i'm so nit-picky

[pocky_slash]

Ridiculous thing that just took me totally out of a fic: Someone using a token as subway fare in NYC. The subways haven't taken tokens since at LEAST 2004 if not earlier and they stopped being the most common form of fare before that

Comments

[very_improbable]

Subway tokens in NYC? That sounds adorably retro to me (I think I would've guessed they'd been gone even longer than five years; I've visited NYC a few times but I'm also really used to farecards from years of riding BART). I guess maybe if someone is not used to dealing with tons of public transit, or they live somewhere with a subway that still does run on tokens, it wouldn't occur to them to check those details? But this is why we have betas.

[pocky_slash]

Well, the first MetroCards popped up in the early nineties and they started to become the default not long after. I've been going into Manhattan alone since I was... hm, fourteen? Which would be 1999/2000 and I've never used tokens. I think, when I heard they were going to be completely phased out, my one friend and I bought one each just to have for the retro factor XD

I have learned way more about the history of MTA fares in the past day then is really healthy, I think.

Also, this totally wasn't even the worst subway faux pas I've ever seen by a long shot. I once had to politely comment on someone's fic (it may have been SGA) to inform them that they had mixed up a whole bunch of subway lines and the ones they were referencing didn't stop where they claimed. I mean, if you're going to explicitly reference particular trains, you should probably check to make sure they actually go where you say, right?

I am so crazy.

[tvisgood]

remember to vote after work tomorrow.

I'm so glad that election is tomorrow, just because I'm so effing sick of seeing those campaign commercials. I don't really know anything about the race, I'm just going to have to smack someone if I see that "Lautenberg called a woman old" spot one more time.

Oh, the joys of different states sharing the same media market. ;)

[pocky_slash]

I'm sick of them too. Ugh. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but there doesn't seem to be any HUGE differences in their policies? Whatever. We'll see what happens.

[scrollgirl]

I remember that fic! Yeah, that kind of threw me too. We still use tokens here in Toronto, but I know NYC only uses cards so it bugged me to see it. Unless the fic was set pre-May 3, 2003 (which I'm pretty sure it wasn't, though I can't remember *which* fic it is now) the token thing is definitely wrong.

Well, it's not the worst locale-specific error I've ever seen.

[pocky_slash]

It was definitely set after may 2003, and even if it wasn't I feel like the token would be a HUGE stretch. Metrocards were definitely more popular by the late nineties and someone who moved to NYC in fall 2002 isn't just going to pick up a roll of tokens, I feel, especially since Metrocard vending machines are everywhere and for tokens he'd have to have asked a transit worker, who probably would have steered him towards a Metrocard anyway.

Oh my god, you see how crazy this had made me? I'm clearly losing my mind. XD

[autophanous]

MetroCards are sexier anyway.

QUOTED FOR TRUTH