Needless obstructions
At the 23rd Street R/W subway stop where I disembark every morning to go to work, one of those obnoxious, scary, revolving steel bar exits await the throng of passengers. You know the kind, where, if any unfortunate souls should misstep/misalign themselves so that they are not perfectly in between each set of bars as they rapidly do-si-do around each other, they will suffer a blood-splattering, "Final Destination"-worthy death. The potential causes of self-mutilating mechanical murder are limitless. Caught between gears, their faces could be impaled on three or more of the bars and ripped from their torsos in alarmingly silent fashion, the subsequent bars knocking their suddenly motionless, decapitated frames out a foot before they collapse in a retinal fluid-strewn heap upon the stairwell. Or entire figure halves could be obliterated by the aftermath of the previously exiting passenger's overzealous (or perhaps just overly pissed off) maneuvering; the left body half, for instance, may jut out too quickly ahead of the right as the uncompromising bars, bloodthirsty with newly accelerated speed, careen into the left half with one fatal "Whoosh." Dazzled passengers will get to see the literal playing out of how the other half dies. A set of iPod headphones inadverdently arranged so that the wires are close to the neck could get tangled up in the bars and strangle the person, or maybe just behead him. Most outrageously, but perhaps most likely to happen, as I've seen the unfatal part of this equation unfold before my eyes, the passenger in question could step out too slowly from the whirring bars, which proceed to sideswipe, or get caught on, the passenger's heel. The force from the bars could in turn cause the passenger to trip, fall on another passenger, who falls on the stairs, where a razorblade lies, and the razorblade could fly up, hit a nearby telephone wire, which comes undone, electrocutes a foreman holding an electric knife, which flies down the stairs and systematically saws apart the passenger...
Are your mornings this gruesome?
Anyway, these thought-out "Faces of Death" scenarios are not the main point of this entry. Next to the revolving bars is a completely useless, seriously irritating "Emergency" exit, which a random passenger less law-abiding than I slams open almost every single morning, letting off a discordant siren alert. Nobody, at least on my watch, has ever been caught doing this, perhaps because there have never been cops present, or because the Metro Card booth is upstairs from this exit so there are no MTA workers to thwart the perpetrator. Either way, it is both safer and quicker than the legal, metal doors and there is absolutely no reason for its "Emergency Only" status. It amazes and repels me that nobody, not the MTA workers, not passengers like me who deal with this every day, have ever thought to suggest to the MTA that the emergency door be promoted to regular exit status, while the steel bar exit gets shut down...or appended with a sign that says "For Martyrs Only."
Are your mornings this gruesome?
Anyway, these thought-out "Faces of Death" scenarios are not the main point of this entry. Next to the revolving bars is a completely useless, seriously irritating "Emergency" exit, which a random passenger less law-abiding than I slams open almost every single morning, letting off a discordant siren alert. Nobody, at least on my watch, has ever been caught doing this, perhaps because there have never been cops present, or because the Metro Card booth is upstairs from this exit so there are no MTA workers to thwart the perpetrator. Either way, it is both safer and quicker than the legal, metal doors and there is absolutely no reason for its "Emergency Only" status. It amazes and repels me that nobody, not the MTA workers, not passengers like me who deal with this every day, have ever thought to suggest to the MTA that the emergency door be promoted to regular exit status, while the steel bar exit gets shut down...or appended with a sign that says "For Martyrs Only."