Traveling from New York to Boston? What about DC? Well, if you are anything like every NYU kid or live in Brooklyn, you are likely all to familiar with what is known as "the Chinatown bus." The Fung-Wah bus line has a sordid history in NYC.
Last August one of their buses caught fire, and there were rumors of gang-like wars surrounding Fung Wah and its competitors. And yesterday, tragically, a Fung Wah bus flipped on the way to Boston, injuring 33 passengers.
The Fung Wah bus turned onto its left side about 2 p.m. while negotiating a curve from Route 290 to Route 12 in Auburn.
"It appears the bus was probably traveling too fast for the off-ramp, which caused the bus to roll over on its side," Auburn Police Chief Andrew Sluckis said.
Though it seems as though the Chinatown bus has cleaned up it's act since '02, when the drivers would walk up and down the aisles asking for change to pay the toll, it may not be safe to take this $15 round-trip ride.
And since the photos of Suri Cruise filled our Asian jokes quota for the day, we will just skip the allusion to bad driving and go straight to the advice: just like with free newspapers, when it comes to discount bus fare, you get what you pay for.
A Chinatown Fung Wah Bus Rolls Over On Its Way to Boston From New York
• We wish we could have a whole round up called "Only in the New York Post." This headline would be the top spot. [NYP]
• Queens College students may be brighter than you thought. Er, well, the kid did get caught … so maybe not. [NYDN]
• Did you hear? Traffic in New York is pretty terrible. You might have better luck walking … but your chances of getting hit by a cab definitely increase. [NYP]
• Tragedy inspires art. Hence, artists should live in New York. It's still the most tragic city in the nation. Even more tragic than New Orleans. [NYT]
• The Brooklyn Pavilion is offering a wide selection of yummy new snacks. [Brooklyn Record]
Yesterday, the dear city of Tokyo experienced a huge threat to their underground transportation system. The transit authorities of the Japanese city came this close to banning advertisements for Harper's Bazaar which features a naked, prego, Britney Spears.
Luckily for everyone involved, that won't actually happen. They reconsidered the publisher's "intention."
But on Thursday, Tokyo Metro said it would allow full presentation of the photo as an exception to its obscenity rule, saying it understood the publisher's intention was to portray a happy mother — not to be sexually explicit.
Oh, really? We actually thought the publisher's intention was to promote birth control … but, happy mom is a good cover, too.
Some advertisements are being banned from subways across the globe, because they have been deemed "too stimulating" or "obscene"
Too Obscene for New York Subways:
Too Stimulating for Tokyo Subways:
Proving, once again, that the desire to keep freak fetish dudes from getting hard on crowded trains is totally universal.
The MTA. Very anal. [Copyranter]
Pregnant Spears ad too "stimulating" for Tokyo metro [AP]
• New York is the new college town… The students here are some of the most inactive, pot smoking, financially screwed, gay friendly people you’ll ever meet. [Gothamist]
• If you keep seeing these weirdos everywhere, don't freak out. They aren't stalking you … they're just riding every single subway in New York. [MySpace]
• Seriously? People, you need to relax. Get a girlfriend or a puppy or something to occupy you for a while. You've seen every movie they play at Bryant Park ten times before. [NYT]
• When did people get the impression that New York was a quiet, peaceful place to live? Shut the fuck up and move to Connecticut if your babies need to sleep. [amNY]
• Hipsters don't just rob New York of its awesomeness … they rob our banks, too. [NYP]t
• Will New Yorkers want to eat where homeless people sleep? Well, they are still eating at Starbucks. [NYT]
• Get your free golf cart tour of Washington Square Park while the offer lasts. [Curbed]
• Breaking, shocking news! You can buy expensive art even if nobody knows who you are. We, for one, are frozen in disbelief. [NYM]
• Now that it's been mosquito season for about three months now, the city is getting around to spraying for West Nile. [NY1]
• If an ugly person writes a book, will New Yorkers read it? [Galleycat]
• Biking in New York 101: Leave the "three to a bike" tricks to Lance Armstrong, Matthew McConaughey, and Jake Gyllenhaal. [ABC]
• The B/D train tracked fire sucked hard. (We were personally affected). But it did create the best image of the week: Cooked, canned, sardines in hell. [NYDN]
• Another sex slave ring was busted. Jeffrey Epstein was nowhere to be found.. [amNY]
• Who can make this stop? Who? Can Adrian Grenier make it stop? Shame on you Flickr. Shame. On. You. [NYO]
• "No Pissing Or Shitting. If Caught Will Be Fine or Jail! By the Law!" Ok, it's better written on a sign. With a marker. By an an immigrant. [Curbed]
What better way to celebrate 100 years of immigrant labor devoted to driving rich people around the city (yes, we speak of the NYC trademark Yellow cabs) than to have little kids decorate the taxis in flowers and rainbows and ponies.
" Garden in Transit," a temporary public art project will be displayed on New York City’s yellow taxicabs in the Fall of 2007. This privately-funded project will celebrate the 100th anniversary of New York’s first motorized taxi as part of TAXI '07, an initiative led by the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Design Trust for Public Space.
