The TTC is a Vulgar Mess
By Ryan Oakley. Filed in toronto |
When Miss. Martindale was asked by The Chap Magazine, what the single greatest challenge to her wardrobe and grooming skill was, she replied thus: “Travelling on any form of public transport – a thing which I very rarely do, owing to the declining standards of the public.”
I have to agree. I have finally given up on the Toronto Transit Commission. I do very occasionally require its services, but I no longer casually engage it to cart me to and fro. I have chosen to walk to work and to walk home. It takes forty five minutes in one direction and an hour in the other.
Breathing fresh air while listening to university lectures about the ancient world upon my iPod is much better than being bullied by the staff, which consists of surly, overpaid communists doing work that could better be accomplished by a vending machine. The smoking of a pipe as I stride through the chocolate-scented, AERO factory district is highly preferable to being jammed in with a ridership that consists of vulgar teenagers, depraved crackheads and glum office personal, all of whom seem to rush home and post their lewd and lonely imaginings about each other in Craigslist’s Missed Connections.
My last straw was the TTC’s recent ad campaign. Aside from depicting its customers as pigs, we are also blamed for delays . Apparently we’re getting sick too often, jamming the doors, throwing ourselves in front of trains and otherwise slowing down the whole system.
Thinking of these advertisements during a half an hour wait for one of their obsolete and overpriced trolleys, I decided to take heed and do my part to help the trains run on time. I would stop taking them. I haven’t regretted this decision for a moment –not even when I walked home in the worst blizzard of the year — and I have saved at least thirty dollars in loose change. Perhaps I will buy a walking stick.
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (bad science fiction), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap. He's a bit of a dick.
Friday, March 23rd 2007 at 1:41 am |
I liked this article. It inspired me to post a similar one on my Blog “Sherlock Ohms – Bullshit Detective” http://sherlockohms.blogspot.com/
about how it’s MY fault I’m causing illness in my family by having a part time job.
Rob Owens