A stray kitten, who was immediately adopted, became an internet sensation after boarding a New York City subway train last week. (awwwww!)

Emmie -- an ode to the MTA -- is now a Harlem resident after a subway rider, who initially whisked the kitten to safety, decided to keep the two-month-old feline.

The kitten had quietly boarded the subway train and had been going from person to person in adorable kitten fashion, meowing as if looking for her mother or needing help from someone for food and safety. 

Yes, there were other commuters who offered to take her, but subway patron Betsaida Mercado swooped the tiny bundle up into her arms and headed back home.

Maybe the two were meant to be together; the next day Mercado took Emmie to the vet, and the kitten had not been microchipped, making her ready to be adopted.

Since then Mercado set up a fundraiser to help her with the veterinarian fees and closed the funding at $3,000, so grateful to everyone who helped, but stated all that money wasn’t needed. Instead she plans to donate most of the money to a few animal shelters in Manhattan.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/stray-kitten-joins-rat-race-aboard-new-york/story?id=124305138

https://petrescuereport.com/2025/stray-kitten-ran-onto-nyc-subway-endearing-internet-adopted-by-commuter/

a marvelous use of vacant subway booth inside Grand Army Plaza station in Brooklyn, artists Akiva Leffert and Sarah Cassidy have crafted a magnificent humorous bodega display of puns, Rex's Dino Store!

I get such a kick out of the imagination, innovation, and humor! Plus, it's a terrific way to put vacant space to good use, let artists take it over! 

Not those nimrods with welded I beams in "modern" art installations of "abstract art" bullshit, but cool stuff like this that inspires others to enjoy the day, life a fun life, and appreciate imagination

Featuring gag items you can purchase with a MasterClaw credit card, like Alka-Saurus, Snarlboro cigs, Trillo-bites, 3 Tusketeers and Buttertalon, Dur-Rex Ultra Ribbed, Meteoritos, MuciRex night and day Brontochitis, and copies of the The Pangaea Times and Maul Street Journal, and a bulletin board listing cave sublets.

The exhibit is part of the MTA’s Vacant Unit Activation Program, launched in 2023, which aims to fill underutilized spaces in the subway system with non-traditional uses to make stations more welcoming and vibrant for riders from the currently defunct 30 + retail spaces found in the subway.

When the subway opened in 1904, the founders declared that it constituted “a great public work” and that all parts of it “exposed to public sight shall therefore be designed, constructed, and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance.”

If you are a nonprofit, community, or arts organization and would be interested in operating a unit, reach out to mtare@mtahq.org

  

A better video at  https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ-HhzoKN18

via the constantly delightful, and ever surprising Atlas Obscura  https://www.atlasobscura.com/

If you have suggestions on more fun stuff they can create and add, or want to contact Rex by email Rex@Rexs.NYC  or sliding into his DMs on https://www.instagram.com/rexs_nyc/ or   https://rexs.nyc/

This took about a year, "We hired a contractor to do the protective glass in the front, which was its own whole saga. The contractor had to get approved by the MTA and that took a month because there's a lot of approvals. We've got our contacts at the MTA, but they have to get approval from different departments, so it's a whole journey. We worked on it for over a year, but there were parts of the process that were mostly just waiting for something to happen. Which gave us time to come up with more products!"

https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2025/05/14/dinosaur-themed-art-exhibit-opens-in-subway-station/

https://pix11.com/things-to-do/dinosaur-themed-store-opens-at-brooklyn-train-station/

https://nygroove.nyc/grand-army-plaza-dinosaur-bodega/

a new subway system in Thessaloniki, (2nd largest city in Greece) has unveiled thousands of ancient artifacts, many of which have been incorporated into the metro station's design in a unique way.

Ancient finds that were discovered varied from Roman-era roads and water and drainage systems to Greek burial sites, mosaics and more.

Many of the ancient discoveries made through excavations of the area are being incorporated into the design of the subway system by being displayed at the 13 underground stations along the route.

Thessaloniki’s much-anticipated metro system took nearly two decades to complete, delayed by funding challenges during the financial crisis that plunged Greece into debt default and depression, and by the tension between preserving antiquities and advancing modern urban transport in a city with a metropolitan area of more than a million inhabitants.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/new-subway-system-greece-puts-archaeological-finds-discovered-during-construction-display-passengers

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2024/12/06/new-greek-subway-station-doubles-as-dazzling-museum-of-ancient-relics/

https://apnews.com/article/greece-thessaloniki-subway-metro-archaeology-7d3354fc6c08824825cd666fa708acb9

smoke caused by an electrical fault on line 5 of the Madrid metro caused panic among hundreds of passengers on a subway stopped in Madrid, on the 20th anniversary of the 11-M attacks, and the passengers could NOT get out, the doors wouldn't open

Apparently, the underside of a carriage had overheated, causing smoke to come out. Faced with this situation, metro staff were forced to manually open the convoy doors from the outside.

https://www.usanews.net/breaking/tension-in-the-evacuation-of-a-metro-station-in-madrid-due-to-smoke-from-h140640.html

a 20-inch water main used since 1896, broke in Times Square, and located directly over the subway system, suspending subway service at the Times Sq subway station, and shutting down affected city streets for the day

The water main located 10 to 15 feet below street level burst at 3 a.m. on Seventh Avenue, near Times Square, flooded streets and sent water cascading into the subway system, shutting down several Midtown intersections and temporarily suspending subway service in the area.

