If Dante had been a New Yorker with a beef against germaphobes, you can bet what their circle of hell would have involved: subway token sucking. Before MetroCards made their debut in 2003, the city used tokens. As is the habit of criminals, it wasn't long before they found a way to jack the system. Criminals would carefully jam the subway token slot with a matchbook or gum wrapper and wait for a rider to plunk a token down. The rider would bang against the locked turnstile and end up walking away in frustration. Then, from the shadows, the token sucker would appear like a vampire, quickly sealing his lips over the token slot, inhaling powerfully, and producing his prize: a $1.50 token. Even among police officers, who had seen it all, it was considered the most disgusting nonviolent crime ever. Some inhalers were sucking up to $50 worth of tokens a day. To combat the disgusting crime, some subway station clerks had a habit of sprinkling chili powder into the token slots. As you might imagine, it wasn’t long before the criminals starting throwing water on the slots. Even worse was the repair work that had to be done. During a typical summer week, repair crews were sent on 1,779 calls to fix turnstiles, and more than 60% of the calls involved paper stuffed into token slots. No wonder people today love their MetroCards.
