A little while back I had to go straighten out my driver's license. (I am disorganized; I didn't even see an unopened letter, in which they were threatening to suspend it if I didn't pay a ticket… I had also forgotten all about the ticket) It wasn't clear that Monday whether I was allowed to drive or not, so I had to hurry down -- by bus and trolley -- to pay it.

I hadn't taken a bus in years and things have really changed for the worse here as far as mass transit goes. They've rerouted the lines, eliminated a lot of them, and the fare is at least double or triple what I remember.

The offices I had to go to are almost an hour away by car. There's a bus to get to downtown, then I have to transfer to a subway train to get the rest of the way. It costs a dollar extra to transfer, which comes off your train fare. Altogether the way in should have cost about 5 dollars, I think. But I made two mistakes with the train part -- got off one too early then got on a wrong one, then had to go backwards. So it costs me more like 8 dollars to get there.

Warning: discussion of public hygiene imminent. Skip down to Hostile Architecture if this will bother you unduly.

I'd never been in one of the subway stations in town. It's concrete and dim and you go down several staircases or escalators to reach the platform. I was looking for a restroom -- but there are none. I went back up to look again, and took the elevator down the 2nd time, which was a bad mistake since they reek so strongly of urine I really, really didn't want to breathe; then the elevator's air circulator started pumping out this air freshener stuff to mask it, which made things worse. It was that like the smell they add to porta-johns, or something like it. Toxic.

When I got out and went to the platform, I sat down on the stone bench to wait. A woman with several children were there too, all eating hamburgers from McDonalds. At my side, the concrete of the bench had this odd wing to it, and on top it was capped with a large, round metal disc. I looked at it and realized there must have been trash receptables built into the bench, but now they were sealed off.

A recording of a woman's pleasant voice, in between announcements of train arrivals, told everyone they should not eat or drink on the train platforms or on the trains. When my train arrived, I looked back and saw the family had left all their trash there on the bench.

What else? Sure, the mother and kids shouldn't have left their trash. That's uncouth. But it was bound to happen. Not only has the city eliminated needed garbage cans in a travelers' waiting area -- a natural place for people to need to toss out stuff -- but the city geniuses who created this station made sure that pee would be a permanent part of the elevators and hallways, by not providing any bathrooms. ( I actually left out the part where I had to run down the street to a McDonalds and buy something so to be granted the privilege of a restroom. What about poor people, homeless people, who can't afford to buy a restroom break; and what about people who can't manage the frantic bathroom search in the downtown area? I guess old or bladder-challenged people are not welcome to travel around town.) It's really inhumane.

And then -- the trains themselves. On two of them, after I boarded and took a seat, I immediately stood up because the urine smell was so strong I suspected it was on or under that particular seat. I moved to another one; same thing. And then I realized it was being circulated with the air conditioning. And then came that powerful, awful air freshener again. What a horrid answer to a sanitation problem.

It took me four hours to get where I was going, since the schedules are difficult to read -- not to mention tiny. I had a magnifying glass with me.

I don't understand why the public doesn't care about the public. Even if the wealthy and fortunate control what's built in a city, don't they want certain things available and convenient (and hygenic) in town? Do they never step out of their limousines when attending some big expensive fundraiser and take a walk -- and then need to find a goddamn bathroom? Has this never happened to them?

Have these wealthy, lucky people never had a cell phone run out of charge and have to find a pay phone? Those are very rare too.

Perhaps some of them take the train, which stops all over the downtown area. Guess what -- it's completely FREE within the central downtown area. How coincidental that all the big law offices, all the courts and big businesses and the political offices are right there and they have this convenient way for their staff to constantly run documents from this building to some office or other. I saw quite a few business guys with folders but no briefcases hopping on the subway. Women in suits with no handbag or purse. They seemed to all be in the middle of work. These seemed to be the ones making most use of the free ride.

The city may not belong entirely to the haves, but it leans towards them. Can we please piss in their limousines?

Okay, now --

Hostile Architecture

You may have run across some of these news stories about areas of London which began adding little features to keep away undesirables. London is a very wealthy city to start with, and these features tended to be in exceptionally ritzy areas.

The Camden Bench. Camden

Camden became famous for having public benches deliberately designed to prevent anyone lying down on them, and when other places installed this type, the name stuck. They might have uneven levels, or armrests put around every seat space. Other benches were made so kids can't easily skateboard off them.

Anti-Homeless Spikes Spikes

More Spikes

These spikes are just medieval. They're more malicious than broken, jagged glass on top of walls and fences. The spikes appeared under bridges, to drive away sleepers. Spikes even appeared on ground-floor window ledges, low walls and stoops -- natural places one might want to stop and sit down.

Another hostile city feature was the use of very high-pitched shrill noise emitted in areas they wanted to drive away teenagers. It's supposed to be irritating to young people like a constant dog whistle would be to dogs, and older adults aren't supposed to be able to hear it. This can really backfire since many 30s, 40s and 50s adults can hear high pitches better than expected.

Anyway, it's good to see that Londoners are protesting the use of these things and many of them have been removed. But when I see this sort of thing, I wonder why the designers, or the wealthy who hire them, are careless about what people might think of to get back at them.