Tyler Cowen and Megan McArdle both recently posted about streetcars, asking why people like them so much. I’ve been pondering this question myself since I spent a month in Philadelphia last fall, living in a sublet less than a block from a streetcar stop. It was great. And I still can’t figure out why I like streetcars so much more than buses!
I definitely do not think it’s because of charm or nostalgia; the Philly streetcar wasn’t particularly charming (and, having lived right next to the route, I can tell you it was way louder than the bus). I also don’t think I was getting away from poor people; the people on my streetcar were pretty much a cross section of people who lived in West Philadelphia/University City, who would presumably be the same people who’d ride buses, though I never got on a city bus so I don’t know.
I think it’s not so much that I love streetcars; I don’t like them any more than subways. (The convenience of not having to take an escalator or stairs to get to the platform is balanced out by the fact that you have to wait in the cold, rain, or heat.) Instead, I think I just really hate buses.
First, while I have certainly gotten queasy on subways or streetcars and even have trouble reading on Amtrak, buses are far worse for motion sickness. Second, buses get stuck in traffic. (I know streetcars in some cities do, too; this wasn’t a problem with my streetcar line in Philly.) Third, I have never been on any kind of light rail with shock absorption as poor as on the buses I used to occasionally ride in Cleveland when I was in college. I literally felt like my teeth were rattling in my mouth.
I think, though, that my main problem with buses is that they’re unpredictable. They can get rerouted, turn unexpectedly, fail to stop as scheduled, get stuck in traffic, etc. Furthermore, this is embarrassing to admit, but as someone raised in the suburban Midwest where we never used public transportation, I am intimidated by figuring out buses. Anything on a track is easy - there’s a straightforward map of which lines go where. Stops are clearly marked, and there is almost always a map at each stop, or at least a list of stops on that line.
I don’t actually know how people usually figure out which bus line to take, because there are hardly ever any maps posted. On the rare occasions when I need to take a bus, I use the local transit authority’s web site to plan my route and it tells me which line to get on. I can’t remember how I figured out my route when I’d take the bus home in college, because I’m pretty sure that was before those services existed, but I do remember transferring buses in Public Square and being very concerned that I wasn’t standing at the right stop, or that I’d get on the 57B instead of the 57A (or whatever) and it would turn out that it took a different route to its final destination and I’d have to call my parents to come get me from the next suburb over.
In St. Louis, the MetroBus map and schedule page consists of a list of numbered and named routes, with links to schedules and maps. Same story for Philadelphia, where I’m moving next week. I’ve seen lists like this around transit stations, but I guess you are supposed to already know which route you are interested in. There are maps online that show routes; I assume these must be available in printed form somewhere but they’re not posted at bus stops (at least in St. Louis, Cleveland, and NYC, which are the cities where I can remember looking closely at bus stops).
This is how I like to navigate: I was in San Francisco last weekend and took BART from SFO to my destination in the East Bay. I decided to stop in the city to visit a yarn store and get dinner. I wanted to go to ImagiKnit, at 18th and Sanchez, so I got off BART at the 16th St Mission stop, walked down to 18th, looked at the house numbers, and set off in the right direction to my destination some half dozen blocks away. I am sure that I could have taken a bus and it would have been faster, not to mention easier considering I had a heavy handbag and a suitcase.
But my navigational style is to know where I am and where my destination is on the grid, and move appropriately. I can remember where subway or trolley lines are, even in a transit-dense place like Manhattan. If I decide I’d like to ride instead of walking, I can go to a subway stop, consult the map, and decide which line to take. I find that much more challenging with buses because of the unpredictability and the fact that there aren’t maps posted all over the place (presumably, of course, the latter follows from the former).
And that is why I don’t like buses: I would rather walk eight extra blocks than get on public transit when I’m not completely sure where it’s taking me. That bus could go ANYWHERE!
I heard an ad on the radio this morning for a company that will finance a brand new computer as long as you have a bank account and can afford weekly payments of $29.99 — for 12 months. They’re selling this as a way to (1) get a computer when you have no credit or bad credit, and (2) build up good credit.
I guess when kids who trick littler kids out of their lunch money grow up, this is the kind of thing they do for a living.
