I personally thought that last week’s Cat Found poster was pretty funny. They were slowly taken down one by one, but at least one of the posters survived the entire week. My goal was to again, cover up the graffiti, and now the broken glass, with something a bit more amusing. The poster I hung last night was somewhat more subtle.

The name Waldo should give it away. Don’t fix that glass Metro North, it looks sexy as-is.

Cover up that graffiti!

Well, let’s just say it was a miserable failure. The signs did not last 24 hours in the station. By morning time, six of the seven were gone, and one was moved in the corner and partially crumpled. If an MTA worker did this, I could understand. But then that means that they employ workers to go into stations and pull down posters. And do only that. Because they sure as hell didn’t clean the station. The same immature penis drawings in the dirt that have been there for months are still there. The graffiti is still there, the broken glass on the floor is still there. I will just assume that I pissed off the graffiti artist. And they certainly didn’t want their handiwork covered up.

The cat girl was out and causing mischief this week in Goldens Bridge. I’ve been told by some people I see on my commute that seeing me with my cat hat every morning makes them smile. But what of every person at the station that I don’t see? I figured I’d make them smile a bit too, and maybe have a bit of a laugh. So if you hang out around Goldens Bridge, you may have seen this poster:

Monday night I hung six of these posters. By Tuesday morning two were missing, and by this morning there were only three remaining, on the south side platform and the south vestibule stairwell. I was hoping that someone would call the number on the poster and say something amusing, but thus far I’ve received no calls. Yes, the number is in fact a real voicemail number. If you call it, any message you leave will be emailed to me.

Part of the motivation for the poster was to cover up the graffiti that the MTA will never clean

Don’t mess with the ticket machines. One of the first signs to disappear.

So last week I posted my brilliant idea of what I would do the next time someone came to me in White Plains begging for money… that was, make them work for it. If they wanted money, I’d give it to them, if and only if they sand or danced on camera. In fact the same man returned, the one I was referring to in that post, again asking for dollars. And thus began my evening in White Plains yesterday.

Dollar man was looking for a dollar, and I said that I would give him one if he danced or sang. I even pulled the dollar out of my pocket. I later said that I’d give it for doing just about anything, including telling a joke. So I turned on the camera, and told him to tell his joke. But he got shy, pulled his hat over his eyes. I said oh well, turned off the camera, and put the dollar back in my pocket.

Certainly by now everyone in the train station was watching this exchange between the man and my friends and I. So the man tried a different tact: “Miss? Did I say that you look very pretty?” Unfortunately I wasn’t giving out dollars for compliments, but it certainly got the room to burst into laughter. But of course, he wanted that dollar bad. And so he finally agreed to “tell a joke” on camera. I put that in quotes because he claimed that he said something funny, but I certainly didn’t hear it. But I told him I was feeling generous and that he could have the dollar. After all, I did get something semi-amusing to write about.

Later on before I got on my train, the man, who told me his name was John, wanted to thank me and shook my hand. He also wanted to know what my name was, and if I was single. In retrospect the idea of asking beggars to perform on camera was rather amusing. In practice however, I don’t think I’ll be doing it again. Either way though, I am probably going to hell.

Some people might be completely oblivious to the fact that elections are going on tomorrow. If you ride the train though, it is highly unlikely that you are one of those people. In the past week alone most train riders have been given handouts equal to our own weight. In fact, the janitors at all stations are probably putting in overtime, necessary to carry out the trash of all the handouts that the train riders are discarding.

In order to help out all our readers for tomorrow’s big vote, I’ve found all of the handouts and politicians from the past few days, plus some old favorites.

In the race for District Attorney, we have two strong candidates. Janet DiFiore, who may or may not have been on Law and Order, and Dan “The Pirate” Schorr!

Competing for Worst Halloween Costume are Beth “Goth Chick” Smayda and Tony “Batman” Castro

Best Halloween Costume is a toss-up between Charley “Superman” Wood, Tom “Cowboy” Roach, and Bill “Rooster” Ryan

Competing in the race for People That Make the Same Face in Every Picture are Tim Idoni and Bill Hyland

And lastly, we have our delightful contest for Lookalikes.

Leonard Lolis and Saddam Hussein

Rob Astorino and Vladimir Putin

Seriously though, go out and vote. Oh, and please remember to recycle.

Train stations are packed this week full of various politicians making their rounds, passing out flyers, and trying to earn your vote on November 3. I was sitting upstairs in the waiting room in White Plains today, and it was just a hilarious procession… Step one: Politician hands you a flyer, Step two: walk down the hallway, Step three: throw flyer into the trash bin, Step four: continue on your way.

Why is it that so many people don’t refuse the flyers? Even if they don’t want them. The majority of folks take it and throw it out. I on the other hand, hold onto them and do different things… Let’s just say I don’t think that Tony Castro and Bill Ryan are my biggest fans.

