Just That Much Closer to Hell

Every day I, like thousands of people who live in or near Boston, descend into the tunnels belows the old town and commute on what we call the T. Driving a car up on the surface is inefficient, wasteful, and expensive. The T is certainly the best alternative, even if it is often uncomfortable, unpleasant, crowded, dirty, loud, smelly, ugly, vulgar, unreliable, and generally awful. Still, we all know it could be worse.

This week it got worse. T-Radio was launched and is now annoying people at three busy stations. One of those stations is a place that I pass though every day.

I'm thinking of all the time I've stood on that platform, waiting (and waiting, and waiting . . .) for my train. I've stood, listening to the water dripping around me, smelling the occasional backup of sewage in the tunnel, contemplating the odd pattern of stains on the floor, while watching little rodents frisking about the tracks below me, and never once thought that my overall experience could be improved by insipid pop music, hip-hop, Latin hits, commercials, and lame chatter from pathetic local "celebrities."

Such is my lack of vision. Have you ever been commuting, stuck on a train or platform or some other public place where you have no control of your environment, when some jackass walks in carrying a boombox? The jackass is playing music you don't want to hear, or a radio program you'd really rather miss, but too bad, his bad taste is now your problem. What I saw as an annoying intrusion the T saw as something to institutionalize as a potential source of revenue.

If this sort of thing had gone on in Charlie's day he would have thrown himself onto the third rail. An increasingly attractive prospect.