In New York, of course, a subway strike wouldn’t be allowed to last two days: “In New York, most people take some form of public transportation every day, with a sprinkling of cab rides for times when the subway is inconvenient or running oddly. Here, the private sector rules. In addition to taking ubiquitous Uber cars, San Franciscans rely on ride-sharing services like Lyft, Sidecar, ZimRide, Flywheel, and more. To get to work in Silicon Valley, many of them board luxury buses owned by their tech companies.”
And who are these rich bastards? Well, one of them is named, Kevin Roose:
I’m guilty in supporting the rise of premium, for-profit transportation services. I use them all the time, and I’m generally glad they exist, for times when public transportation falls short or isn’t available. I might even use one to get into San Francisco this afternoon, for a meeting I’m scheduled to have. But if I do, I’ll do it with a tinge of guilt, while thinking of the people who are truly stranded by BART’s shutdown and left out of the private-sector schemes of Silicon Valley disrupters.
Afterwords
I don’t know if it’s safe to extrapolate sociological talking points from TV, but Carrie and her Sex and the City crew never took the subway. “Making it” in New York is defined in part by joining that class of people who never take the tube. But the classism hardly stops there. Beyond those who ride in cabs are those who hire limos (e.g., Charlotte, when she’s not slumming it with the girls) and beyond those are those who have limos (e.g., Big), not to mention those who heliocopt to the Hamptons. The Big Apple ain’t quite so egalitarian as Kev remembers it.
