sabotabby | Urban Woefare

There's nothing like a subway breakdown during rush hour to demonstrate the extent of human unhappiness in a city like Toronto. It's frequent—and will get even more frequent as Ford smashes the rotting shell of the TTC to pieces—and it's miserable.

Taking the subway is generally an unpleasant experience to begin with. At 7 in the morning, no one is taking the subway for exciting reasons. If you're conscious at that hour, you're probably going to work, and you're probably not happy about it. Everyone stands in their puffy winter coats with tired, lined faces, hoping against delays and abrupt stops that send you flying. It's either too cold or it's too hot.

Then you hear the announcement. There's some sort of problem. They never tell you what sort of problem it is, just that your subway is not going to make it past Broadview. No one gets off because there are no instructions of any sort. You get off to seek advice from the toll operator, who tells you that you should have taken the subway to Broadview.

So you trudge back downstairs and wait for the next train, this one more crowded than the last. You make it one stop before you hit the problem, and you're shuffled upstairs in a crowd of puffy jackets, hoping someone at the head of the herd knows where the shuttle buses are. You wait outside for the buses. The others, who are probably nice people once you get to know them, immediately devolve into rabid libertarians. It's every man, woman, and child for themselves, clawing and shoving through the mass of bodies. No one really gets hurt because everyone is encased in a bubble of down, but it's still more violent than a hockey game and about as entertaining.

Finally, you get onto a shuttle. You're crammed into the armpit of the person standing behind you, while the person in front of you unwittingly demonstrates what the kids these days call "bubbling." You're a foot shorter than the average height on the bus, so reaching a pole isn't an option. For awhile, you are kept afloat simply by the pressure of armpit on one side and ass on the other, until the bus clears out a little at Yonge. Then you can grab a strap. The bus seizes and jolts along Bloor, every sudden stop attempting to wrench your arm out of its socket.

Half an hour later, you reach St. George. You call and say you're going to be late. Everyone around you is calling and saying that they're going to be late. You hope the person on the other end can hear your voice from within the din.

You wish Rob Ford was here. Instead of you.

Now you've missed all your connections, so it's more waiting outside in the cold for a bus. You swear and are mightily tempted to stomp your foot, but no. You are mature, calm, and patient. You are an experienced Toronto commuter. Drivers outside of the downtown core may have decided that you don't matter, but hey—it's all right.

You have your Metropass, and the moral high ground.