Tag Archives: trash

Imponderable #125: The Metrocard

9 Mar

March 9, 2015

I don’t ride the subway that often, so it was a little surprise that when I went to refill my Metrocard, the machine said that it was about to expire and couldn’t be refilled. Used to be they didn’t expire.  The machine gave me the option of replacing my card, which I did. It gave me back my old one, then gave me a new one I could put money on. I filled the new one and threw the old one away.

This is really ridiculous. One of the benefits of the Metrocard is that it is refillable, therefore you use less of them, and fewer end up in the trash (or on the floor of the subway station, more often.) But here they just gave me a new one and forced me to throw the old one away, when the simpler option was to just add more time to the old card. It would have saved the use of a new card and kept the old one out of the landfill.

What’s up with that, NYC? Huh?

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By the way, when I was in High School, the Metrocard was just being tested and was only in use in a handful of stations. Students used to get a subway pass that they had to show the guy in the token booth, but one year they moved to Metrocards, which doubled as passes since most stations weren’t yet equipped for them. I still have the first few I was issued, so I have some of the very first Metrocards ever made (as I’m sure thousands of others do too. I’m pretty sure they aren’t worth anything.)

 

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Sesame Street Is A Dump

11 Feb

February 11, 2014

Like pretty much all of us, I grew up on Sesame Street. Because of that show I can count, I can read, I can spell, I can live a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch. So what did I learn from public school? How to cut class.

But I recently had opportunity (I was bored) to watch a very, very old episode from Sesame Street’s second season in 1970. Wow, the 70’s were a very different time. And Sesame Street? Full of trash. It was a total pigsty!

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Ok, you expect some trash when one of the main characters is a filthy green hobo, but this is excessive. What’s with all the burlap? What’s with all the crates? I don’t get it. But it gets worse.

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Look at the ground- there is trash everywhere! Under the mailbox, piled up by the newsstand, all around the people’s feet. Doesn’t anyone on the block have a broom?

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Look at the background, behind the cool cat- more crates! What is in all these boxes just scattered around? And Bert and Ernie are standing in front of an old shipping pallet. Are there a lot of warehouses on Sesame Street?

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And that wall in the back- filthy and full of soot. Is that a foundry? A rendering plant? A smelter? I hope none of kids picked up black lung disease. (BTW- that is not a flattering picture of Big Bird.)

Since then, Sesame Street has gotten a lot cleaner. I think it was some sort of federal government urban renewal project.

All this is proof, I think, that Sesame Street is in New York. NYC was pretty dirty back in the 70’s too.

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