The MTA Thanks You For Snitching

The MTA is releasing television spots reminding people to say something if they see something:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 5-year-old anti-terror tagline, “If You See Something, Say Something,” is going prime time today.

The MTA is spending $3 million of security funds to air the slogan in more than 4,000 television spots and run 84 ads in 11 regional newspaper over the next four and a half months. The 10-second spots will be broadcast during news programs on local New York City television stations, the agency announced yesterday.

The television advertisements, which will air in English and Spanish, are the fifth generation of the “If You See Something, Say Something” safety campaign.

In the 10-second spot that begins airing today, a hoarse, male voice narrates: “Last year, 1,944 New Yorkers saw something, and said something.” The words are displayed in royal blue over a white background as he reads. “Thank you, for keeping your eyes and ears open,” the voice says.

But did you also know that the phrase is being licensed for use in other skittish cities around the globe? I feel like Giuliani might call that “ghoulish”:

In 2002, the anti-terror advertisements were simple, plain-text messages posted on subway cars, bus kiosks, and train platforms. After the Madrid subway bombings in 2003, the MTA rolled out more eye-catching photographs of suspicious packages on subway cars. The television and newspaper advertisements mark the largest expansion to date of the anti-terror advertising campaign.

The catchy slogan, which among transit-riding New Yorkers rivals “Just Do It” and “Priceless” as a well-known, oft-quoted motto, was created after the attacks of September 11, 2001, by the chairman and CEO of the advertising firm Korey Kay & Partners, Allen Kay. It was adopted as the MTA’s official safety slogan in 2002. “It took time for everyone to buy into it,” Mr. Kay, whose firm also came up with the Port Authority’s slogan, “Look What We’re Doing,” said in an interview. “The MTA had some concerns that it might scare people that a disaster could happen, but research found that it was quite the opposite, that the police and the MTA can’t be everywhere, so it was smart to enlist the aid of everybody.”

The trademarked phrase has been licensed for use in dozens of transit systems across the globe to purvey an anti-terror message. The largest banner displaying the slogan hangs in a train station in Perth, Australia, Mr. Kay said.

The Pick Up (A Gallon Of Non-Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone Milk) Scene At Your Local Whole Foods

Like WNYC’s attempts to cash in on its wonky, somewhat female-overloaded Soterios Johnson-loving unattached demographic, the new Whole Foods on Houston is hosting events for, er, thin-slicing singles:

Over samples of aged Gouda and amid aisles of extra-virgin olive oil, New Yorkers shopping at Whole Foods Bowery are turning the grocery into a thriving pick-up scene. The gelato bar, the upstairs café, the chilled, private cheese room, and long checkout lines are where flirting is most rampant in the 71,000-square-foot store that opened last March, Whole Foods employees said.

. . .

While many pick-up lines fall flat, single shoppers said the floodlit aisles provide a “safer” space to start up conversations with strangers than most bars in the neighborhood. Peeking into each other’s grocery carts, they said, could also be more revealing of a person’s lifestyle choices than an online profile on a social networking or dating Web site.

“I’m really health conscious,” a 28-year-old singer in the band edible red, Collette McLafferty, said. “I want to date health conscious people, and that could be why Whole Foods seems like a good place to meet people.”

After chatting with an attractive man at Whole Foods two nights ago but forgetting his name, Ms. McLafferty, who lives on the Lower East Side, posted a message on Craigslist looking to reconnect with him.

“He had dark, curly brown hair, blue eyes, he was well built, probably about 5-feet-10,” she said. She is waiting for a response to her posting, she said. Ms. McLafferty, who said she has often been approached by shoppers who comment on the tattoo of a dragon around her upper arm, added that flirting was easy at Whole Foods because of low expectations. “When you go out with the intention of meeting someone, you never meet anyone,” she said.

. . .

“I make eyes at people,” a 27-year-old actor who lives near South Street Seaport, Ari Rossen, said. “It’s a hip neighborhood, everyone who shops here is young, and there are plenty of things around to talk about.”

Whole Foods Bowery is actively boosting its reputation as a place for singles to meet, a spokeswoman for the store, Rebecca Ulanoff, said. In August, the store is hosting “Check Out,” a singles night co-sponsored by the Web site Gothamist.com. The store is also hoping to attract a fashion-forward, eco-friendly crowd tomorrow morning when it sells Anya Hindmarch shopping totes printed with the message: “I’m Not a Plastic Bag.”

I guess the singles events at the Pathmark by the Manhattan Bridge were sparsely attended?

Potential sociology dissertation topic ca. 2014: “The Rise Of The Co-Optation Of Interpersonal Relationships By Corporate Entities In The 21st Century.”

God Help Us Should Soterios Johnson Ever Decide To Institute “Whip It Out Wednesdays”

Local NPR affiliate WNYC really is a lot more popular than you thought, what with its frighteningly devoted fan base and personality branding even Martha Stewart would admire:

A steady, soulful tenor of a voice — combined with a first name that is as mellifluous as it is unusual — has won public radio host Soterios Johnson a legion of devoted fans, some of whom have gone so far as to write songs in his honor and name pets after him.

The WNYC station staff regularly fields requests for autographed photos of the baby-face 39-year-old newsman. Beat reporters say that, while out on assignment, they are frequently bombarded with questions about Mr. Johnson.

