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September 20, 2012
Red and green messages from the subway globes
2nd Ave. Sagas
by Benjamin Kabak
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As I took a walk around the outside of the new Atlantic Ave.-Barclays Center subway entrance on Monday afternoon, I chuckled to myself when I spotted a free-standing pole with a green globe on top of it. The subway globe strikes me as an iconic part of the subway system, albeit one that isn’t very old, and the globes themselves are supposed to broadcast a message to the public. These days, based on emails and Twitter comments I’ve received, no one really knows what they mean.
I’ve always associated the globes with the subway system and for good reason. Once upon a time, the globes were simply white with the word “subway” written through them. The color system in place today with red and green globes made their New York City debuts, so to speak, at around the same time I did. The MTA installed the globes in 1982, about a year before I arrived on the scene, and they were introduced as a safety measure.
NoLandGrab: You'll have to click the link for the answer, but here's our guess — the green represents all the corporate welfare that enabled the building of the Barclays Center, and the red represents all the red ink that the taxpayers are stuck with.
Posted by eric at September 20, 2012 10:48 AM