Last week I mentioned being disgusted by a scofflaw encouraging a child to lick a sticky sweet on Washington's Metrorail. I was disgusted because everyone learns that, even on Metrobus, there is a very real possibility of attracting literal "bugs in the system." Many parts of the city are overrun with German roaches. People who dsn't want these "friendly" little insects crawling from a sewer right up their legs. in pursuit of the warmth and chemical odor inside their laptops, have fairly intense feelings about the idea of attracting roaches to the public transportation system.
But a glance at an old newspaper I was about to burn reminded me that Metrorail has an additional reason to be vigilant about food and drink on the trains.
Several, actually. Trains move. Crowds jostle. Food and drink spill. Nobody wants to step in other people's snacks, nor do Metrofolks want to scrub it off floors.
Then there's the fact that Washington is full of small restaurants and snack wagons run by nice people who need money, and if you feel a need to eat while you're in the city, you are supposed to pick a local entrepreneur to support. Noshing on packaged snacks is tacky. Everything has been done to attract the tourist's eye to all the nice places to sit down and eat the city offers. If, as it might be because you're on a one-week temporary job that is the first temp job you've had in a month, you do feel obligated to carry your own food around town, for goodness' sakes don't advertise the fact.
But the reason why Metrorail is more vigilant than Metrobus is that Metrorail runs on electricity. Food and its containers are fuel that could easily catch fire.
"In 1987," Richard Garrison of Arlington informed the editor of the City Paper, "31 people died in London's King's Cross underground station in a fire...caused by rubbish beneath wooden escalators being ignited." Metrorail's escalators are not wooden, but the prospect of all those electrical wires catching fire while people are somewhere in the middle of 160 steps is an effective way to suppress any normal appetite.
Metrocops have been somewhat inconsistent about enforcing the law. There's been a tendency to avoid getting involved if top government officials or big-spending tourists violate local laws, while enforcing the laws strictly on private local citizens. While most Metrocops are Black themselves, this still adds up to an unacceptable frequency pf Black youth going to jail for offenses like eating or littering on Metrorail, while older and richer-looking people might be politely ignored or, at worst, required to go to court and pay a $50 fine. So it's very likely that tourists ignore the law, stuff their bloated faces on Metrorail, and go home to tell their friends that city laws are enforced only by dirty looks and an occasional unfriendly comment. The sad truth is that those people probably don't even care that they're participating in a little sociological drama that is elitist, not racist, but is perceived as racist by ghetto youth.
Like it or not, violating the law while rich and pale-complexioned is a way of grinding the faces of the poor into the fact that you are lapping up the benefit of prejudice that works against them. Not that people who think they are entitled to munch, slurp, and dribble in public places care.
They won't care unless they are trapped in an elevator during a fire, and while that's a development all Washingtonians--even the ghetto youth--want to avoid, there would probably be some small compensation in considering that some two-legged swine deserve to be trapped halfway up a 500-foot elevator shaft in a fire.
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