As crews work to excavate and repair the broken water system, roads remain closed on Seventh Avenue, between West 42nd and West 39th streets, and on West 40th Street between Eighth and Sixth avenues. Officials said they expect them to remain closed throughout the day.

The flooding forced the MTA to partially suspend subway service on the 1 and 3 train lines and reroute 2 trains. Just before 11 a.m., the agency said all three lines were up and running, though with extensive delays.

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/08/29/water-main-breaks-closes-streets-in-midtown--disrupts-subway-service

It was about a decade ago that it seemed every month a century old water main was breaking and causing flooding and damage to California cities, I guess it's not news that the cities can't afford to do inspections, maintenance, or replacement based on age and statistical data that shows how likely they are to not continue to function. But the insurance companies are analyzing every iota of data about driving, to ram in higher costs to customers. 

Makes me wonder, why aren't these millions of dollar events like this, worth the same focused analytics, and prevention, in cities that can afford to run emergency crews to cope with breaks, on over time, at union scale? 

the shells of 200 New York subway cars were sunk on the Florida coast in an experiment to provide new habitat for marine life. It worked pretty well evidently

https://www.postandcourier.com/environment/20-years-ago-sc-reef-system-added-nyc-subway-cars-today-sea-life-passengers-thrive/article_db26a94c-2a48-11ee-8d65-c7dde08cb827.html

It cost roughly $837 million to build a new subway station on 96th Street and Second Avenue in New York City.

 8 to 12 times more expensive than Italy, Istanbul, Sweden... compared to low-cost Helsinki and Spain, and compared to medium-cost Paris and Berlin

labor is 40-60% of the project’s hard costs, a lack of design standardization leads to fewer economies of scale, New York’s subway station construction methods, by themselves, led station costs to triple through overbuilding, and unions profiting from graft cause redundancy in blue-collar labor, as did overstaffing of white-collar labor in New York due to general inefficiency as well as interagency conflict

Numerous cost drivers have been identified that stem from procurement norms in the United States. 

These include a pervasive culture of secrecy and adversarialism between agencies and contractors, a lack of internal capacity at agencies to manage contractors, insufficient competition, and a desire to privatize risk that leads private contractors to bid higher. 

Overall, this raises costs by a factor of 1.85, with the extra money going to red tape, wasted contingencies, paying workers during delays, and defensive design.

 Moreover, many ongoing reforms hailed as steps forward, at best do nothing and at worst are actively raising costs; these reforms all aim to privatize risk and have been popular throughout the English-speaking world, and while consultants, managers, and large contractors like them, costs grow sharply wherever they are implemented.

Soft costs include design, planning, force account, insurance, construction management, and contingencies. Nonetheless, those add 5-10% on top of the hard contract costs. 

But in the Second Avenue Subway, it was 21%.

https://transitcosts.com/wp-content/uploads/TCP_Final_Report.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184420745/why-building-public-transit-in-the-us-costs-so-much

Pizza Hut is testing “Underground Deliveries” for a limited time in New York City subways

Pizza Hut and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, Mutant Mayhem, are teaming up, for pizza and superhero fans around the city.

In honor of the upcoming film debuting in theatres this summer on August 2, Pizza Hut is reaching new depths, testing “Underground Deliveries” for a limited time in New York City.

If you’re not yet a major fan of the Ninja Turtles (you should be), know that these mutant heroic reptiles live in an abandoned subway station, and like all New Yorkers, love pizza. Pizza Hut is letting fans feel like a Ninja Turtle (no weird shell required) by enjoying subway pizza delivery.

 

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/you-can-get-pizza-delivered-on-the-subway-this-summer-062123

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pizza-hut-tests-underground-deliveries-to-celebrate-the-upcoming-release-of-the-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-mutant-mayhem-movie-301856182.html

subway station musicians doing a cool duet

 

1945 subway car used until the late 1980s, that's been restored and is in the Rockhill Trolley Museum, Pennsylvania was part of a New Jersey city scam, as what else have NJ politicians ever done?

the president of TCRT, as well as another company official and the owner of a local scrap firm all were later convicted in federal court on fraud and associated charges related to the rapid dismantling of the TCRT streetcar system, in order to replace streetcars with buses. 

New management took over TCRT in 1949, and was successful in finding buyers for its virtually new PCCs, selling the cars at bargain prices. 

Mexico City took the lion’s share, while Cleveland’s Shaker Heights Rapid Transit bought 20. Public Service Coordinated Transport, predecessor of New Jersey Transit, bought 30 cars for the Newark City Subway.

https://rockhilltrolley.org/new-jersey-transit-pcc-car-6/

https://tramsstophere.wordpress.com/page/4/

https://www.lhry.org/fundedprojects

Buitoni turned the New York 14th Street subway stop into a pasta Art Exhibition

 

https://ericaswallow.com/2009/06/08/buitoni-turns-14th-street-subway-stop-into-pasta-art-exhibition-3/ in the next post, about the artist Seneca, I finish the post with the poster art Buitoni, who is now owned by Nestle

Buitoni began in 1827 when Giovan Battista Buitoni and his wife Giulia Boninsegni opened a small shop in Sansepolcro. It was their great-grandson Giovanni who was largely responsible for establishing the family name as one of the worlds leading pasta manufacturers.

