New Balance’s slate of Spring 2018 releases paying tribute to the sights and sounds of the their Boston home ponies up the fare for a ride on the T.
The interchangeably venerable and vexing institution that is Boston mass transit is a fixture of the city that encompasses all walks of life, not to mention something no Bostonian can live without, and it serves as the visual muse for a limited release edition of the classic 998 runner, the “Mass Transit.”
Anyone who’s lived in Boston for longer than a week can tell you that public transportation in our fair city is always something of an adventure. Mostly because you can never be exactly sure what experience awaits you when your communal chariot pulls into the station.
On good days, after a minimal wait, your train will arrive and offer up, if not an expanse of available seating, at the very least, enough personal space to read a book or play with your phone: reliable service in clean confines that gets you where you need to go with no fuss. Really, there’s not all that much to say about the good days; maybe it’s just human nature to take the pleasant experiences for granted.
If there isn’t that much to say about the good days, the other days more than pick up the slack. There are times when just boarding the train resembles a scene from a zombie movie where the protagonists have no choice but to power their way past a shambling horde of the reanimated dead, a process always made more pleasant by the helpful fellow travellers who treat their first step onto the train like it’s the edge of the world on an antiquated map. Then, once you have tested the limits of physics and squeezed yourself into an impossible space, the heat generated by such a condensed mass of humanity presses you into service as a judge of the various claims made by every deodorant advertisement in existence. Oh, what’s that? You need to get off? Well, the people standing in front of the door have decided that instead of stepping off and back onto the car to let people out, that setting foot outside before their, particular stop would be as hazardous as stepping out of a space shuttle without a helmet. So good luck. Don’t even get started on the moderate delays and signal problems, and disabled trains.
Well, you get the picture. Besides, if we tried to lodge every individual, unpleasant subway experience, we would need a second internet. The point is, there are times when it is very tempting to just get out and walk.
The New Balance x Bodega 998 encompasses both sides of the mass transit experience. The stately suede and mesh upper sports the colors of the various train lines that operate throughout the city, timeless design celebrating the efficient reliability that literally keeps the city moving. If you’re having one of those days though, the performance technology that defines New Balance running shoes will allow the orange, red, blue, and green of the 998 Mass Transit to get you wherever it is you need to go, in comfort and style.
