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xiphiasSo, I've now taken the Orange Line -- the line that the MBTA is being hyper-vigilant about -- several times, and I have a few observations.
Number one:
Terry Gilliam called. He wants his costumes from Brazil back.
I mean, seriously. Whose idea was it to dress these people in uniforms that look EXACTLY like the uniform of a fascist police state officer from every single dystopian future science fiction movie I've ever seen?
Other than that. . .
North Station is directly under the Fleet Center, where the DNC is. Because of that, they've totally closed down North Station, which is a Major Pain In The Butt, but, okay, whatever. The train just goes through North Station without stopping.
The station north of it is Community College, south, Haymarket.
On the station before you'd go through North Station, they stop the train for a couple minutes, and one of these black-fatigues-clad MBTA police officers walks through each train car, looking in every bag of significant size.
I've been through this four times now, and was reasonably comfortable with how it was done three of those times -- I held the bag open, the officer glanced in and noticed a significant lack of dynamite, and moved on. One time, however, the officer kind of pawed through it, looking underneath things, which I was under the impression they were not to do.
I am not comfortable with this being done on an ongoing basis, but if it stops after the DNC is over and North Station is re-opened, then I don't see it as unreasonable enough to worry about.
Oh -- also -- let me say for the record that I think that a city may EITHER tell everyone that they are in danger from terrorists who want to blow the city up and institute rather invasive and annoying measures to attempt to combat the putative terrorists OR may have fireworks displays without telling people first, BUT NOT BOTH.
Okay? Just. . . don't. It's not really fair. The first explosion, I was worried. Second, still worried. Third, okay, I figured it was probably not a terrorist attack, because that seemed like a bit more than I thought they could manage, but I did look for a police car, and when I saw that it didn't have its lights on, I figured there wasn't any emergency.
Still. . . fireworks and bomb threats don't mix, m'kay?
Number one:
Terry Gilliam called. He wants his costumes from Brazil back.
I mean, seriously. Whose idea was it to dress these people in uniforms that look EXACTLY like the uniform of a fascist police state officer from every single dystopian future science fiction movie I've ever seen?
Other than that. . .
North Station is directly under the Fleet Center, where the DNC is. Because of that, they've totally closed down North Station, which is a Major Pain In The Butt, but, okay, whatever. The train just goes through North Station without stopping.
The station north of it is Community College, south, Haymarket.
On the station before you'd go through North Station, they stop the train for a couple minutes, and one of these black-fatigues-clad MBTA police officers walks through each train car, looking in every bag of significant size.
I've been through this four times now, and was reasonably comfortable with how it was done three of those times -- I held the bag open, the officer glanced in and noticed a significant lack of dynamite, and moved on. One time, however, the officer kind of pawed through it, looking underneath things, which I was under the impression they were not to do.
I am not comfortable with this being done on an ongoing basis, but if it stops after the DNC is over and North Station is re-opened, then I don't see it as unreasonable enough to worry about.
Oh -- also -- let me say for the record that I think that a city may EITHER tell everyone that they are in danger from terrorists who want to blow the city up and institute rather invasive and annoying measures to attempt to combat the putative terrorists OR may have fireworks displays without telling people first, BUT NOT BOTH.
Okay? Just. . . don't. It's not really fair. The first explosion, I was worried. Second, still worried. Third, okay, I figured it was probably not a terrorist attack, because that seemed like a bit more than I thought they could manage, but I did look for a police car, and when I saw that it didn't have its lights on, I figured there wasn't any emergency.
Still. . . fireworks and bomb threats don't mix, m'kay?