And just how filled with joy this little girl is at the thought of having her gorgeous garden in transit displayed in a taxi where Wall Street guys snort coke and drunk college kids get busy.
It's enough to make Mariah Carey give her private chauffeur the day off.
Garden in Transit [NYC.gov]
• Now teachers are using the "I lost the homework" excuse. On the smart kids, too! [NYP]
• If an 8 year old girl gets killed because some dumbshit kid cut the breaks on a school bus, don't you think calling the kid a "mischief maker" is a little bit too lenient? We'd go with "murderer." [NYP]
• This story is totally about the Clintons and not about New York City at all … except for the part where Bill and Ron Burkle hit Manhattan parties together. [NYT]
• The good news is NYC is not bankrupt. The bad news? Our government has more reason to spend our money on staircases that lead to nowhere. [NYSun]
• Which means we have no money for the topic of the day … the subways. [NYDN]
Once again, we bring you another installation of "bloggers who have way more time on their hands than we do." And today, we discover graphpaper.com, a blog by some artist/teacher/designer type guy who rides the subway. We don't know which subway it is that he rides, but he decided to lay out a detailed description of the cities subway commuters.
For those of you who don't drive a subway car, live in a subway car, or nanny, you may find this information useful, informative … or at least mildly amusing.
3:00-4:00 AM
Drunks of all sorts, club kids, and winos. Late night workers, busboys, getting off their shifts. Only a handful of people per car. 6:1 male/female ratio.
4:00-5:00 AM
Transit workers changing shifts. Maybe 6 people per car. All male.
5:00 AM - 6:00 AM
Blue-collar laborers, minorities, immigrants. Half the car is asleep. Maybe 20 or 25 people per car. 9:1 male/female ratio.
6:00 AM - 7:00 AM
Construction workers, blue-collar laborers, hospital workers. 75% of seats in car are taken. 7:3 male/female ratio.
7:00 AM - 8:00 AM
Low-level office workers, civil service workers, some Wall Street broker types. Mostly minorities, lots of black women, lots of all kinds of women in fact. 90% seats occupied. 1:2 male/female ratio.
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Professionals, white collar workers, office workers. 100% seats occupied, many people standing. 1:1 male/female ratio.
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Early-career yuppies running a little late, creative industry workers, all sorts of professionals. 100% occupied. 1:1 male/female ratio.
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Hung over office workers, some seats available. 2:1 male/female ratio.
11:00 AM - noon
Starting to see people who are running errands for work, not just going to or coming from work. Plenty of open seats. 3:2 male/female ratio.
So, either women aren't leaving their houses, they're taking cabs, or, they travel more frequently between the hours of 12:00 pm and 3:00 am. Yeah, we bet he would of found tons of cocktail waitresses on the N train right around 3:30.
Morning Subway Demographics [Graphpaper via Gothamist]
• As if the subway isn't gross enough, now we have to worry about foot molesters … and not in that "Charlotte getting free shoes" sort of way. [NYP]
• A sneak-peek at the new Apple store tonight? If there is a way to break into this Rubik's cube, the computer nerds will find it! [Gothamist]
• Who would have thought that selling flowers was such a dangerous job? Even drug dealers don't face this much danger … or so we've heard. [NYT]
• Props to the Observer bloggers who trekked all the way to Red Hook to cover the opening of the biggest supermarket to hit New York. Those cats sure love their grocery stores. [NYO]
• Actually, The Falls isn't officially closed yet. So there's still time to grab a drink and say farewell to your favorite crime scene. [Gawker]
• His show has been cancelled for years, but it wasn't until recently that Jerry Seinfeld finally dumped his bachelor pad. [NYO]
• C is the dirtiest subway that you've ever heard. [Gothamist]
• But, y'all keep riding the nasty thing anyways. [NYP]
• Mayor Bloomberg tries to up his street cred by conducting his very own sting operation in the city. We can almost see the three day televised mini drama now. [NYDN]
• This was the only story under the regional section of the Daily News today: two old people died a day apart. That's so sad. Well, we guess the article is pretty depressing, too. [NYDN]
You may have already seen the Daily News' cover story about advertising on the subway while you were riding the subway this morning. But, if not, we're here to give you a re-cap. (We so love it when cover stories focus on media instead of murder and/or natural disasters.
More or less, the MTA is considering bringing advertising on the subway to the next level, in the form of television like "changing images." (Cue collective "ooooooh.") Trapping riders in a train and forcing them to watch ads? Could advertisers ask for anything more? Plus, it could be good for commuters, too.
But Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign believes the ads are worth it if they help reduce fiscal pressure to raise fares - especially with a hike being mulled for next year.
Well, maybe the only other thing advertisers would ask for are consumers who aren't as vocally opposed to spending money and a law against allowing iPods on the train.
