New York City Subway Loonies

I have to say I am impressed by the gravitational pull exhibited by New York’s MTA Subway (Oh, BTW: onnyturf did a cool mash-up of Google Maps + Subway).
The subway is like a little Neutron Star when it comes to attracting weird people:

Naturally, when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for a crazy person to walk into a subway car and start mumbling his/her apocalyptical visions of mankind’s destiny onto a crowd of captive audience. After all it’s what advertising companies do all the time: Mumble their shit into your brain where you can’t escape it.

However, going over it a second time in my head, raises an interesting possible catch-22: If the loonies are really loonies, then why are they exhibiting such a profoundly sane behavior? (just Nike’s creative team would… if you will)

I’m beginning to think these people aren’t really loonies, but are really a sophisticated underground of beggars and sales people.
I bet they have secret meeting in some underground basement of the MTA where they divide the subway lines by lane, direction and time in between themselves. It has to be true! How else can you explain you never see more than one of them on the train at the same time? It’s probably all a secret sophisticated plan to demolish society internally.

Anyway, back to the loonies, I’ve noticed there is a pattern when it comes to their behavior. Although you may see tens of them in any given day, they can usually be categorized into a few distinct groups.

Over the coming weeks (after I get a good pocket camera…) I will try to film them while on the Subway, and will post the basic archetypes of Subway Loonies of this blog.

~ by damageboy on December 11, 2007.