The MTA's Tsk-Tsking

The MTA has launched a poster campaign aimed at teaching New Yorkers how to ride the subway. It mixes the insipid humor of a fifth-grade teacher with the stunning obviousness of the health warning on a package of cigarettes. It is ubiquitous. One of its main goals is to spread the good news about handrails: "Physical fitness experts suggest Yoga and Tai Chi for better balance. We suggest handrails." Another message reads: "Hold on to your youth, your dreams, and while you're at it, the handrails."

So that's what the metal things are for!

Apparently we are a city of imbeciles, but as if that is not depressing enough, many of the posters suggest that we are ill-mannered imbeciles to boot. The posters seek to cast a dark eye on a good deal of behavior that used to be considered normal. Whatever you are accustomed to doing on the subway, you can be sure that it is now verboten.

One poster in the series uses the stern language of the universal sign for NO to inform us that eating and drinking on the train is no longer acceptable. Why? Because eating and drinking sometimes result in litter. It is the logic of the schoolmarm: If you can't play nicely, you can't play at all. Banning soda because of litter makes no more sense than banning cars because of drunk driving. And besides, if that is the MTA's intention, why are there so many station newsagents selling soft drinks?

Another poster in the series shows a middle-aged man calmly reading his newspaper. He's minding his own business and he looks all right to me, but it turns out he is committing one of the MTA's subway sins. He is leaning against the train doors: "Lean on your best friend for that $50 he owes you," says the caption. "But don't lean on subway car doors. It's dangerous and you block other people." Not only do I doubt the danger involved, but I'd wager that the man in the picture would take a seat if there was one.

Like a mayor cracking down on jaywalkers, the MTA seems to think there is no such thing as a piddling offense. Twenty years ago we were worried about boomboxes; today we take up the fight against headphones. To everyone with a portable CD player, this is a message for you: "Excuse me. Excuse me! Ahem. Excuse me. Will you please turn down the volume on your headphones? Thank you."

What is most irritating about the headphones poster is mirrored in another poster aimed at stigmatizing those of us who wear a backpack to work: "Ouch! Oh! What the? Will you pullease take off your backpack!" Disregarding the question of where we're supposed to put our backpacks if not on our backs (I know from experience that the floor is not a good answer), it strikes me that in both the headphones and the backpack poster the MTA is going after the wrong guy. I ask you: Who is a bigger pain in the ass? The backpack-wearing headphone listener or the bitchy lady who mutters into her handkerchief and can't abide the slightest inconvenience? The MTA stands squarely on the side of the precious bitch.

Another irritating aspect of the backpack poster has to do with the use of the vernacular spelling "pullease." One imagines that it's meant to be funny, and the same joke crops up again in a message about holding train doors open. Working from the premise that neither late nights nor the G train exists, the MTA would have us believe that no one ever has to wait for a train and that therefore it is very naughty to hold the car doors for one's friends: "Show a little New York attitude," says the poster. "Don't hold train doors for nobody."

Like the spelling of "pullease," the double negative is indicative of the worst sort of condescension. It reminds me of a college friend who twice had his car window broken by someone trying to steal his stereo. My friend did not even have a car stereo, so he drew up a big cardboard sign and placed it on the dashboard. The sign said: "NO RADIO, MAN." When I asked him why he added the word "man," he told me: "Hey, you've got to speak their language."

The MTA seems to feel the same way about us.