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FOOD POLICE ON DC SUBWAY

Chewing or talking on a cellphone I do think we could all be a little more polite including the police. It seems that busting poeple for little things may work. After reading both stories I think I would leave my cellphone off (unless I was a doctor on call and I would not move my mouth in a chewing fashion on the subway!


Food Police
After spending last weekend in Boston with a bunch of leftist types, I returned to New York just itching to perform a revolutionary act of civil disobedience. So, I think I?m going to go down to D.C., hop on the ?Metro??that?s what they call the subway in D.C., you New York snobs?and in full view of the transit authorities, eat a French fry. That?s right, John Ashcroft, now who?s gonna stop me?

Dedicated readers of this blog may recall an earlier post by Hannah that touched upon Washington?s absurdly stringent rules against eating on the subway and its environs. As an alert reader pointed out, not long ago, a twelve-year-old girl was handcuffed?yes, handcuffed?for popping a single French fry into her mouth while waiting for the train. (Hence my choice of protest-food.) Now, this: A 45-year old employee of the EPA was recently arrested for the heinous act of ?chewing inside a Metro station.? Yes, a government employee was so offensive as to take the last bite of her PayDay candy bar and chew it, in plain view of a police officer. (Some people are just sick.)

Truth be told, this crack-up, er crackdown, has been a long time coming. My earliest suspicions that D.C. was turning into a police state came at the tender age of 17, when, on a school trip to the Supreme Court, a few of us stopped for breakfast en route to the Metro. I got a bagel with cream cheese, and, perhaps more hungry than my classmates, upon arriving at the Shady Grove station, proceeded to chow down while waiting for the train to arrive.

That?s when the voice appeared.

?No eating on the platform.?

It seemed to come from nowhere. I looked around.

?No eating on the platform,? the voice, not quite mechanical but not quite human, repeated.

I looked up. At that moment, a video surveillance camera turned and peered directly at me.

?Jesus Christ,? I said, through a mouthful of cream cheese. My friend, next to me, echoed the sentiment. I stuffed my half-eaten bagel into its bag and saved it for later. Much later.

It wasn?t the first time I?d been admonished for eating on the Metro. The summer before, a random passenger had scolded me for eating a bag of M&Ms on the train. Was I making a mess, you ask? Was I, perhaps, dropping them onto the carpeted subway car one by one and crushing them into the ground with my heel? The answer, of course, is no.

D.C. Metro riders are, in my experience, leaders in the Unsolicited Remark department. Aside from the schmuks described above (who my friend and I disdainfully labeled ?vigilant citizens? from that day forth), other characters have huffed at me for standing on the wrong side of the escalator (okay, I admit, that annoys me too), and one time, a pathetic little man projected all his prudishness onto a nearby child, who, despite the fact that she was minding her own business, he informed me was being traumatized by a G-rated display of affection with my boyfriend.

Meanwhile, in the span of a few weeks, while riding the considerably less wussy New York subway, not only have I been witness to the widespread consumption of hot, odorous food, I have also been treated to: 1) the conspicuous viewing of pornography on a portable DVD player, and 2) I kid you not, on my way to work the other day, a man quietly injecting himself with insulin. (I think.)

D.C. riders need to spend a day, or just an hour, on the New York subway. Toughen them up, I say. As for the cop who arrested the eater of the PayDay bar? Reassign her to the B/D stop at Yankee Stadium. I?m not sure what that smell is, but it?s certainly not food...anymore.


Posted by Liliana Segura on July 29, 2004 at 11:57 AM | Permalink

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