Famous Ankles

The Shuttle is a subway that goes between Grand Central and Times Square.  It’s one of only a very small number of east-west subways in Manhattan.  It just has those two stops.

On a recent day, I was using the shuttle in my quest to get to Greenwich Village and noticed that they are up to their usual “tricks”.  As I walked in the Shuttle Passage to get to the Grand Central stop, I started seeing a toilet paper motiff.  Every few weeks, a company will buy up all of the advertising  spots in the passage.  This time, it was Cottonelle.

No big deal.  Like everyone else, I see their ads on TV and all.  Nothing special here.

But what was a bit different is that they went the whole nine yards and also paid for the remodeling of one of the subway tracks.  You see, there are three separate tracks on the subway and Track 1 has the distinction of using their cars as advertising media.  Not in the sense of the outside, but of the inside.  And we aren’t talking just signs in there (although they do that, too).

We’re talking about the entire walls and doors of the subway.

The walls have been painted/silkscreened to look like a closeup of toilet paper.  Now that’s odd.  It goes all the way down the car’s inside.

The signs themselves take the position of doing sort of an inspirational/humorous view of toilet paper and its uses in modern life.  It’s cute, but ultimately quite juvenile.

And, although I said they went the whole nine yards, they really didn’t.  Sometimes the companies that do this will redecorate the seats, too.  But that might get a little too weird, even for NYC.

-H

This entry was posted on March 27, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Manhattan, Mid-town, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.