Off 
Animals on the Underground is a collection of over 20 animal characters made using only lines, stations and interchange symbols on the London Underground map, created by illustrator Paul Middlewick in 1988. In 2003, the concept was used in a poster campaign by advertising agency McCann-Erickson to promote the London Zoo.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Comments Off Yes, this is a viral ad by Volkswagen, but this giant slide in a Berlin subway still looks like a lot of fun! Sure beats going down the stairs …
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Going Underground’s Blog
Previously on Neatorama: Turning a Staircase into a Piano
If you’re caught jumping the turnstiles or sneaking through the exit barriers on the Paris Metro, you’ll face fines up to $60. Sacrebleu!
Subway freeloaders have banded together to come up with the perfectly logical solution: a scofflaw insurance fund!
The answer, here in the land that gave the world the motto "All for one, one for all," is as typically French as it is ingenious: They’ve banded together to set up what are, essentially, scofflaw insurance funds, seasoned with a dollop of revolutionary fervor.
For about $8.50 a month, those who join one of these raffish-sounding mutuelles des fraudeurs can rest easy knowing that, if they get busted for refusing to be so bourgeois as to pay to use public transit, the fund will cough up the money for the fine.
It provides a little peace of mind, however ethically dubious, in a time of economic uncertainty.
But for many of these fraudeurs, cheating the system and forming a co-op isn’t just about saving money; it’s about striking a blow against a capitalist state that favors the haves over the have-nots. Fare dodgers of the world, unite!
Henry Chu of LA Times Column One has the story: Link
Graffiti can be useful! Someone has been painting compasses on the sidewalks of New York City at subway exits. If you’ve ever ridden a subway beneath a city, you know how helpful this can be when you re-emerge and have to get your bearings on the street level. The question is: why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Actually, they have.
Using sidewalk compasses is an idea that has been tried before by both official and unofficial sources. In 2006, a blogger snapped a photo of a compass on the sidewalk at the 8th Street L station; someone else caught one on Bleecker. The City of New York’s Department of Transportation got in on the act in 2007, installing compass decals in the ground at selected stations around midtown, in a pilot program that doesn’t seem to have been continued.
Maybe this time, the idea will stick around. Link -via The Daily What
(Image credit: Paolo Mastrangelo/NYC The Blog)
For years, people have complained about the way that Subway places the cheese wedges on their sandwiches. This is best explained by a 2007 comic from Left Handed Toons. As we suspected, it was a policy designed to encourage customers to order extra cheese. However, what looks to be an internal memo from Subway Down Under hints that this policy might be changed effective July first. Link
You need a metrocard to ride the NYC subway.
Most people just throw it away when they don’t need it anymore. But other use the small credit card size card as a canvas for art, origami and other art-like inspirations.
remember lots of advertisers and local tourist stops using the backs of the cards for messages and promotions. But, others have used this little 3×2 card as a canvas for paintings and silk screens. Or, used discarded cards to make origami-like objects.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Baierman.
Image: Samuel Arbesman
Sure, anyone could consult an atlas of the Milky Way Galaxy to see what’s all there, but if you think like Samuel Arbesman, that won’t do. He has created a handy station and route map of spiral galaxy as a way of making the immense more accessible. Introducing the Milky Way Transit Authority.
This map is an attempt to approach our galaxy with a bit more familiarity than usual and get people thinking about long-term possibilities in outer space. Hopefully it can provide as a useful shorthand for our place in the Milky Way, the ‘important’ sights, and make inconceivable distances a bit less daunting. And while convenient interstellar travel is nothing more than a murky dream, and might always be that way, there is power in creating tools for beginning to wrap our minds around the interconnections of our galactic neighborhood.
Let’s see, I need to get to The Hamptons… I’ll take the shuttle from Sol to Eagle Nebula station, then to Carina where I swap out on a express ride to Norma. From there, the long ride past Crab Nebula & Pal2 to New Outer Junction, where I swap again and take the Omega Centauri suburban line into Canis Major. Whew, it’s going to be a long ride!
Bigger image at Link.
Design Boom has a huge gallery of the most beautiful works of subway station and tunnel architecture across the world. Pictured above is the Solna Centrum metro station in Stockholm, which opened in 1975. Shades of red dominate the artwork of the station, which depicts the social concerns of 1970s Sweden.
Link via Fast Company | Photo: flickr user Erwyn van der Meer, used under Creative Commons license
Improv Everywhere set up a portrait studio aboard a subway train and persuaded riders to have their pictures taken for the “subway yearbook”. Read the story behind this mission and see more pictures and a video at their website. Link -via Buzzfeed
Life in Moscow has certainly changed since Soviet Times, but apparently stray dogs have adapted well: they ride the subway just like ordinary people!
Foraging dogs have long been part of Moscow’s landscape, but they stayed mostly in the city’s industrial zones and lived a semiferal existence. They mainly relied on discarded food, rather than handouts, so they kept their distance from humans.
With old factories being transformed into shopping centers and apartments, strays have become more skillful beggars. [...]
… many Muscovites appear to enjoy, or at least tolerate, the dog population. Most of the dogs go out of their way to avoid antagonizing people. Even pooping in the metro is rare, researchers say.
Link [with an embedded Video Clip of a stray dog riding the subway!] | Wall Street Journal article about the cushy life of Moscow’s subway dogs – via Rue The Day
Telephone Line (2002)
Metropolitan Transit Authority in collaboration with TelecomThis homage to the urgency of communication is meant to highlight the recent necessity, from instant to instant, to maintain the potential for instantaneous, world-wide contact from any location, at any time. That a conversation from such a location would be abruptly interrupted by an arriving train suggests the artist’s intent to lampoon the perceived dependence on telecommunication.
Commuters passing by didn’t know what to make of the performance, but some ended up really enjoying themselves at the gallery opening! Link -via Metafilter
The tunnel under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn was New York’s first subway tunnel. It was built in 1844, then abandoned in the late 1850s. For over a hundred years, the tunnel seemed to be only a rumor, until an teenage urban Indiana Jones named Bob Diamond decided to unearth the tunnel once and for all. Link
London artists now have a solution to the dilemma of renting expensive studio space to work in. Furniture designer Auro Foxcraft purchased four old Underground subway cars for 200 pounds each and mounted them to a rooftop, creating some unique, affordable office space.
Located atop a warehouse in Shoreditch, London, Village Underground as it’s called, only costs artists 15 pounds a week. And while the roof is a work area for artists the warehouse below is used to exhibit their work.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.
You can check out previous years’ pantless rides and other great pranks on ImprovEverywhere’s YouTube channel.
[YouTube]
