It’s been a long time – several months – since my last tribute to an extinct and short-lived tumblr. Here’s a new one, this time to pixie-boys (October 2019 – July 2021). I selected a fine collection of 18/25 year-old cuties… The texts – if any – are mine.
The Beijing Subway serves the urban and suburban districts of Beijing municipality. It is the oldest metro system in mainland China with 456 km of tracking operation which makes it the second longest subway system in the world after the Seoul Metropolitan Subway. The subway ranks third in the world in annual ridership after those of Tokyo and Seoul, with 2.46 billion trips delivered in 2012. The average weekday ridership is 8.539 million and single-day ridership record of 10.276 million passengers was set on March 8, 2013.
The Beijing Subway’s flat fare is 2¥ per ride with free transfers on all lines except for the Airport Express.
I mean, it probably goes without saying, but the Found Family trope is so popular because so very many people are so terribly, terribly lonely
I adore the friends I do have immensely but god it would be nice to have like five people living nearby who I could call on for help or to hang out at any given moment
Jesus Christ, when was the last time a swede did anything useful?
What the fuck those streets were before cars, fucking playgrounds and parks with waterslides?
Or did people commute on them, on the level of whatever technology they were on, the vere purpose they were built for since the first city?
I’m trying my best not to automatically dislike artists, I really do, but sometimes I just wish I could send them milking cows or shoveling gravel.
@santaclausdeadindian “What the fuck were those streets before cars, fucking playgrounds?”
Yes, actually.
[description: a black-and-white photo from the 1900s of a group of girls in pinafores standing in the middle of the street; according to the website I found it on, this is a ‘street dance’. The girls are talking to each other in small groups. end description.]
Children used to play in the street all the time. And for most of recorded history, that was relatively safe. Running into someone on foot is not going to kill a child, and horses - let alone carriages- were relatively rare.
Streets used to be public spaces. People would hang out and talk in the middle of the road, or set up shop with a little cart at the side of the road. “Right of way” used to mean “your right to take up space on the street, because you are a free citizen and free citizens get to use the road.”
[description: a black-and-white historical photo of two children in the middle of a mostly empty street. One child is sitting in a wagon, and the other child is standing, ready to pull it. End description.]
It wasn’t until the 19th century that it became common enough for your average joe to own horses that it was unsafe for kids to play in the street (and they still did anyway!). And it wasn’t until the early 20th century that people got cleared off of the street in favour of cars- before then, people and horses and carriages had to share the road, and carriages had to go at the same pace as whatever was around them.
We laugh at the insanely low speed limits of the 1910s and 1920s - really, cars can only go at 3 mph?- but they were there for a reason, and that reason was “to keep the roads safe for horses and pedestrians”. If cars could go at top speeds on city roads, they’d only be safe for cars, and people couldn’t use their public spaces anymore. But thanks to lobbying by the auto industry and a whoooole lot of PR spin, that’s exactly what happened.
I’m going to leave you with two pictures. The first is Mulberry Street in NYC, according to wikipedia, in 1900. The second is Mulberry Street today.
[Description: two photos of city streets. The first photo is sepia-toned, from the 1900s. It shows a city street full of people and carriages. The foreground of the photo is taken up by a group of vegetable sellers, and a group of men and young children standing beside them looking at the camera. The second photo is a modern photo of the same street. It is a heavily decorated tourist district, but most of the street is taken up by cars. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians, but they’re shoved off to the side. End description.]
Little Italy is a touristdistrict. It is meantto be walkable so that tourists can browse and look at all the little restaurants and window-shop. And yet 75% of this picture is taken up by a fucking car canal, and people- the people this street was built for - are shoved off to the side, so as not to get in the way.
People got forced off the road in favour of cars. People got forced out of public space in favour of cars.
There is such uniqueness about taking public transport. You are in this kind of ambulant ephemeral something until you reach your final destination, and you don’t feel the necessity to share anything because let us be honest, isn’t everyone streaming within their heads already?
Sunny bus selfie. Yesterday as I boarded there were already two strollers in the priority zone (there are two on Vancouver buses accommodating one wheelchair user and one stroller at a time - better than most cities).
The bus driver obviously had to ask them to move because wheelchair users have priority (strollers are supposed to be folded up at this point). Of course the ladies didn’t want to remove their toddlers and fold up their strollers so they made it awkward for everyone but the worst part of it was for me - everyone involved referred to ME as ‘the wheelchair’. I am a damn person.
They all also spoke as if I wasn’t even there (which not surprising given that I’m referred to as an object). And here’s the thing - I know it could have been far far worse - in Britain for example there’s a stand off between wheelchair users and parents with pushchairs (strollers) even though the Supreme Court has actually ruled in wheelchair user’s favor (of course! We don’t have a choice in the space we take up and our need for that space is fundamental to our existence in the community).
So, I know it could have been far worse but it just really sucks being spoken about in this way and never TO. The lady decided she could share my space and didn’t even ask me if I was okay with this. Neither of the mothers looked at me once. You know how that makes me feel? Not just that they like to think I don’t exist but that they’d rather I didn’t exist. That I’m an annoying inconvenience in THEIR day, not the other way around.
I had different problems with using the bus before I used a wheelchair and to be honest they were worse but I just implore everyone to think about how you talk about wheelchair users and just address us! Talk to us like any other human being. We are people and we deserve your decency and humanity.
If public transit has million number of fans i am one of them . if public transit has ten fans i am one of them. if public transit have only one fan and that is me . if public transit has no fans, that means i am no more on the earth . if world against the public transit, i am against the world. i love #publictransit till my last breath.. .. Die Hard fan of public transit. Hit Like If you Think public transit Best invention & Smart In the world
