Subway Love

I would like to start off by stating that I have been waiting to post until I have had enough time to write a super well thought out piece about something very relevant to the issues we face today. This has been a bad idea though because this amount of time either never comes or when it does, writing about the issues we face today often makes me either angry or sad, or sometimes both at once, which then discourages me from putting my thoughts down in a binary way. I mean, what kind of a world am I bringing a kid into anyway, right?

Well, to brighten things up on this rainy Monday (which as an aside is the name of a "Shiny Toy Guns" song that I love), it is a world that has subways! As a kid, I loved the subway - the machine's motion mixed with all of the revolving human commotion that occurs on the platform and within - and I still do as an adult. I have loved living in both NYC and London - two cities with iconic underground systems - for this very reason as I flat out love not owning a car.

Regarding my home city's system, in 1972, Massimo Vignelli developed a now famous map of the NYC Subway system. I was happy to learn that you can now buy an updated versions of this map but watch out, its a tad more expensive than the free ones the MTA distributes.

I was recently made aware of Eddie Jabbour's attempt at building a better mousetrap so to speak called Kick Map which is pretty cool as well. Here is one critics take on it:

"The Metropolitan Transportation Authority might learn from Eddie Jabbour. After studying more than a century of New York train and subway maps, Jabbour concluded that the current map, which originated in 1979, has become obsolete. Jabbour started buying old subway maps on eBay and researched their histories. More than two years work culminated with his own, a smaller and easier to read map influenced by all its predecessors.

Indeed, his map is easier to read. It is clean, uncluttered and efficient. There is a folding, pocket-sized version, smaller than a calling card. Every train line is depicted with its own corresponding line on paper. It's easier to tell what train stops where on his map."

In summation, I promise to try and post more, even if they aren't 5,000 word screeds about the idiocy of our war in Iraq, the looming recession, the mortgage crisis or other fun topics.