I ran across a link to Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2010. I’ve seen these before, as they’re frequently forwarded around. This one is a bit bizarre. Some of them make me feel old:
Some of them are true of me (class of 2003):
And some of them don’t make very much sense:
So then I looked up the ones for the class of 2003 and some of them were great because they’re now outdated:
Then some again seem wrong:
And some don’t apply - apparently I was really not with the times, because I don’t (and never did) know the names of at least half the members of the “Brat Pack”, who Tina Yothers or Max Headroom is, which dolls had “Xavier Roberts” on their ear, what Willis was “talkin’ ’bout”, or what a Doozer is.
It’s true, though, that I have no idea why “Solidarity” is spelled with a capital “S”! (Wikipedia actually didn’t shed a whole lot of light on this one; I now know about a whole bunch of different leftist and socialist organizations called that, but it isn’t obvious what the list writers were referring to.)
The St. Louis Public Library is running a program this month called Read Down Your Fines. For kids 17 and younger, every 30 minutes they spend in the library reading erases one dollar of library fines. How cool is that? When I was a kid I could have used that. I used to have to spend my lunch money to pay my library fines, then I would have to eat lunch on a dollar a day. (Don’t ask why I didn’t ask my parents for more money. I was a weird kid.)
I don’t have anything to say about high apartment rents in NYC but I loved this part:
Students on tight budgets find it especially tough to find housing. Last fall, Kate Harvey, a part-time nanny and a junior at N.Y.U., and eight friends saved on rent by camping out in vacant offices at Michael Stapleton Associates, a downtown explosive-detection security firm. For nearly three months, they told the guards at 47 West Street that they were interns, even as they trudged in near midnight or pattered through the lobby at 10 a.m. in pajamas and slippers.
Ms. Harvey’s father, George Harvey, who is the chief executive of Michael Stapleton Associates, had lent them the space, which included two kitchens and two baths, after his company moved into a new office before the lease on its old one expired.
They sneaked furniture into the 11th floor on the freight elevator, squeezed three beds into the former chief executive’s office and turned filing cabinets into clothing drawers. One student pitched a tent. They brought their cat, Sula, past the front desk. They knew pets were allowed, they said, because the company had allowed bomb-sniffing dogs.
While most of the students who were interviewed said that they came from families that were fairly comfortable financially, they said that area rents were so high that they could not afford both housing and tuition.
“It was nine girls and a cat,” Ms. Harvey said, sipping on steamed milk in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse.
That’s kind of adorable. I can’t help thinking of my college-student sisters; it seems like the kind of thing Ellen would do!
A Simple Need, All Too Often Unmet
I’ll never forget what I saw years ago from my Times Square office window. It was not yet theater time and all the nearby restaurants had signs saying “Restrooms for customers only.” A well-dressed woman standing near Shubert Alley had an accident in the middle of the sidewalk and collapsed in tears in her companion’s arms.
No one should have to suffer such humiliation. The expression “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go” is more often true than not. But where?
I am so glad there are people out there pushing for more access to public toilets. When I went to Germany as a high school student, I remember being shocked at how hard it was to find a restroom (oases: department stores and train stations, both of which do require payment). Until fairly recently, I thought it was another manifestation of how the Germans have evidently adapted to require less water than Americans (see also: no water fountains, rare free water at restaurants, and only beer comes in large sizes when you’re dining out). Once I started spending more time in American large cities, though, I realized that we have a problem too.
The author of the article lists some suggestions for finding restrooms while you’re out and about. Her experience generally lines up with mine, although I’ve actually been thwarted at a McDonald’s (in San Francisco, where we also found one of the public toilets she mentions and couldn’t get it to open up). In general, though, the only reason I ever patronize McDonald’s is the fact that they have toilets (I do always buy something once I’ve taken care of needs). And I have to say, one of the major pluses about the recent expansion of relatively upscale chain stores is that they almost always have bathrooms. Target, Barnes and Noble, and Starbucks have all saved me from possible embarrassment more than once.
Tim has an interesting post speculating on “which subjects will be the subject of moral revolutions in the 21st century.”
I think there are three ways to identify possible areas for moral change. First and most obviously, you can look at what’s currently in the process of changing and predict the eventual outcome. For example, we’ll see further gender equality, with the idea (e.g.) that women are the best caretakers of children becoming as unacceptable as the idea that, say, Jews are greedy. (Of course, there’s still room for progress there too.)
