There’s a poster in front of me showing two guns, one red the other black with the caption, Which is real and which is a toy? above it.

These public service ads have been out since since December but every time I see them I stop and ask myself, Which is real and which is a toy?I look at them and think, this is too obvious - the black is real and the red is a toy. But then I read the sub-headline which says, It’s not the one you think. So the obvious answer then has to be the red gun because that’s not the one you think, which is the black one. But, if my original thought is that it’s the red gun, because why have the ad in the first place if the answer has to be the red gun, then… it’s not the one you think makes me think the obvious answer has to be the black one is the real gun. But, what if they’re both real? It doesn’t say that can’t be, but then why ask which is real… if you don’t want people to make a choice. No, it has to be one and not the other. So the real one has to be… the red one. Unless… it’s the black one in which case it can’t be the red one.Where is my train?

At this point, waiting for the F to arrive I’ve already spent way to much time thinking about guns, something I’d rather not do since I don’t believe anyone should have one, unless they’re a superhero who has only good in his or her heart. Though why a superhero would need a gun because they’re, well, a superhero, I don’t know… unless they’re The Punisher, or Batman. They use guns of various sorts, I think. Or… Hell Boy. Yes, he uses a big gun - a very big gun.

I checked on the ad in a piece from the Daily News and they report that indeed, the red gun is the real gun and the black gun is the toy. It seems City laws require toy guns to be painted red, yellow, or blue (bright colors indeed), only, surprise surprise, gun dealers have caught on and painted real guns the same colors. I’m not sure what all this means other than guns, toy or real, mean trouble. How do British Police officers do their jobs without guns?

Can you image a British ad with a picture of a nightstick - what the English call a truncheon - one red and one black with the caption, Which is real and which is a toy? It’s not the one you think.

It’s been a while since I’ve really looked at the other passengers on the subway. Maybe that’s what winter does to you - it numbs you. Or maybe I’ve just been tired of people and there are too many around you on the train. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Well, my vision lifted this morning, probably because it’s supposed to reach 58 today and my bones are aching for some sun.

I took the E-train, a new blue car. It seems like all the cars are now blue-benched. The changeover happened while I was hibernating. All my favorite orange benches are gone.

I almost didn’t get on the train. It was packed. I tried two different doors before I stopped just outside the last one and, looking in at a space that could fit maybe two more people, debated on whether to go in or wait for the next train. I stepped forward as the doors closed, pushing me further in than I wanted to go because my backpack was still on and I hadn’t had a chance to take it off. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.) A young woman to my left had her back to me. She was reading a book and taking up an additional foot of space with the hardcover. There aught to be a law against that. I reached over someones head and grabbed the center pole. My book was in my hand but I couldn’t get to it. There just wasn’t any room. I made eye contact with three people and looked away after each one, smiling half-heartedly. A large woman in a bright red wool coat came in behind me and we all accommodated her space as she took central pole position right underneath my arm.

I looked across the car towards the other door and saw a young woman in business attire with wispy hair ruffled as if it had been pushed about by the wind. She was reading the Dailey News and making little sounds as she read, pinching her cheeks in then puffing them out, then biting her teeth together - a veritable orchestra of tiny sounds and small dramatic movements. I couldn’t tell what she was reading so I shifted a bit around the large woman in the red coat in order to get a better look. It was either movie reviews or the obits.  Without large headlines to see or my glasses, I couldn’t tell. My glasses were in my bag and my bag was inaccessible. I watched her face as the orchestra of twitches, grimaces and frowns continued.

Stops came and went. The orchestra played on. Finally in an especially crowded moment I lost sight of her. The woman in the red coat looked up at me - I was a little too close to her so I moved back. My backpack poked into someone behind me. “Sorry,” I said over my shoulder. I looked back but tall heads and reaching arms obscured my view.

At the next stop, 42nd street, most of the car left in a giant exodus of folding papers, closing books, and iPhone and cell button pushing fingers. I saw the back of the woman’s head and her wispy brown hair, then a flash of the paper under her arm, and… she was gone.

I looked around me and found myself free of most of humanity -the car practically empty. The woman in the red coat was gone. I had the pole to myself. I opened my book on Iyengar Yoga and read. Although there were now seats empty, I stood the next two stops and got off on 23rd. It was still cold outside and windy. I’d worn a spring jacket, like an idiot. Maybe it’ll be 58 later in the day, but right then it was still pretty damned cold.

