Manspreading

Perhaps it was inevitable. The countdown displays in the subway are displaying signs about subway etiquette.

I get the biggest kick out of the fact that the mass transit reporter for the NYT, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, is from Texas. I've never been to Texas, but I did root for the "masked man," the Lone Ranger in the 50s, who with his Indian sidekick Tonto and his famous horse Silver could get all the bad guys to flee into "Box Canyon" and have to give up. A police chase on horseback. It was great.

The above photo is from a Tweet that Ms. Fitzsimmons has recently posted. In case you don't know what "manspreading" is all you have to do is look at the display and realize it has to do with guys whose legs don't offer their adjacent seatmates as much room on the subway bench seat as they should. It is considered uncivilized to sit like that.

The scooped out seats on a subway train are absolutely no approximation of what space someone seated needs to have to be be reasonably comfortable. They are calibrated for naked, anorexic Asian women. Then you can get 8 people in the row.

Anyone who has ridden the subway twice can attest to seeing "manspreading." It is usually a male in what should be a two-seater who is feigning sleeping. They might really be sleeping, but whatever, they are hogging the space.

I will admit seat hogs are annoying. Add winter puff coats, and the acreage per butt is greatly increased, no matter the gender of the passenger.

I've looked at myself seated on the train and I've realized I do not "manspread," at least not as depicted, but I do take up more space than a female. I attribute this to the difference in anatomy between females and males: inside vs. outside plumbing. Most males don't cross their legs like females, either.

So fine, post whatever you like about males who hog space, "dudes," in the current lexicon of  the language. Why not "shout-out" "Yo." No matter. As long as there are little etiquette displays about Bloomingdale bags on the seat and back packs on all. Signage is a great thing.

I think it's great to have someone from Texas in the NYT describing what riding the subway can be like. Goodness knows, few officials have ever taken notice before, so Ms. Fitzsimmons's Tweeter feeds and byline are a great communicative tool. Sort of like a public complaint department.

Emma tells us of the F Train (her train, I think) that runs with so much head time between trains that it arrives at the station already filled to the gills with passengers, the proverbial cattle car. The Texas cattle car.

She sees things we've all seen, and then some new ones. I will admit I've never seen what she just described in a recent Tweet as seeing:

Never seen this on the subway before: A woman plops on the floor in the middle of the train and sits cross-legged eating pasta with a fork.

Frankie No at Rao's has passed away, but apparently it is still just as hard to get a table at Rao's as it always was.

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