I’m writing this on the subway.  (I posted it later though.)  How is that possible, you ask?  Why, because I’m on my new laptop.  It’s so small, it fits in my purse!  One of the best things about living in New York is the subway.  Everyone has good subway stories.  Right now, for example, I’m looking at two sixteenish-year-old girls, who are pretty average seeming teenagers.  A little less trendy, a little more grunge.  But they’re both carrying stuffed animal backpacks.  One has a koala, the other has a shark.  What?  That is weird, right?  I love the subway.

Today it was big news that they’re changing the subway maps.  Manhattan will be bigger!  Sorry, Staten Island, you’re not all that important, but you knew that already.  I mean, people take the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, not to actually go to Staten Island. The new maps will also make the water bluer!  And parks will be less green!  Wait, one of those things doesn’t seem like an improvement.  The MTA never gets it right.

So, what does this have to do with the rest of the country?  Well, you all have incompetent government agencies, right?  I mean, it makes total sense to have people pay more for less services, when ridership is at an all-time high.  You deal with crap like that.  You’ve got crazy people in your communities yelling at themselves and at you, right?  You’ve got kids selling candy for their basketball teams, right?  Of course, if you’re from the suburbs, chances are that basketball team actually exists.  In NYC, not so much.  And the police have the right to search your bags at any time, right?  No?  That’s just here and at airports?  Oh.  Well, that sucks.

Local pop culture is weird.  Tte subway plays a huge part in local NYC pop culture.  You can see it in any comedy show.  Entire improv shows taking place in or around the subway (I’ve done that twice).  And so many stand-up bits about the subway: homeless people, how much the F train sucks, advertisements, etc.  You can learn a lot about local pop culture at comedy shows.  For instance, I was recently in Phoenix for an improv festival, and they make a lot of peyote jokes.  Like, in Phoenix, peyote jokes are like pot jokes everywhere else.  Do people really use peyote (or whatever the term is for using peyote…dropping? taking? smoking?)?  Next time you’re in Phoenix and find yourself at a party, you may have to cook up some peyote (is that it? cook up?) instead of taking a hit.

I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if I came across someone snorting (do you snort it?) peyote on the subway, though.  They do pretty much everything else on the subway, including smoke pot.  One time, I was stuck on a train at like 2:00 am and a drunk eighteen-year-old girl went in between the cars and went to the bathroom.  Number one and number two.  Isn’t New York pop culture fascinating?