That was about all that was interesting at the train station this morning… though we did have a guy who was begging for coins, he claimed that he missed his train and he needed fifty cents to call his boss to say he was going to be late to work. One of the folks I ride the shuttle bus with gave him the money, then he walked away. Right past the phone booths. So I shouted out to him, “Hey, the phones are over there!” With everyone staring at him now, he pretended to make a call. Quite terribly though, because he didn’t put that money in the phone. What a surprise.

When I started out this blog, it was sort of just a portion of my own personal website. It had the same layout as my site, and was fairly integrated. I have been thinking for quite a while now though, this blog has really taken off in another direction, and is pretty much standing well on it’s own. So I felt that in order to reflect that new identity, the site needed a little bit of change in the aesthetics department. Enjoy the new layout that I’ve made, which I’ll probably be tweaking for a little while now that it is up. I’m not much of an illustrator, but I did want to try doing a little sketch for the title, with the Sky Ceiling in Grand Central in the background.

So what else is changing? Next week brings new schedules to the MTA, and conductors will be changing around their jobs… so you may see some new faces on your trains. I’m quite bummed that all the conductors on my train all got bumped off and had to take jobs on other trains.

Conductor winter wear will also make it’s comeback… though my proposed new hat for MTA conductors was denied.

If you do like changes though, especially changes in the leaves, you must check out the Fall Foliage Rail Excursion, over on the Hudson Line, which will be happening on the 24th. You can find more information about that tour here.

Lastly, if you missed October’s Mileposts, you may have missed some nice deals. When buying tickets for Cirque Du Soleil’s Wintuk, and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, you can save ten dollars, and get a free round trip train ticket. Just be sure to use the promo code METRO.

When it comes to crazy people, White Plains station has no shortage of them. From now on I think I will officially dub the man which I’ve talked about a few times as Mr. Chicago, as he always seems to be talking about Chicago. This morning I was sitting waiting for the shuttle, and he sat down next to me. He was having a long conversation with himself, parts of which sounded like they were complete gibberish. He also described a fat woman that looked like Johnny Damon, and about how he would have beaten someone up, had he not been “drugged into submission.” I imagine this guy knows all about being drugged.

I never got around to mentioning it, but a few weeks back White Plains got some new signage. The old signage had a black stripe on the top, not the blue stripe consistent with the rest of the Harlem Line stations. Here is a delightful photo I took of an M7a coming into the station, you can see the new sign over on the other side of the tracks.

Unfortunately, the schedule board signs around the station have not been working too well. If anyone was curious, they are apparently run on Windows XP:

Though it would have been a little bit more amusing had it been like this:

Usually they work pretty well, and I’ve certainly talked about how I liked them before… of course I only like them when they are working properly.

And for no apparent reason, here is a picture of Peggy, my favorite one-legged pigeon.

This week has been rather hot. The trains have been hot. Some of the air conditioners are not working properly. As conductor Guy said, “It is so hot you could cook brownies in here.”

Inevitably what happens in the heat? People sweat. If you are some of the great people who hang out in the train station of White Plains, sweating doesn’t stop you from wearing your clothes many days in a row… as I doubt you have an entire collection of shirts that say: “My imaginary friend says you have severe mental problems.”

The Chicago-obsessed, taxi screaming, crazy man also wears the same clothing over again. I saw him over by the telephone last night and saw he had some sort of nametag or ticket in the transparent side pocket of his bag. So I walked past him to see what exactly it was. It looked like some sort of train ticket that actually said Chicago on it. It looked nothing like this ticket, but it would be certainly amusing if it had. And if this guy had photoshop skillz, no doubt it would have been like this, instead of a fake computer print-out.

On the other hand, at least these people stay away from me… and they aren’t this guy:

That’s real nice dude, as if putting your feet up on the seats wasn’t nice enough, he decided to take off his dirty, smelly sandals. And then proceeded to pick his feet. Thankfully conductor Peter came around and at least he stopped the feet picking, and put his shoes back on. Is this National Nail Week or something like that? With all the people I’ve seen picking, clipping and painting their nails, you’d think it was. You know what else is good? Showering, and changing your clothes every now and again.

Did anyone notice the delightful little flyer that was left on our trains yesterday? The one in the shape of a footprint, that said “Wiggle Your toes in the grass…” and on the back had safety tips? Well, I didn’t think it was very convincing, so I designed a new flyer for Metro North. This new one is oh so much more professional, and it has pictures! Doesn’t everyone just LOVE pictures?

While riding the train I always see a lot of people drinking beer after work. I wonder if some people solely ride the train just because they can drink and ride, instead of getting arrested for drinking and driving. I also notice that just about every single person who drinks beer, leaves their empty beer bottles and cans on the train when they get off. You know, just so everyone sees how cool they are that they drink and ride. Everybody know you gotta show off like dat, yo.

Some people get started early…

And others enjoy the beginning of the weekend…

Either way, you’re just not cool if you aren’t drinking beer on the train.

Hey, maybe Metro North could even do a promotion, touting the best reason to ride the train! Completely ignore the fact that the majority of people do actually have to drive their cars home after getting off at the train station. Replace those boring train advertisements, and do a little something like this: