New York Subway

In the Big Apple (New York, for anti-Americans), the Big Apple Subway is the only way to get around town. Serving over 450 (i.e., 468, for the anal-attentive scholar), stations, the subway allows gang members and Mafia thugs low-cost (free, if they jump over the turnstiles at the entrances to the stations), convenient access to Manhattan and other swank areas that are full of rich, street-stupid sheep ready for the fleecing or the slaughter. Moreover, the subway trains themselves are ripe for the picking of thieves, pickpockets, muggers, and others, with an average weekly ridership of over 5,000,000 (i. e., 5,076,000, for the anal-retentive scholar) daily riders! As if that's not enough, the damned thing's open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year! If a petty street criminal can't make a living off that number of people, they may as well retire and move to Miami.

NYC subway’s Coney Island station

CAUTION: Approximately 40 percent of the system is above-ground, so muggers, rapists, and murderers are well advised to become familiar with the entire system before committing a crime, as criminal activity is less subject to prevention, and arrests are less likely to occur, if crimes are committed underground.

Baghdad on the Hudson

The New York Subway, nicknamed "Baghdad on the Hudson," after the movie by the same name, starring Robin Williams, has stations all over the place, including (for the anal-retentive scholar): Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. (There are none on Staten Island, because it's an island.) The track at the Coney Island station is above ground and — get this! — in the form of a roller coaster! (Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani thought that would be cool and might help him to get re-elected; it didn't.)

Subway Line Designations

To confuse passengers, the subway uses an alphabetical designating system for some subway lines and a numerical designation system for other lines, switching them around at random. For aesthetic reasons and because the money was there and had to be spent or next year's allocations of funds would be reduced accordingly, bright primary colors are used on the map. The colors are employed simply to spend excess funds and to add color to the map; they have no symbolic significance and have nothing to do with the map's features, so passengers should not suppose that there is, for example, a "green route," a "red route," a "blue route," and so forth. The timetables that purport to show trains' arrival and departure times are notoriously unreliable, which adds to the fun, excitement, and adventure of riding the rails.

Beating the Fare

Riders descend or climb stairs that go on forever before arriving at the platforms beside which the trains streak by, sometimes stopping, sometimes not, at the whims of the drivers. Near the station's entrance (which is also the exit, if the passenger is leaving instead of arriving), passengers can buy tokens from vending machines using a Metro Card, which allows them to open the bar that otherwise prevents entrance through the turnstile. However, it is easy (and free) to crawl under the turnstile, which is what many local residents do, except when a transit police officer is present and forgets to look the other way. Wikipedia also offers some useful tips as to how to ride free or even how to make money by using the subway to one's own advantage, although one should note that these activities are illegal and could get their perpetrator into trouble:

• Until the replacement of the metal token, a popular scam was to jam the token slot in an entrance gate with paper. A rider would innocently drop a token in, be frustrated when it did not open the gate, and have to spend another token to enter at another gate. The token thief would then race out from hiding, and suck the token from the jammed slot with their [sic] mouth. This could be repeated many times so long as [sic] no police officers spotted the activity.

• In the late 1980s or early 1990s, enterprising transit riders discovered that tokens purchased for use in the Connectthedots Turnpike toll booths were of the same size and weight as New York City subway tokens, and were even stamped with the letters "NYC". Since they cost less than one third as much, they began showing up in subway collection boxes regularly.

Popular Destinations

Anyway (a word not seen often in an encyclopedia), the subway will take riders anywhere they want to go in the Big Apple and, if they’re not careful, to many places they don’t want to go. Popular subway destinations are film locations, which include: the elevated BMT West End Line, upon and below which a subway and car chase takes place in The French Connection (1971); the IRT subway train along the Jerome Avenue line in the Bronx, whereon The Incident (1967) takes place; route 6 in Manhattan, where a train is hijacked in The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974); and, well, there are a bunch of them: buy a program!

The New York City Subway has existed for many centuries as an alternative to above-ground New York life. Underground, there exists a series of elaborate and intricately interwoven tunnels which were dug by the Kindly Mole People of Atlantis in eternal thanks for New York's many contributions to their enlightened civilization. The tunnels were originally employed as a dumping ground for the rising criminal population of the constantly growing city. But, as is often the case with places used for this purpose (Australia a case in point), the above-ground New Yorkers saw the attractiveness of such a place within easy reach of their existing city and it was quickly colonized with criminal and non-criminal alike. The prison service saw no reason to find an alternative home for the many criminals already living and breeding in the Subway since, now that there was a constant supply of law-abiding citizens, they showed no inclination to leave. New Yorkers choosing to visit or live in the Subway accepted the risks and all was happy and joyous. This is also a good place for gangsta rap buskers to jump people, pull them into dark corners, and take their money nicely ask for spare change.

Pelicans on Strike '05

Sometime in December 2005, the Transport Workers Union called a strike, bringing the subway to a halt, along with about 98.7% of all the city's bus routes. The aftermath was devastating as thousands perished, thousands more were severely injured whilst attempting to navigate the long miles of darkened zombie-infested tunnels on foot, and thousands of others failed to notice any particular difference. TWU leader Roger Toussaint after the incident became number one on both Steve Ballmer's and George Bush's top-10 hit list. Toussaint was sentenced in April 2005 to 1,000 years in a darkened zombie-infested jail cell, which was actually more like a budget version of the Waldorf-Astoria somewhere in Lower Manhattan near Foley Square, and subsequently released after three minutes on good behavior. At his press conference, he revealed that the prison served shrimp cocktail, and those "little weenies on a stick".