Joel Up Front

So yeah, my Accounting professor says I'm failing. With that horror show of a test I handed in earlier, I should probably register for the class again... I hate college. I wonder how all my peers have kids/get drunk/find time for hobbies and manage to do well. I really hate that.

Was City Hall really that dimly lit in the 1900s? There are plenty of videos of trains turning through the loop and it looks pretty dismal in there. And I wonder if South Ferry still has the platform gap fillers working. Those things are still pretty new.

In reference to the city, let's just say that you know you're from there if any of the following apply to you: You say "the city" and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan. You have never been to the In reference to the city, let's just say that you know you're from there if any of the following apply to you: You say "the city" and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan. You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can�t find Wisconsin on a map. Hookers and the homeless are invisible. The subway makes sense. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual. You've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple". The most frequently used part of your car is the horn. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard. You consider Westchester "upstate". You think Central Park is "nature." You see nothing odd about the speed of an auctioneer's speaking. You're paying $1,200 for a studio the size of a walk-in closet and you think it's a "steal." You've been to New Jersey twice and got hopelessly lost both times. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the U.S. pay in rent. You haven't seen more than twelve stars in the night sky since you went away to camp as a kid. You go to dinner at 9 and head out to the clubs when most Americans are heading to bed. Your closet is filled with black clothes. You haven't heard the sound of true absolute silence since the 80s, and when you did, it terrified you. You pay $5 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28 cents. You take fashion seriously. Being truly alone makes you nervous. You have 27 different menus next to your telephone. Going to Brooklyn is considered a "road trip." America west of the Hudson is still theoretical to you. You've gotten jaywalking down to an art form. You take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise. Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes. $50 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories. You don't notice sirens anymore. You live in a building with a larger population than most American towns. Your doorman is Russian, your grocer is Korean your deli man is Israeli, your building super is Italian, your laundry guy is Chinese, your favorite bartender is Irish, your favorite diner owner is Greek, the watchseller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was Pakistani, your newsstand guy is Indian and your favorite falafel guy is Egyptian. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you. You secretly envy cabbies for their driving skills. You think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price. Your door has more than three locks. Your favorite movie has DeNiro in it. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression. You run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection. You're 35 years old and don't have a driver's license. You ride in a subway car with no air conditioning just because there are seats available. You're willing to take in strange people as roommates simply to help pay the rent. There is no North and South. It's uptown or downtown. When you're away from home, you miss "real" pizza and "real" bagels. You know the differences between all the different Ray's Pizzas. You're not in the least bit interested in going to Times Square on New Year's Eve. Your internal clock is permanently set to know when Alternate Side of the Street parking regulations are in effect. You know what a bodega is. You know how to fold the New York Times in half, vertically, so that you can read it on the subway or bus without knocking off other passenger's hats. Someone bumps into you, and you check for your wallet... You cringe at hearing people pronounce Houston St. like the city in Texas. Film crews on your block annoy you, not excite you. or the Empire State Building. Someone bumps into you, and you check for your wallet...

All the NG CNGs here and some bus operators are wearing TWU Local 252 pins. The last NG I got off of Wednesday had "Local Jobs for Local People" taped on the back of the bus.

Mine doesn't work anymore... I could find a used one, but I do have games from overseas that require... certain hardware to play.

It's always cool to sit at a terminal and watch a convoy of buses rolling in to start another run or to take passengers.

Ah, these were great memories, driving down a small-scale version of Manhattan in this game from 1999. Reminds me of the camera zooming down various side streets until it got to your car, on a dark and rainy night.

An old MSBA operator on SubChat said those Gilligs were deathtraps and had power steering that was too sensitive. Why did they take the cool "Phantom" name? Is it a reference to how like its safety, phantoms aren't real?

Thank you! It is hard to figure out whats a Nassau bus and whats a Queens bus along Hillside Av... That is until the N6 goes flying by at 45 right past you, as you flail your arms wildly... At least five things wrong with that. 1) Forty-five? Miles an hour? On Hillside Avenue? laughingelfman.jpg 2) LIB operators wish they could do 45. Wait, I was just on the N51 and the B/O DID about 45 for a good 20 seconds. Fun ride. 3) Bus models? Destination signs? That not good enough for you if the NGs are all white with a blue stripe? 4) Okay, I ran out of things. 5) You just lost the game.

There's always gotta be the ***** ass professor in your institution of higher learning that gives you impossible to answer problems for homework and then bitches when no one understands it. Tenure a good instructor does not always make.

When I was on the second I got on last Friday, the conductor actually made an annoucement himself. He was pretty heated at the person blocking the doors. That wasn't me because I was looking at the map inside the car... still startled me, though.

NJT does use Luminators, so you shouldn't have a problem.

Seriously, the next time I see this Princess crap I am going to flip shit.

If "The Wiz" doesn't scream "I grew up in the 1990s," I don't know what will. The one I did have near me is a Petco now.

lol glee It's the exact opposite of what I feel when I catch a glance of it.

Please, MMPR Yellow ranger = hot. Why she was the Yellow Ranger and Asian we will never know. Why did she have to die...

There's a key difference between liking a railroad and foaming over it. Being told after foaming is not an excuse to get mad.

Too bad about those fires and brake issues. I did lol @ the paper rollsign, though... we were still in that "omg look digital" age from the early 1980s and we still used the old rollsigns?

That's JohnQPine, Garibaldi. Not saying he's any better than the trolls on SubChat. Nice of him to help that B/O on the N27 after that storm in June just after the cuts hit, but he had nothing nice to say after...

I get on the N43 earlier and run into the same bus operator whom I remember for arriving to Freeport 20 minutes late consistently who had the run for God knows how long.... she rolls up to NCC just in time, never broke 30 anywhere, and somehow arrived under Freeport right on time. When I do get on the M7 that rolled into the station, the conductor that was collecting tickets got smacked by the door at Baldwin because everyone got on real quick and the head conductor must have been eager to give the engineer the signal.

Pokemon Black and White? I want to see a "Legend of Zelda: The Five Boroughs."

Damn it, there was this Facebook group about the NYC Subway that had photos of the coolest and weirdest stuff in the subway, including: -"Brodaway" on the (which is how I started getting into the subway) -The group starter finding a somewhat concealed outlet on the ceiling of a subway station, and taking a photo of his Blackberry charger plugged into it -hijinks within subway cars, such as a girl in one of those toy Hummers and more... But it apparently went down last year or something.

The M8s would look cool in Kawasaki's native Japan, but that top light just kills it. Godawful things. Not to mention I'm not exactly a fan of Metro-North. Or the state of Connecticut. Or Pennsylvania, but that is for another time. I like how sleek the R160s look, but if the LED sign is somehow missing half the fracking letter or the circle around it, it ruins it for me.