CTA Tattler

Dual diaper dandies

Riding home from work, I spy the ultimate tourist family at the other end of the car: Mom and three kids, ages 10, 6 and 1. First the kids try El surfing, without much luck. Onto the aisle floor they go, laughing. Mom tries to get them to behave, to sit down, but they are too excited about the ride.

They all talk animatedly, especially the 1-year-old, who chatters the entire ride in baby-speak, alternately punctuating his babble with loud SCREAMS.

Finally, Mom gets the idea that maybe his screams are from wet pants. She stood him up on the seat between her legs and grabbed a diaper from her bag. She held the diaper out in front of his crotch, fully extended, as she eased the dirty (not THAT dirty) diaper off his butt. All the while her two other kids paid rapt attention.

As she was about to deftly install the new dy-dee, he let loose with a torrid stream. Uproarious laughter rose from his siblings, as his Mom tried to corral the waterfall. Even the perpetrator started giggling.

As did I.

Meanwhile, yesterday Cheryl noted this diaper discretion:

I sat next to a youngish woman with a baby this morning on the Red Line. She changed the baby's diaper and was so good at it if I had been sitting there I would never have known what she was doing. I didn't see or smell the dirty diaper and it didn't end up on the floor or in someone's lap (which I have seen before). It was impressive indeed!

T-shirt words and PDA cases

Here are two Tattler shorties to get us going today:

I was going home one night after a day game at Wrigley. Four kids in their late teens got on at Addison, all of them wearing long white T-shirts. Soon it became obvious they were sitting next to each other, spelling out words on their shirts to catch a cameraman's eye. It was interesting to see the T-shirt guys out of the context of the ball park.

On the front: D L E E

On the back: 4 M V P

The guy really is having an MVP season.

The next morning, a white-trash-looking guy was wandering through the aisles selling stuff.

"Hey, who needs a Palm Pilot case? $5."

A case? For a Palm Pilot?

Talk about driven to desperation.

Advice for all you CTA "newbies"

Kyra Kyles, the Redeye's new Going Public columnist, today has some advice for all the newcomers who will be crowding trains and buses to get to the Taste of Chicago and other summer city events.

Know where you're going. Don't clump up in the cars. Step away from the doors. Hold onto the railings. Yours truly contributed his own expertise as well.

And you veteran riders out there -- be nice to the newbies. They were you, once upon a time.

So what's your advise?

Therapy-speak -- feelings and YSL sales

Riding the Red Line north at about 8 p.m. the other night, I noticed a college-age couple -- two men -- having an increasingly heated lovers' spat about one of them evidently sabotaging the other's dinner reservations, and consequently "f*cking up the entire evening."

The further north we ride, the louder and more urgent the argument gets. And its full of grating "therapy-speak":

"When you do this, it makes me feel like ...."

"When you say that, what I'm hearing is ...."

The absolute crescendo of this 40-minute-long tit-for-tat occurs when one of them blurts out: "It's not that I think you don't love me. I know you love me. But sometimes I feel like you'd rather go to the Yves St. Laurent sale than be with me!"

A petty, huffy, little exchange followed about who was going to walk whom back to his apartment. And of course, they got off at my stop.

Party/Bacardi weekend on CTA

It was busy weekend for the CTA. Taste of Chicago opened. The Red Line baseball series moved to Cellular Field. The Gay Pride Parade stepped off on Halsted. Northerly Island hosted its first concert.

We boarded the Red Line south at Morse, headed to Belmont, at about 6 p.m. Saturday night. Only two stops from Howard and the train was already nearing capacity. Lots of suburbanites apparently were following good advice to take public transit to all the big weekend events.

It seems like our car was full of gays and lesbians heading to pre-parade parties Saturday night. One 20-something guy was wearing a T-shirt that said: "Get your mind out of the gutter," depicting a sexy woman bowling in full French maid get-up.

He proudly pulled a 1.75 liter bottle of rum out of a cloth bag that was cloaked with a T-shirt saying "Drink responsibly." He told his friend, "This is my baby. Her name is Bacardi."

Sobering death at Bryn Mawr

Another poor soul Saturday decided to leap in front of a train zooming into the station, this time at Bryn Mawr on the Red Line.

Trains were shut down between Addison and Granville for a few hours in the afternoon. Shuttle buses transported riders on their way to the Taste or Gay Pride events or the Cubs-Sox game. Police aren't calling it a suicide. Yet.

I'm just calling it sad.

Full exposure for plant hanger

We were headed southbound on the Red Line, exiting the Wilson station. It's mid-afternoon, and I'm lazily gazing across the tracks at the backs of the new condo homes on that stretch, amazed at all that new construction represented by the ugly concrete blocks.

I spy a guy in his mid-30s reaching up to hang a planter.

In the nude. Totally.

Apparently he caught the eye of a few other passengers, because murmurs swept through the car: "Did you see that?!" "Sheeeittt!" "Damn!"

And I really have to figure that he doesn't care that he was on view for hundreds of people on the train passing by.

With the train so close to the tracks from around Armitage practically all the way north to Howard, y'all must have seen other such unwelcome displays? Or were they? Do tell!

Finally?! Dooms Day cuts averted

The RTA board voted this afternoon to allocate $54.3 million in state money to the CTA, thus avoiding draconian cuts scheduled for July.

The Chicago Tribune reports the RTA board decided to give all the cash to the CTA. There was some speculation that the PACE system would get about 20% of it to help pay for paratransit services it provides.

Instead, the RTA "found" $7.8 million in funds fo PACE  "from the RTA's larger-than-expected 2004 budget surplus and higher-than-projected 2005 sales tax revenues," the Trib says.

(So, the CTA has been begging for months, and it turns out the RTA -- the mother agency -- has extra cash lying around? What's up with that?)

But hold on to your fare cards, Tattler readers: RTA board members are already pushing the CTA to raise fares to at least $2 next year.

Blogger rides an "El marathon"

Thanks to Tom at the Underscorebleach blog for alerting me to this fellow who rode almost every last mile of the CTA El system. (He did it on the weekend when the Skokie Swift is closed.)

Great pictures and stories.

Now why didn't I think of that!

Copernicus calling all cellers

I'm really enjoying all the great comments sparked by my "So what's the big deal with loud cellers?" post yesterday.

You folks are very passionate and insightful on your opinions about CTA cellers. But really, Christine had what I thought was one of the best lines to sum this up (with deep apologies to ChicagoTom):

"Who's that ringing on your cell phone? It's Copernicus calling to tell you that after careful research, it has been found that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you."

Note to self: Lay off the cell phone posts for at least a few days. There's plenty more in my trusty notebook to blog about.