In 1909 at the age of 18, he took over general management of Perugina, a chocolate company which was co-founded by his father a few years earlier. He continued to work for the family businesses and in 1938 he became CEO of both the Perugina and the Buitoni companies.

 The following year he and his wife, opera singer Letizia Cairone were invited to the United States by Hershey’s. Whilst they were abroad, Italy entered World War II, thus preventing their return home.

In response to this change in circumstances they established the Buitoni Foods Corporation, which eventually grew to incorporate factories in Brooklyn and Jersey City, a spaghetti restaurant in Times Square, and a Perugina shop on 5th Avenue.

https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/books-al-dente/

Damon Scott at 86th street, wow, train station music is a daily experience for some people, that the rest of us can only find on youtube. Compliments to Damon! Proof that you never know who you're going to meet, or what they've accomplished

next is short documentary he did, skip to 1:15 for the narrative

His mom is the Earth Wind and Fire vocalist Sherry Scott, I bet you didn't expect that!

fwiw, one of my favorite pieces of instrumental music is from another train station group, Too Many Zoos who played at Union Station https://youtu.be/JD8ZO5P9yzQ

so teach your kids music, so they will never ever go hungry. They'll always be able to work and earn a living with nothing more than music. 

For other cool stuff, click on my tab "street entertainment" 

Twenty years after he swiped the NYC A train for a three-hour joyride — which included making all stops for hundreds of passengers along the way — Keron Thomas still doesn't like to brag. Even though he pulled off the wild heist at just 16 years old.

"I never did it for fame," Thomas told the Daily News. "It's not something that I'm proud of, but I don't want people to get the wrong impression. ... I just wanted to drive a train."

Thomas said his May 8, 1993, stunt stemmed simply from his affinity for subway trains and how they work. He spent months reading books and operating manuals about the city's subways to "learn the tricks of the trade," Thomas said.

On a Saturday afternoon Thomas, posing as a motorman he'd befriended to learn more about the job, called a Transit Authority crew office and left his home number to sign up for any available overtime shifts.

A short time later, his phone rang and Thomas was told to report for duty at the 207th St. station in Inwood. Wearing his motorman shirt, he walked in carrying all the proper operator equipment: safety vest, brake handle and a reverser key.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/man-posed-train-operator-reflects-teen-thrill-article-1.1335852

made by the Grueby Faience Company in 1904, who made vases and lamp bases for Tiffany Studios

The large “Bleecker Street” plaques were assembled from 27 pieces of faience ceramic. They depict poppies. 

Philip Ashforth Coppola art, which inspired this post, from when I posted about his project to memorialize the NYC subway system art http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/12/there-are-472-new-york-subway-stations.html

https://tilesinnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/08/subway-tiles-part-ii-heins-and-lafarge.html

https://medium.com/@jrramsayiv/the-b-of-the-bleecker-street-manhattan-subway-station-aa59cdd0ae50

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/bleecker-street-subway-station/

impressive. Trains through apartment type buildings... sure does looking interesting

https://ogdaa.blogspot.com/2020/08/wednesday-gifdump_26.html#more

For the first time in its 115 year history, New York City deliberately shut down its entire subway system, to deep clean every subway car

The cleanings will be done on a nightly basis, from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. When the cleaning is done, every single subway car will be disinfected.

My question, is why did they wait until now?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/us/new-york-subway-closed-history-trnd/index.html

the right way to cheer up the commute, and the right guy to do it

I'd like to think I'm doing pretty good, but this guy crushes it!

I am pretty sure that tomorrow you will go to the scrapbook and crafts supply store tomorrow and get a pair of googly eyes...

https://itsfunnytomemke.tumblr.com/post/182356710947#notes

New Yorkers know that the MTA has a monopoly on public transport, they keep raising the price then claim they’re making things better but it’s not

it’s the municipal government using taxpayer money to pay for police time to enforce an arbitrary rate hike by a state-licensed monopoly basically immune from voter/consumer input set up to run a transportation system built by taxpayer money.

https://theysaiditwillbefun.tumblr.com/post/188276824537/capitalism-is-trash

this is so weird... have you ever seen or heard of that before? A drunk 31 year old from Fröndenberg blocked the underground traffic in Dortmund for hours. Thanks Shas!

The recovery of the vehicle was extremely difficult, as the area for the recovery vehicles was difficult to reach. For five hours all rail traffic was rerouted.

About 3000 euros of damage to the car occurred.

https://www.derwesten.de/staedte/dortmund/sued/betrunkener-faehrt-mit-auto-in-u-bahn-schacht-in-dortmund-id10405382.html
https://theinturnetexplorer.tumblr.com/post/138555764640/is-this-not-the-highway#notes