Permanent Job Security

The Con

Yesterday, despite my best efforts, I found myself running late.  Usually, I walk the ten blocks across town to my gig but the line for coffee was long, there was no hot water that day etc.  Whatever the reason, I was late and I had to open a restaurant.  With great reluctance, I hailed a cab to take me west, down 17^th Street to 10^th Avenue.

My reticence to get into a taxi had nothing to do with the bad economy draining my bank account or the $1.00 surcharge medallion operators had the TLC sign off on two years ago.  Traditionally, taking a cab across town in the middle of the day was sure to make you tremendously late.  Despite my Pavlovian conditioning to the in and outs of New York traffic, I knew there was one new wrinkle in Gotham life: the lack of automobiles.  So instead of taking possibly an hour to travel those 7 blocks across town, I was walking under the Highline in less than 10 minutes, early for work not late.

Whether this is due to the bad economy or an upsurge in car-pooling for conservation and the desire to lead greener lives is debatable.  “It’s a fucking pleasure,” a patron told me.  “I can actually hear my IPod now.”  No good deed goes unpunished, however.  If we aren’t waiting to take a cab across town, what are we waiting for in New York?

As it turns out, we’re waiting longer for the subway.  According to the New York Post the MTA has declared the “letter’ rail lines: A, D, E, F, G, J, M, N, Q and R will now run every 10 minutes instead of 8 on the weekends due to permanent repairs.  You have to hand it to municipal employees: times are hard and people are being laid off left and right.  However, they have job security.

It like a reverse Mussolini or something like that.  Conspiracy or something more?