It’s sort of like Bigfoot or something–until you actually see the dreaded beast, you can’t say for sure it actually exists. That was my take on the much-ballyhooed pants-ripping armrests on the new M7 cars.

Well, I saw Bigfoot on Friday. It was a nice looking couple–he a tidily attired i-banker type, she a blonde who looked like she’d be in love with an i-banker. They were sitting across the aisle when the guy suddenly started crumpling his newspaper up in an animated way, as if to mimic a truly frantic person.

I looked over the lip of my Sam Adams and smiled.

As his companion laughed, he looked back at my and said, “My freakin’ pants ripped!”

Sure enough, a half-inch swatch of white peeked through dark suit pants. Which was odd, because he hadn’t either sat or risen–the likely situations for pants-ripping–in several minutes.  

I told him the MTA would reimburse him, to which he replied, “It’s an $8,000 suit.”

His companion stopped laughing and said, “It ISN’T!”