This is the final (hopefully) installment of this straphanger's report from the city pavements, so I'm gonna make this wrap-up nice and neat. Okay, I understand that the media has a job to do in covering this bloodless morsel of headlines, but it would be nice if I could navigate through City Hall without the ABC/CBS/NBC/Faux News crews clubbing me in the back with their tripods and camera equipment to keep up with the foot patrol and the Associated Press snapping flicks of oncomers (meaning me) wiping away a booger or struggling with excess baggage. In the eloquent words of that poet laureate Ludacris, move bitch, get out the way!

Chaos in Gotham wouldn't be complete without the rest of the country taking potshots at the avalanche of media coverage surrounding this fiasco. An annoyed reader of the Public Eye sniped:

"All of the network newscasts tonight prominently featured the transit strike. One network had it as the top story. Is there some East Coast bias here? The vast majority of the country is not affected by, and is not particularly interested in, a transit strike in New York City."

Hm. Let's see...with City Comptroller William Thompson estimating the cost to New York's economy at $400 million the first day and $300 million for each subsequent weekday the transit workers are out, NYC being a $450 billion economy on its own and the entire metro area boosting that figure to an eye-popping $808 billion and being the international crossroads of finances, I'd think twice about not pulling your head out of your ass to recognize that this doesn't let the air out of our parcity alone, but on a national scale as well. Let that one marinate, hick boy.