Secondly, you can think about where your own morals conflict with those more generally accepted by society. Nationalism is an example here; I truly do not understand why people believe that someone from Texas should have more of a right to go to Cleveland looking for work than someone from Mexico does. I think that as our world becomes more interconnected, national boundaries are going to seem less important and more arbitrary, and we’ll start seeing people from other countries as simply fellow humans.
Third, you can think about where your moral intuitions conflict with one another, or don’t match with reason. Here it’s difficult to predict what will happen, since if you knew how to resolve the contradiction it wouldn’t be a problem, but it provides a way to identify areas of change. Animal rights is a big one here; my moral intuition that stops me from hurting cute things conflicts with my intuition that meat is a normal thing to eat. And it’s not easy to resolve logically. My guess is that meat eating will become less accepted, especially since it’s now easy to get sufficient nutrients otherwise.
I note that my last two examples rely rather heavily on increased prosperity. The more productivity increases, the easier it will be to let more people compete in American labor markets - eventually there will be enough to go around. And technology and prosperity make it easy to survive as a vegetarian. It’s also probably true that increases in material wellbeing make less-economically-fraught changes easier as well; people who aren’t worried that anyone’s going to take their next meal away are more likely to focus on their own problems rather than causing trouble for anybody else. Plus, there are more overindulged college students available for protest duty.
Sometimes I wonder why it is necessary to include instructions on, say, soap. I suppose it is possible that some people have not figured out to use soap yet. However, I don’t think the following label will take care of that:
Directions: Wet hands. Work into a rich lather. Rinse.(Trader Joe’s “Next to Godliness” hand soap)
It doesn’t seem to mention the part where you add the soap.
Similarly, a frozen pizza I baked the other night instructed me:
Remove plastic wrap. Place pizza directly on oven rack. Bake 9-10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.
It’s a good thing I knew that I should remove the cardboard under the pizza. Sure, that’s obvious, but it’s not as obvious as removing the plastic wrap! (If you hadn’t had frozen pizza before, you might not notice the cardboard since it can blend in with the crust.)
On a different note, I just purchased some “Blue Tabs” automatic toilet bowl cleaner. I noticed that the package says
Safe to use around pets and children, although it is not recommended that either be permitted to drink from toilet.
That is so awesome. I was dithering on whether I really needed toilet bowl cleaning tabs, but when I read that I decided that this company definitely needed to be rewarded with my business.
(It does later say: “HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED. EYE IRRITANT.” so I’m not sure exactly how safe it is.)
This morning I went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel with some friends who were on their way out of town. In the “country store” area they had these fake pets that look pretty lifelike and “breathe” as they “sleep” in their little baskets. I’ve seen these things before, and I always have to walk away, because they’re so pathetic it makes me sad.
The copy on the website says “Perfect Petzzz are cute sleeping puppies and kittens that offer unconditional love and are maintenance-free.”
I can’t help imagining some elderly lady who’s lonely and needs a companion, but can’t have a real pet because she’s too stiff to care for one or too poor to feed it, and her grandchildren who can’t be bothered to keep her company themselves buy her one of these things so she can try to pretend that she’s getting unconditional love from this pet that never ever wakes up. Gah, it’s so sad.
(As if my imagined pathos weren’t bad enough, I had to go read the testimonials at that website. Don’t do it.)
I am really annoyed at the amount of garbage companies - some of whom I have never even done business with - force me to throw away.
To Sierra Trading Post, Norm Thompson, and Omaha Steaks: Yes, I ordered from your website. That was because I want to shop online. I do not want to shop from catalogs. If I want anything else from you, I know where your website is because I’ve ordered things from it before. Stop sending me your freaking catalogs. (And Norm Thompson, the one thing I bought from you sucked anyway. You should have a disclaimer that your products are meant for middle-aged women.)
To the phone company: WTF? Why have I gotten three sets of phone books in the 17 months I have lived here? I am not even your customer, nor have I ever been. T-Mobile, whose customer I actually am, doesn’t leave heavy phone books on my porch so that I have to lug them to the dumpster. Why do you? Seriously. Why is it OK for you to drop garbage off on my front porch when I have never had any doings with you whatsoever?
Maybe I should save all the phone books and drop them off at the phone company’s doorstep once I have too many to carry at once.