Mining for ad dollars [Pete Donahue, Daily News]
• After forty years, the Harlem peirs are coming to town. [NYT]
• Amy Sacco's old eatery, Lot 61, is being turned into an art space. Expect to see the same crowd looking about 10 pounds lighter. [Art News]
• Calling all Bushwick dwellers! Shake Shack sherpas are the new bike messengers. [NYDN]
• The government kidnapped a Columbia engineering student for their secret underground nuclear development program. Ok, we made that up — except for the kidnapped Columbia student part. [NYP]
• If your hipster co-workers rolled into work like half an hour ago, it wasn't their fault. They were stuck on the L train. But now they're free. [Gothamist]
• When the fattest man to walk cross country finally gets to New York, he better have lost about 200 pounds if he actually wants to sit anywhere. [1010 Wins]
• It's an arcade. In a bar. Dude, it's just so Williamsburg. [Gothamist]
• The Post lets the terrorists know where the un-policed stations are now. Thanks for looking out for us, Rup. [NYP]
• Bloomberg wants to take down the NYC party train, one seven-seater party bike pedicab at a time. [NYT
• "The Brooklyn-born publicity magnet had planned to leave his bubble tonight, get wrapped in 150 pounds of chains - and then jump back in and hold his breath for nine minutes while escaping his bonds." How did we not already know David Blaine was from New York? It all makes so much more sense now. [NYDN]
You know when you're stuck in the subway and you need to make a phone call and the public pay phone doesn't work? Yeah, we don't either — our reaction was "ew, people actually touch the phones in the subway?"
They do. And while there are patrons brave enough to pick up these phones with their bare hands and put the receiver in the vicinity of their face, their heroic efforts often go unrewarded. The friggin' phones don't even work! Well, 25 percent don't work … mostly because of vandalism, lazy Verizon employees, and obviously, the growing issue of phone abuse.
The bigger problem, he said, is that the 4,400 pay phones in the subways are abused by riders.
"People act out their frustrations on our phones," he said. Verizon's previous maintenance requirement "was a very difficult standard to meet," Mr. O'Brien said.
Hey, now, let's not be too hasty. Isn't it better to take the aggression out on the phone than to use the phone to split open the heads of low-level employees?
Rider Survey Finds 25% of Subway Phones Out of Order [Thomas J. Lueck, New York Times]
• The TWU pays people to protest. So much for free speech. (Ba-dum-bum, ching!) [NYP]
• Gotta' love this city … especially because we have the most clogged toilets. Well, that would explain Lenny Kravitz's plumbing bills. [NYDN]
• We used to fear muggers and rapists and not making rent … now New Yorkers fear flatware. [NYT]
• A Brooklyn teacher taped a coupla' kids to their chairs. Hey, those Park Slope tots can be really friggin' annoying. [NYP]
• Brooklyn "turns Japanese." It's a Metro headline. [Metro]
• They need to get those tabloids off the subways, yo. These transportation workers are starting to take after Charlie Sheen. [amNY]
• Nothing says "wake up with a warm cup" than a steaming pile of shit that looks like a coffee cup. New York advertisers are getting really desperate to reach you jaded freaks. [Gothamist]
• The graffiti isn't just annoying and hard to read … it is actually eating the subway trains. [NYT]
• A very scientific method of figuring out which people to avoid at all possible costs. [Social Rank]
• Don't listen to Mayor Bloomberg. He doesn't realize how important it is for you to wast time reading blogs. [NYDN]
• Times Square adopts the most loved thing in Brooklyn, Junior's Cheesecake. This borough is really running out of cute little indie things. [OTBKB]
• That's right. Brooklyn has the smartest, geekiest, high school chess players around. And they're damn proud of it. [NYP]
• Rent is up … but auto-insurance has dropped. Good news for everyone who lives in their car. [NYP]
• Sucks to be Roger Toussaint. But hey, New Yorkers might get 35 cents back on their metro cards. It almost makes all of those subway delays seem worth it now. Ok, we said almost. [NYDN]
• A man is stabbed to death in Prospect Park. (Yes, that would be in New York Magazine's favorite borough.) The Times wins a new best quote award: "It's hard to say whether you hope it was a robbery or an anti-gay attack. At the end of the day, a man is dead, and it doesn't really matter." (Note the words "hope" and "doesn't matter.) [NYT]
• Yesterday, a man lost his foot to the N train. The driver thought he was a piece of trash. Should we warn Britney Spears about the dangers of public transportation? [amNY]
• The largest New York grant ever is going to Brooklyn. Don't say this city never did anything for Sunset Park. [NYP]
• Met fans have yet another reason to hate the Yankees — they're now the "Bronx Billionaires." [NYP]
• There was a crazy runaway horse on Broadway. No, it wasn't Julia Roberts. [NYDN]
• The hawks now official join Jennifer Aniston and Demi Moore in the "can't reproduce" category. [NYT]
• Children in playgrounds might have to deal with swings breaking, duct tape holding pieces together, heads getting stuck in weird places, and even urine … but nothing prepares you for the real world like the streets of NYC. [Metro]
• We thought there was a little more space on the 6 train last weekend. [amNY]
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