Today, to our collective horror, the Tube is anything but a distraction from reality. Today, the links in the post are to tragedy and mass murder, and "we are all Londoners now." But Londoners' famous resilience has already begun to kick in, and the Underground is gearing up to restart service. So perhaps it's not too early to celebrate the Tube's lively and somewhat endearing centrality to London's life, past and future.
originallly posted 2-12-05
About those things you find on the web that you didn't know you needed/wanted until you find them... OK, it's the weekend. And I'm not sure I can get all the way up for "good news Saturdays" or other kinder, gentler fare. Maybe I should call it "funky Fridays" but that would require an adherence to punctuality I've already violated.
Nonetheless, couldn't we all stand a bit of change of pace with no political angle after all the surreality coming out of the WH gaggle this week. And I need to replenish my batteries before I face the sturm und drang eminating from the "muscular democracy" theologians of the right hemisphere of PlanetBlog.
So here's a blog devoted to all things London Tube.
Underground mass transit, especially its aesthetics and technology, is not a new subject of inquiry at chez Nadezhda. Back in late October, when praktike was feeling especailly burned out on politics, he took a look at New York City's subterranean celebrations. [There's probably some sort of subtext about heading below-ground when we've had it with the blogsphere's insanity levels.]
The Going Underground blog has a bit edgier, urban attitude that's not exactly what you'd think of as a "trainspotters" sort of site. It's the companion blog to the website goingunderground devoted exclusively since 1999 to, you guessed it...
Check out the section of the website devoted to the drivers including some favorites from public announcements. You can even hear the audio of one of my favorites, as described by the webmaster as:
a really, really, TOP London Underground driver who was clearly either on drugs, or delirously happy, or both. It's a classic, he talks about people singing along with buskers, getting someone who's come on the train with an ironing board to do the ironing, and how every man on the carriage should stand up for any Mum as it's Mother's Day tomorrow.The site also records the driver's response, which was to assure the riding public he wasn't high on anything, that's just his natural ebullience.
Then there's the section on "Ghosts, ghouls and other wierdos on the Tube." Reading on the Tube is a highly developed skill in the art of self-defense in public spaces, but you can also find plenty of reading about the Tube at this page on Tube lit. Or this amazon.com.uk page for One Stop Short of Barking, with its additional Tube-related reading selections, especially some of the photo books. If you have a taste for combining your ghosts with architecture, Abandoned Stations on London's Underground may whet your appetite. And you can add to your history lesson with What's In a Name, which explains the origins of station names on the system.
You can get going-underground.net goodies from cafepress.com with T-shirts motto-ed, what else, "mind the gap". [I wonder how many national security-types who click on the portion of the chez Nadezhda sidebar blogroll under the category "minding the gap" recognize the Tube reference, not just the Thomas Barnett one.] Since we didn't win the Satin Pajamas award, I'm going to have to spring for my own sleepwear -- and the boxer shorts look just the thing!
Cafepress offers more than just merchandise -- it takes you to an article at Suite University (online learing site) that gives a brief history of the famous phrase. And for those of you who can't get enough of reading about "mind the gap," you can hear it as well -- Richard's sound effects recordings (apparently an "audio" trainspotter) has captured the "mind the gap" announcement, sandwiched within a nice assortment of train arrival, brakes, doors and other Tube-sounds from a stop on the Bakerloo line. He's also got a recording of a "Sonia" public announcment -- a digitized "posh" voice the staff declared so annoying "it getS ON YA nerves."
The Tube's not just an underground space. It offers its own "map of the world," a way of conceptualizing above-ground geography, a kind of virtual space that links the totally different topographies of the subterranean and surface. Look at the difference between this pocketmap of the Tube from 1927:
with the first diagrammatic map of the Underground from 1933.
I learned London as a "temporary audio typist" (don't ask!) for a summer in the early 70s. I spent the first week combing the near-in downmarket residential areas for a coldwater flat to rent, and each week I would get a new assignment that would take me to a company in another area of London. All of that was done by Tube, and all with a diagrammatic map based on the original classic. Needless to say, my mental picture of London is dominated by the Tube diagram, even though I know full well the actual surface streets and parks and landmarks don't in fact resemble the diagram closely at all.
Today, if you want to explore the London segment of the blogosphere, there's London Bloggers, the London weblog directory -- 1632 registered blogs and counting -- organized by, what else, the Tube map.
But back to the Tube itself. Not everything about the London Tube is sui generis -- it shares a number of features with other underground mass transit systems. For example, subway riders around the globe could benefit from some of the "etiquette rules" Although, certain techniques for addressing violations of etiquette might work better in some cultures than others.
I once heard a tube story of a woman who was being groped by a man in a crowded tube. She picked up his hand from her rear end, held it in the air and loudly said "Does this belong to anyone, as it seems to be attached to my bottom?" The man went purple with embarrassment and slunk off the tube at the next stop.Apparently this comes in handy when someone takes a bit too enthusiastically a driver announcement encouraging a crowd on a northbound Victoria line train:
"Move right down inside please - it's a Friday afternoon, the weekend has just started, and we all would like to get home. Please move inside the carriages so everyone can board the train. I know it is a bit squashy, but you never know, you might make a new friend to spend the weekend with. Mind the closing doors, please".And don't forget to mind the gap!
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Art posters -- Underground Art: London Transport Posters 1908 to the Present by Oliver Green
Maps from London's Transport Museum
Pocket Underground Map, 1927, designed by FH Stingemore
Henry Beck's first diagrammatic Underground map , 1933
London Underground map download for desktops