“It’s like he’s a rock star,” a city government reporter at WNYC, Beth Fertig, said, recalling how guests responded to Mr. Johnson at a recent cocktail party for station donors. “We walked in together, and it was all about Soterios. I joked, ‘What am I — chopped liver?'”

Mr. Johnson said he’s flattered, if puzzled, by the fervor of his fan base. He attributes it to the “intimate medium” of radio, and to listeners’ fascination with his distinctive moniker, which means “savior” in Greek. (His Cyprus-born paternal grandfather changed his last name to Johnson upon becoming an American citizen.)

The ultimate fan tribute will come later this month, when a Brooklyn-based heavy metal band called Satirius Johnson releases its first album full of what guitarist Alistair Wallace calls “hard, noisy music.”

Satirius Johnson’s three members, all avid listeners of WNYC, see more than a little irony in the band’s name, Mr. Wallace said. “I imagine Soterios Johnson is quiet, unassuming, and maybe a little bit bookish,” he said. “I don’t know if he would necessarily be into a band that plays eight-minute songs with lots of feedback, but you never know.”

The band places Mr. Johnson — alongside Sam Champion of ABC’s ” Good Morning America” and Gina Kolata of the New York Times — in a tiny cadre of distinctively named New York journalists who have inspired rock band names.

In addition to the jolting sounds of Satirius Johnson, Mr. Johnson, known to friends as SoJo, has also launched a more lyrical brand of music. A popular Brooklyn folk-rock singer and songwriter, Jonathan Coulton, several years ago, penned “Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance.” The song imagines the radio host as a nocturnal party animal, making the rounds at New York City nightclubs. Lyrics include: “Go, Soterios Johnson, go/All the club kids are watching your glowstick glow/With the light of a truth you can’t hide/That the news is the news, but the dance goes on forever.”

. . .

During his five-year tenure as the WNYC morning host, Soterios Johnson has heard of more than one listener who has named a pet after him. In an interview with The New York Sun, he recalled hearing his name called during an East Village house party; turning around, he realized the hostess was beckoning her cat.

Sadly, there are too many examples to cite.

When You Want To Be The Freakiest, Only The Freakiest Will Do

Joe Sitt will have a hard time rebranding Coney Island if someone beats him to it:

The Shmaltz Brewing Company, maker of “He’Brew, the Chosen Beer,” last week released Coney Island Lager, the first of a side-show-inspired series of beers.

The logo, designed by Brooklyn-based tattoo artist Dave Wallin, features a tattooed and pierced version of the iconic Steeplechase smiling-face surrounded by slogans such as “Freak’s Favorite Beer” and “Alive.” The beer will be brewed in Brooklyn and profits will go to Coney Island USA, a nonprofit arts group that runs the sideshow and the annual Mermaid Parade.

Jeremy Cowan, the owner of Shmaltz, was approached by Coney Island USA with the idea shortly after his company put out beer commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Lenny Bruce.

. . .

Shmaltz plans to roll out Coney Island Lager over the next month.

“Coney Island Lager is already the freakiest new beer in the world,” said Dick Zigun, the head of Coney Island USA. “When we expand our Freak Bar, it will be featured as our bar’s house brand.”

Huge In Salt Lake City

The Kelly Choi juggernaut rolls along largely unimpeded:

“I play this character, this kind of spy, that goes to places that the typical New Yorker could never find themselves in,” Ms. Choi said. “The things that I get to tell people are things that even somebody who was born here and who’s lived in New York all their lives wouldn’t necessarily know.”

. . .

In municipal television terms, NYC TV has blown past all previous ratings benchmarks. “Secrets [of New York]” has garnered strong market share numbers in unexpected places such as Salt Lake City and Albuquerque (although in some places it shows in the middle of the night or other off-peak hours).

[Arick] Wierson, a former investment banker who was named general manager of the station after working for Mayor Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign, said the station is getting people from places such as Utah to think more about New York. That New York boosterism is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg wants. In August, the mayor said the PBS deal would get millions of potential New York tourists thinking about the city.

“Secrets” costs about $35,000 an episode to produce — a cost the city says is four to 10 times less than other national programs. While the show does not currently draw down revenue, station officials are in discussions with several potential underwriters to sponsor it.

Mr. Wierson said the show is also ripe for product placement. That means Ms. Choi could soon be darting between locations in a Pontiac Grand Am or using a T-Mobile handheld computer instead of the nondescript device she uses now on the show to find out where her next “secret” destination is.

Ms. Choi, a former model and a Columbia University journalism school graduate who has worked in television and print reporting, is an off-camera ham who likes to joke and flirt with the crew and with onlookers. Between takes at the monument, Ms. Choi, a self-described foodie who also hosts the station’s “Eat Out NY,” fanned her coat to disclose black gym shorts and a Tshirt underneath. She jokes that the coat is like a “sausage casing” when it gets hot.

Her spiky high-heeled boots, cinched black coat, and regularly rotating jewelry are so carefully watched by fans that the producers had a code from “The Matrix” scanned onto one of her chokers.

Some critics have questioned why the city is in the business of producing fast-paced, nontraditional programming that has little to do with government. City Council Member Gale Brewer said she had no problem with “Secrets,” but that if the city is going to invest in the station’s other flashier shows, it should improve its other station’s coverage of public hearings. Station officials say there will always be critics, but that NYC TV is drawing in viewers for the first time in municipal history.

The director of production at the station, William Fitzgerald, said that when an NYC TV show features a New York business, the owner almost always calls to report a spike in sales.