Public transportation in New York is about to get even better and demonstrably worse all at the same time. While the TLC is cutting down on cabbies honking their horns, the MTA is ditching the trash cans in subway stops. Man, this is going to get messy.

HBO finally bought so many ads on the New York City transit system that MTA let them buy an entire car. Coming soon to a 2/3 track near you: A vintage subway car from 1917, with rattan seats, a ceiling fan, and ads for Boardwalk Empire. If you end up on this car you will probably enjoy it a little, but will have to pretend you don't, because you're sick of this mind control ad immersion bullshit, and don't want to be associated with the Instagram obsessives tweeting twee pictures of it. But secretly? Old-timey transit is fun. Admit it, you want to ride in this car.

Yoga is a beautiful, ancient tradition that helpfully reduces stress and probably benefits your internal organs and soul and whatever else people are made out of. Unfortunately, Lululemonheads like these two have ruined it for the next several decades.

Out of all the crazy shit that happens in New York's subways, this might be the most quietly disconcerting: A filthy refrigerator sat on the West 4th Street subway platform for four days.

It's not just passengers that are acting up on the subway. Employees of the MTA are misbehaving as well! Here's footage that a YouTube user (and Bloombergian anti-smoking activist, we're guessing) recorded of a couple of MTA workers smoking inside the Christopher Street 1 Train station on Sunday morning. Are you totally outraged yet? Is the smell of smoke better or worse than the usual subway odor of urine and feces? We're just grateful that these guys didn't follow in the footsteps of these people and strip off all their clothes.

This video was uploaded to YouTube earlier today. And if I had to venture a guess, it looks like one young woman decided to beat the record-setting New York City heat by riding a Manhattan-bound D train completely naked from the waist down. No, it's not the most polite thing to do on the subway. But on a sweltering day like today, can you really blame her?

This might provide some clues as to why no one in New York is riding the bus anymore. Asked by a driver to not use her iPhone's speakers to play her music, the woman unleashed an extremely loud, hateful, and profanity-filled tirade ("You need to shut the f*ck up and drive your bus, you miserable old f*cking man!...You f*cking honky!"), which was captured on video by another, pissed-off rider. iPhones fighting iPhones!

From the Products We Don't Need file comes Metro Mitt, a little plastic bag for you to put over your hands while holding the pole in the subway. It's supposed to make your commute more sanitary. God, this thing is stupid.

William Hattar was riding the subway this morning and the doors made a different and really cool song when closing. Have a listen. Hey MTA, can we adopt "Doors Closing: Extended Dance Remix" as the official song of subway doors?

[A crew shovels off the Q train track in Coney Island today. Plenty of New Yorkers are pissed that two days after the snow started their roads haven't been plowed and public transport is a mess. Image via AP]

A 31-year-old Brooklynite stabbed his mother to death and slashed his father before running to Windsor Terrace's G-train station and throwing himself into the rails, to the horror of commuters.

Yesterday an MTA officer was placing her gun in a weapon's locker and accidentally set it off. The bullet ricocheted and hit another officer in the gut. The cop is alright, but will never enter a locker room again.

NYC subways: even crappier this year than last year. Well, surely the fare hikes will change that.

The woman who records the announcements for New York's subway system has never ridden the subway

It took the runners hours to finish, but thanks to this MTA time-lapse video, you can watch the joggers in yesterday's NYC Marathon begin the race by crossing the Verrazano bridge in no time at all. Participation is overrated anyway.

The Way We Live Now: riding dirty. Clocking dollars. Unretiring, training for the worst, and calling off Christmas. It's been one of those kinds of eons, hasn't it?

New Yorkers, the price of your Metrocard just went up 17%.

Looks like NYC subway stations are getting cell phone service earlier than expected: Six stations—Along 14th St., and at 23rd St. and 8th Ave.—should be wired by the end of 2011. It will be both convenient and annoying.

The MTA is redesigning its service advisory posters to give NYC subway riders a clearer idea of which lines are fucked. But they're refusing calls to cut off those ceaseless shrieking emergency-exit gate alarms. Don't want to improve too much!

Legendary train thief Darius McCollum was arrested yesterday for stealing a Trailways passenger bus from Hoboken, New Jersey, and driving it to Queens, saying afterward, "I'll bet they won't leave the keys in the ignition." It was his 27th arrest.