Nick Paumgarten has written the Magna Carta of commuting in the new New Yorker, an eight-page tome with the added bonus of a Campari ad featuring the sultry Salma Hayek smack in the middle.
Among the gems he offers up in “There and Back Again” is something I’ve been meaning to write about since Trainjotting was a mere pup: Everyone lies about their commute. “It is said that doctors, when they ask you how much you drink, will take the answer and double it,” he writes. “When a commuter says, ’It’s an hour, door-to-door,’ tack on twenty minutes.”
Other tidbits: a Harvard scientist says every ten minutes of your commute results in 10% fewer social connections, Bronxville has what’s said to be the “perfect” commute, and the word “commute” comes from the definition “to change to another less severe,” meaning the original suburban riders 150 years ago received a reduced train rate, similar to the modern monthly pass.
Paumgarten also nails the novice commuter: “He’s rifling through pockets in search of his ticket, coffee bubbling up out the pinprick holes of his flattop lid, leading him to wonder how it is possible for the coffee to be leaking when the top is on tight. He has not strategy for newsprint stain.”
He also explains how much better train riders have it than car drivers: in short, you behave in your car the way you behave when by yourself in a room–thus, the cries of “Asshole!” when another motorist cuts you off. On a crowded train, decorum (usually) prevails.
I’m halfway through the article (something to do with that Salma Hayek ad), but will finish it later. While commuting, of course.
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