What Straphangers Don’t Say Aloud
We mutter these phrases under our breaths as we avoid eye contact with fellow passengers. It’s a unique vocabulary unspoken but shared by New York City’s 5.6 million daily subway riders. These expressions reveal the full gamut of human emotions from pride to prejudice, glee to desperation. Anyone who regularly ventures into the underground or ascends to the El will recognize this lexicon of in-transit slut talk many of us are thinking but rarely articulate out loud.
Girthism
Bias against anyone who takes up more than one seat.
Seat-voidance
The act of successive passengers shunning an empty seat on a crowded train because it appears dirty or moist.
Butt Bufferer
The rare straphanger with a newspaper who throws seat-voidance to the winds and papers over a suspect surface. Seated, he or she wants to yell: “Try sitting on your smartphones, suckers!”
Strap-o-bats
Teens who grab the bars normally used by straphangers to perform acrobatic acts while music blasts from a boombox they’ve brought.
Sub Math
An impatient passenger’s gut calculation that states: “A ① in the station is worth a ② or ③ to come” or “A ⑥ in time beats a ④ three stations away.” Certainly.
Ex-flection
The point down track where the express you should have waited for passes the local.
Bud Buddies
Best friends for life (typically two adolescents) sharing one music player using a single pair of stretched earbuds. Also called Bud Splitters.
Slo-cavores
Riders who choose the local over the express to get a seat and turn uncomfortable standing time into productive reading time.
Congestionfreude
Smugness that pervades slocavores looking up to see their local passing an express that’s stopped in the tunnel.
Blockheadism
Prejudice against the preoccupied jerk who stands in the middle of the doorway to read a text while blocking those trying to exit and enter the train.
Seat-vana
The feeling of landing the perfect seat that contains both an armrest and legroom. (Such seats can still be found at the two ends and in the middle cars of older F-, R-, B-, A- and D-line trains.)
Seat-apocalypse
The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s push to replace older, sit-down cars with shinier ones that halve the number of seats in order to squeeze in more standees. Also called cattlecarism.
The Submeil and Submazel
One passenger (the “submeil”) dashing to seat-vana whose swinging shoulder bag inadvertently knocks a $5 cup of cappuccino out of the hand of a second passenger (the “submazel”) who is seated, causing the espresso with steamed milk drink to spread sadly across the cracked linoleum.
Conduct-arrhea
Words from a loquacious conductor who at every stop demonstrates his or her knowledge of subway and bus connections while reminding passengers to take their things and to have a nice day.
Groans & Shakes
The moan from passengers whose train isn’t moving that’s emitted when the conductor belatedly announces there’s a sick customer in the train in the station ahead. Collective head shaking ensues as the conductor says, “We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Stairs-a-gists
Those who strategize to position themselves to wait for the train exactly where they’ll need to be for the steps to be at their feet when they get off. Also called platform artists.
Expreshment
A fleeting breeze from a passing express benefiting those waiting at a local station on a sultry day.
Expressionalism
The exceptional commute that is fast and efficient, getting you to Herald Square in under 27 minutes instead of the usual 45. Hallelujah!
Michael Antonoff is a freelance writer who rides the F train to Manhattan most weekdays.
