It's not even that people are in the way though, some of them just look at you passing like you're bothering them by, you know, moving past them.

Mos def. I get that look a lot.

I have come to adore the weird looks I get when I take the stairs instead of the escalator. You'd think I was walking up the stairs with a hat made of half donkey, half terracotta.

The two things that I wish people visiting DC would learn on the Metro is "stand right, walk left" and "Don't stand in the doorways." I have seen a school group get into a metro car, the teacher told them all to stay right with her right by the door (even though there were STILL PEOPLE BOARDING), stay right by the door for six stops during rush hour, then exit at Metro Center and have them all wait directly outside the train door until they'd all left the train, and then complain about how people in the city are so rude and pushy.

Once, when I offered to help some lost tourists, they told me that I was so much nicer than what they expected in a city like DC. I told them I was from NYC and that was where I learned my manners. (Really, although I know it was nice and polite to help lost people, the main reason I did it in that case was because they were standing somewhere that made them block two escalators and a several streams of traffic. I was being nice to them, but I was being nicer to my fellow DCers.)

On days with evening Cubs games, the CTA Red Line often gets tons of people riding it to the game who don't normally take the train. So you see big groups of baseball folks standing in the train near the doors so others can't get in. And once I got into a shoving match with a woman who was pushing her way onto the train before those of us leaving the train had gotten off.

Oh, did I mention that people going to Cubs games are often already drunk on the train? Once a drunk woman screamed and laughed when the door she was leaning against opened and she almost fell out.

Oh!! Can anyone tell me what the hell happened to Tomato Nation??

Oh!! Can anyone tell me what the hell happened to Tomato Nation??

Mysteriously disappeared during the Great Ketchup Shortage of Ought Six?

She was up on Friday, so I'm assuming server issues.

On days with evening Cubs games, the CTA Red Line often gets tons of people riding it to the game who don't normally take the train.

HATE. Once upon a time, I was unfamiliar with public transportation, so I am often very forgiving of people who are clueless. But game days make taking the Red Line so goddamn miserable. The jocularity, drunkeness, and entitlement make me so angry.

Oh how I wish it were universally known that one should stand on the right and allow walkers to pass on the left.

Well, I mutter it outloud every opportunity I get these days, so at least I'm doing my part.

On days with evening Cubs games, the CTA Red Line often gets tons of people riding it to the game who don't normally take the train.

Ugh. A friend was coming over last night and ended up getting off the train, walking a mile and taking two buses as soon as she realized it was a game day.

The NY subway has never made as much sense to me as I was sure it should have.

I found myself a bit confused the last time I had to take the subway in New York. A lot had changed in the three years I'd been gone.

I don't mind the Salem tourism for all months that do NOT rhyme with "Shocktober." The Halloween stuff is just *so* overwhelming and in a very area, it really, really impacts daily life (mostly weekends.)

I don't mind the summertime tourism because summertime kind of makes me a tourist in my own town, in that "gee, what a cool place this is!" way. Though, this year, I've discovered that tour guides are huckstering much more aggressively and it makes me uncomfortable on Essex Street.