This bit of Westchester commuter humor before I sign off for the week comes from Jimmy Fallon.

A woman who lives a mile from the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York has been charged with prostitution.

The woman said she hates living in Chappaqua but she loves the one-mile commute.

[image: skaneatelesdesign.com]

TJ is on vacay starting in, oh, 3 hours and 15 minutes, and probably unable and unwilling to post.

In my stead is the capable and charming Straphanger Joe, who will be maintaining Trainjotting next week, and adding his observations from the subways.

Joe is an old friend, an astute observer and a talented writer. He’s contributed his “Straphanger Joe” musings to this site--dozens of entertaining essays, in fact–for most of the 3-plus years Trainjotting has been in existence.

We’re psyched to see what he comes up with next week.

Upon our return, every iota of last week’s snow will be gone, and sunset will be late enough so that we will be able to see a hint of the bright yellow ball and all its radiance poking over the mid-Westchester hills to the west as we return home after work.

If neither of these wishes are met, we’ll have to embark on another vacation until they are.

The woman who “flashed” her MetroCard at the 28th Street station this morning.

We were getting off the downtown-bound 6, and were making our way to the emergency exit door that leads to the way out at 26th Street.

You were flying into the station, desperate to get on board that train. You were blonde and about 40, with an expression that brought to mind grave seriousness, though we can’t say for sure if the unique circumstances in which we encountered you contributed to such a mask. Perhaps you sport a different face on weekends, peering over the Sunday Times in slippers made to look like rabbits.

But today, it was Game Face.

As is often the case, there’s really no way to effectively swim upstream when you’re trying to get past a teeming mass of humanity flooding the turnstiles in the opposite direction. Let’s face it, you’re on the next train, important meeting or not.

So what did you do? I mean, you had to be on that train. At 9:10, the next one might not arrive for, oh, another four minutes or so.

This is what you did. Seeing a slight break in traffic flooding past the iron emergency exit door, you made your break. Of course, there was the small matter of actually paying for your fare–not an option when you go through the emergency door, unless there’s a token clerk there to ring you up, and there hasn’t been a clerk in that spot since Ford told the city to drop dead.

Nonetheless, you, Woman With Grave Expression, At Least This Morning, flashed your MetroCard through the air, like Detective Sipowicz showing his “shield” at a crime scene (”Uh, sorry for your loss, ma’am. Whadda we got, boys?”), as if some invisible magnetic laser would extend from the turnstile to your card and charge you the required $2.25.

It was as if you were saying, I’m willing to pay, I even have my card out! I just don’t have time to pay the fare. No, not me. Places to go, people to see. Hard work to do before the rabbit slippers this weekend.

I wasn’t able to tell if you got on that train, Ma’am. I can only hope a member of law enforcement mimicked your motion and flashed you something with more juice than a MetroCard.

Slate.com has a a fun story penned by Julia Turner on yet another reason to dislike Penn Station–impossible-to-follow signs.

Penn Station’s signage got 2.5 stars on Yelp.com (”Without a doubt, one of the poorest and most confusing arrangements for signage and passenger movement that I can imagine”), Turner notes, compared to the 4.5 stars Grand Central got.

Of course, comparing Penn Station to Grand Central is comparing Tad’s Steakhouse to Gramercy Tavern Camryn Manheim to Cameron Diaz.

But Turner does some digging into signmaking and “wayfinding”–the school of thought about how best to get people from Point A to Points B, C and D–and discovers what sort of a conflicting mess the Penn Station signs representing Amtrak, LIRR and NJT make in aggregate.

She writes:

The problem at Penn Station is not that designers skipped these steps. It’s that three sets of designers did them three times. Penn Station is owned by Amtrak, which manages its concourse on the western side of the station. But Amtrak leases the rest of the station out to the two other tenants: New Jersey Transit has the southeast corner, and the LIRR the northeast. (The Metropolitan Transit Authority oversees both the LIRR and New York City Transit, which manages the two adjacent subway stations; their sign systems are similar to the LIRR’s.) The fundamental wayfinding problem at Penn Station lies in the fact that each of these entities manages its own signs, usually without consulting the others. As a result, the station essentially has three different systems of signage.

This is a crazy way to manage information at the biggest railway station in the country. The user experiences Penn Station as one place. But the current system assumes that the user experiences the station as three distinct spaces. In truth, though, as we saw in the slide show above, many journeys require travelers to cross from zone to zone.

