The
U.S. Open is getting underway not far from where I live in Queens, and it means
that life for some subway commuters is going to get more difficult for the next
few weeks.
There’s
not much of a reason to watch tennis except to gawk at women in short skirts,
and you can do that anywhere
for free. I’m sure for fans of the sport in New York, the Open is a great
opportunity to see some great masters of the game up close, but it’s not an
interesting enough game for the price you pay. You can watch it on TV for free.
What
the U.S. Open does for the many riders of the 7 train is flood our already
overburdened subway with gaggles of U.S. Open attendees who do not know how to ride the subway.
I’m
sure you’re thinking, ‘Riding a subway is easy. How can someone mess that up?’
Well, they manage. The tennis fans headed to the U.S. Open are easy to spot on
the 7 train. Whereas the afternoon and evening 7 train is usually filled with
haggard working people tired after a day at work and quietly waiting to get
home, the tennis fans move as gaggles of cheery chatterboxes, filling the air
with their inane conversations.
Tennis
fans have every right to their inanity of course, but they are thoroughly
unversed in the concepts of being courteous to others in a public space. Riding
the subway is a quaint slumming experience for them, and their mannerisms
betray them at every turn. They constantly lean on subway polls or spread out
over spaces meant to accommodate several people. They constantly delay trains
by hesitatingly getting on and off of a subway as they are unsure if they are
on the right train or at the right stop.
On Main Street, Flushing the
other day, I made my way to the subway for the second leg of my three-leg
commute to work. A pair of older gentlemen made their way down the sidewalk among
the throngs of Asian immigrants. They wore overpriced athletic gear though they
looked like they had not exercised in years. One of them was bald but had hair
around the edges of his head, and that hair had been dyed the color of a tennis
ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment