Subway Stories

The New York City Subway's metro card kiosks have a newfangled way to "fight" credit card fraud (because so many people who steal other people's credit card numbers decide to rack up rides on public transportation, rather than say, visiting Best Buy to get a Plasma or something). Now when one goes to purchase a metro card with a credit card you have to punch in your billing zip code. This is traumatic for people with Howard Hughes-like tendencies like myself because it means having to touch additional buttons at the kiosk itself, but if that weren't bad enough at the 1/9 kiosk at Penn Station some joker decided it would be comical to cover the number "4" on the key pad with superglue. Maybe an ex boyfriend or girlfriend lives in the Meatpacking district and they were trying to send a message, maybe they thought, "how many people out there really have a "4" in their zip code?" Like it isn't bad enough that I'm having to take the subway as it is, and I'm having to touch the screen and all the creepy buttons, but then, there I am, trying to push the damn number "4" to no avail. Speaking as someone from 08540, for anybody else out there who wants to get cute, and if you want to be really effective in Manhattan, try for the Number "1".