It’s a fun read. It’s here.

C’mon, folks, get those votes in for the Best Damn Commuter Town Period contest.

A week ago, we announced the second running of Trainjotting’s search for the best commuter town in the area, based on train service, downtown options, property taxes, walkability, a**hole factor, and other factors that make a cool town cool.

Is it Mamaroneck? Summit? Revitalized Rockville Centre, fey English spelling and all?

Or something from the Nutmeg state: The wilds of North Stamford, or the Aryans who make Darien so special?

Will Pleasantville repeat its 2008 win? Get those votes in, either via the Comments section or by email.

A reality show about the New York subway and its workers has, like so many N trains, been delayed.

Reports the NY Times:

The series, commissioned by the A&E network, would follow an ensemble cast of train conductors, station agents and other subway workers as they handle track fires, angry customers and the grind of running the country’s biggest mass transit system.

But as with many of the authority’s major projects, the show is now facing a delay. Citing hard financial times, transit officials said they were halting work on the show, even though shooting had started last month for a 15-minute sample episode — the first step toward a pilot and potentially a full season.

The MTA thought such a show would help with public relations, as viewers would see the people behind the system and presumably be more tolerant of the MTA’s ills.

The concept for the show came from Ross Breitenbach, a veteran producer of reality television who supervised “The Simple Life 2” with Paris Hilton and “Sober House,” a VH1 series about celebrities in rehab.

Inspired by his children’s Thomas the Tank Engine toys, Mr. Breitenbach approached the transportation authority last year about an animated children’s show focused on the subway. But the conversation quickly shifted to something more vérité.

“The plan is to follow these guys wherever they go,” Mr. Breitenbach said. “The M.T.A. has been interested in letting us tell real stories, not a sanitized commercial.”

The idea of a documentary series also appealed to the authority’s marketing department, which had struggled to showcase the human side of an often-demonized system. Tight budgets have prevented in-house television projects in the past.

A&E set about casting for the untitled program by interviewing transit workers in Grand Central earlier this year.

A&E has tapped transit for reality programs in the past. Parking Wars looks at ticket agents in Philly, and Airline filmed Southwest Airlines employees.

Westchester is still digging out after the two-foot ass-kicking we took late last week. Much of the county lost power for a significant amount of time; some are still without power, I think,

Chappaqua resident Peter Applebome, who writes the My Town Our Towns column for the NY Times, writes about the misery of being off the grid for three days up there in Clintonville. To be fair, Applebome says it ain’t exactly the same as being an earthquake victim.

I saw stretches of outages while walking home Friday, including Broad just east of Bradhurst.

While we were able to keep Dinosaur Train airing on Sprout for Little G all weekend, we were nonetheless dismayed to find our beloved little bike rack–the one we pestered Town Hall for 2 1/2 years ago, the most publicized little bike rack in the free world–flattened from the snow.

What fond memories we have of the rack: Seeing it arrive that fateful day in July 2007. Seeing it become a popular hangout for two-wheeled vehicles when gas got freakishly expensive. Seeing it get totally full of bikes after some initial resistance.

[The curvy black bar behind the fence]

Well, perhaps it was not entirely flattened, but it’s looking for all the world like it is not something you will ever again lock your bike on, at least not in its current state.

It appears the snow plows, while clearing out the Hawthorne station lot, shoved a mountain of snow against the rack, which has been lifted off its moorings on one side and now is raised to the sky at a 45 degree angle, as opposed to the right angle more commonly seen on bike racks. The plows presumably busted the thing right out of its concrete platforms, which, frankly, didn’t look so secure from the start.

We’ll see what it looks like when the mound of snow clears. For now, there’s so much snow keeping the rack in place that it seems safe to lock your bike to–heck, I did this morning, and the long vacated Power Climber bike is still there, more neglected than Kirstie Allie’s StairMaster.

But the Town maintenance guys are going to have to do some jiggering to make it viable after the snow’s gone.

CANON FODDER /KAN in FAH dur/ noun: Ambulatory commuters who end up in tourists’ photos as they snap pictures of Grand Central Terminal with their digital cameras.

Usage: I was late for my 9 a.m. meeting, and ended up being Canon Fodder for some German tourists when I bolted in front of of them as they took a group picture in front of the Information kiosk in Grand Central.

Past Words of the Week are here.