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What's On That Subway Pole? This Time, It's Peanut Butter
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 28, 2020
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Nia Meadows
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 28, 2020
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There are a lot of gross, unsettling things we've seen on the subway (Google "Gothamist subway condom" at your own risk), but it's rare that something is both gross AND a potential health hazard. But in an unnervingly smooth campaign of terror, someone has apparently been spreading peanut butter on subway poles on the A train.
Nia Meadows, 19, was riding the A train from Harlem to Canal Street to go to jury duty this morning around 8:30 a.m. when she encountered the creamy pole. "I put my hand on the pole—I was using my phone absentmindedly, so I wasn't looking around—and I touched something that did not feel like the pole," she told Gothamist. "And I looked up and saw some sort of brown substance on it and on my hand." She sniffed her hand to confirm it was indeed peanut butter, and got worried—because she actually has a nut allergy.
"I probably should have been more panicked, but I really didn't have a response," she said. "I thought, 'I guess I'll just use my EpiPen if I need to.' It was kinda funny, sitting there staring at my hand thinking, 'This would be a really dumb way to go.'" People near her on the train avoided the substance while making snide remarks: "There was a collective disgruntlement. People were not thrilled. It was a very NYC moment."
She ended up going the rest of her commute with the peanut butter all over her hand. "It looked so nasty, and I didn't want to wipe it off on anything in case it wasn't peanut butter, but I also didn't want to spread it—what if someone else with a peanut allergy touched it?" she added. "That was the worst part of it. I thought about asking people around me for Purell, but I didn't want to make a public announcement."
Thankfully, she didn't have an adverse reaction, and wiped the peanut butter off when she got to jury duty.
It turns out that this wasn't the first time in the last week that peanut butter was spotted on the train: Katherine Sullivan, who works at WNYC, also had a nutty encounter when she rode the A train to work around 9 a.m. on January 16th. "There was peanut butter smeared all over the bars on one end of an uptown A train," she said, noting that the train was so crowded "no one could move and it got all over everyone's coats."
"It’s kind of hard to see it on the hand rails, so a lot of people (me included) put their hands in it without realizing," she added. "It’s pretty bad! If someone had an allergy they’d be in big trouble." Someone else who was on the train tweeted this as well:
Then one day later, Business Insider editor Mark Abadi also encountered the sticky stuff during the morning rush hour commute. "I would describe [people's reactions] as a mixture of annoyance, confusion, and 'it's too early to deal with this shit'-style ambivalence," he told Gothamist.
"The train felt slightly more crowded than usual because people had to cram to avoid touching the peanut butter," he said. "During my ride, one unfortunate passenger did walk on the train and grab the upper handrail without looking (and before anyone had time to warn her) — she seemed a little confused and grossed out. Luckily she had a napkin on her to wipe it off."
An MTA spokesperson said they are "looking into" the incidents. If you've had a brush with the peanut butter—or have seen the person who put it there, a.k.a. "the lamest superhero villain of all time"—let us know at [email protected].
Tagged
subway pole
peanut butter
subway etiquette
subway
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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