Features NY Life — 13 October 2010
Don’t Eat On The Subway. This Is Not a Joke.

Life is busy.  We all know that.  This couldn’t be more true to us New Yorkers.  Multi-tasking is our collective middle name.  One minute you could be downtown getting your computer fixed at the Apple store, the next you could be uptown picking up mountains of dry cleaning.  Throughout all of these little trips, you are going to get hungry- it’s natural.  But I ask you; no I beg of you: Do not eat on the Subway.

You may not be guilty of it yourself, but so many of us “humans” are.  The subway if you recall, is a filthy place that homeless derelicts call home.  It is most certainly not a picnic area for you to gorge yourself on whatever fare you decided to eat in front of perfect strangers.  Nobody wants to be on the subway- it takes forever and with all of the issues with the MTA cutting service, why should we have another headache like eaters on the train to deal with.  When we are all packed in tight, with our faces literally pressed onto the window pane, trust me- nobody wants to smell your Filet O’Fish sandwich and those greasy French fries.

Having lived in fair Gotham for six years now, I have experienced every kind of subway eater using the trains as his or her personal feeding ground.  The first and most common, I like to call “The Bananarama.”  People seem to think it is ok to have a simple banana on the train.  They may have been running late for work or have recently finished an invigorating workout.  Either way, these are simply poor excuses.  Don’t get me wrong, I love bananas.  They taste great and they are filled with potassium.  But when a person is on a train filled with people and they start peeling this yellow fruit, I am instantly filled with sickness.  First off, the trains move quite erratically. So say you’re standing next to the “The Bananarama” and the train stops to a halt; there is a good chance you’re going to have the gooey fruit mashed into your clothes. Sounds great right?  But that’s not the worst thing about someone eating a banana on the train. Sooner or later they will finish eating it, and guess what’s left- the peel.  I don’t get it, but everyone who consumes a banana on the subway feels it necessary to hold the empty peel, and/or trash of the banana for the duration of their trip.  If you’re going to be gross already, why not have some brains to put the skin in a bag to hide it from my view. I almost want to wear a t-shirt with a picture of a banana with a line through it, but that may give some people the wrong idea.

Mr. and Mrs. Bananarama are nothing compared to the granddaddy of all subway eaters. The following people are lucky that I am even referring to them as people because they are downright disgusting.  These are the folks who bring full meals on the train.  I like to call them, Pigs. There is no fancy name needed, as they are just like swine.  You can always tell you’re in a Pig car, because the scent of some type of food is completely filling the air.  The Pigs will usually pull some type of styrofoam container out and begin to chew their cud like this is an acceptable everyday practice. It is not.  Most of the time, the food being consumed has a pungent odor.  Believe it or not, but I have even seen someone eat ribs on the train.  Ribs! You literally have to have no regard for the human race to eat something as messy as Ribs on a moving train. It is also quite irritating to see more than one person eating together on the train. I have seen families sharing Mickey D’s like its Sunday dinner.

These practices really deviate from what is socially acceptable. When you are on the train you should really only be doing things that bother no one else. Read a book; listen to your Mp3 player.  But please, don’t eat anything on the train.  You will be doing everyone a solid. Note: it is still acceptable to stare someone down the whole ride. That’s totally cool.

-  Alan Smithee

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(3) Readers Comments

  1. Interesting and informative article. I haven’t traveled on the subway in many years and surprised to see so many folks eating while commuting or traveing. I was wondering if there was some kind of rules or regualtions prohibiting taking food on the subway. Perhaps there are but I guess rarely enforced.

  2. I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?

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