Atlantic Free Press was launched in September 2006 by Dutch-Canadian R.G.
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands and American Expatriate Chris Floyd of
Oxford, UK.
Brick Ogden, an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
Assistant Editor Canadian Chris Cook hails from Victoria, British Columbia and Senior Writer Paul William Roberts is based in Toronto - but often on the road.
The mission of AF Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. AF Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Nobody walks in the subway anymore. I say this to myself but even in my own
head, my voice sounds weary this early in the morning
Look down in the New York City subway and you'll see feet. Lots and lots of
feet. In high heels, sneakers, work boots, dress shoes, and casual loafers,
the feet pounding on the filthy, century-old floor have one thing in common:
they are moving quickly. If it's not an all-out sprint, it's at least a
two-steps-at-a-time, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way stride. In the middle of it
all, I try to maintain a more reasonable pace amidst enough jostling and
bumping to please even the most diehard roller derby fanatic
The prehistoric subway system of New York City was obviously designed well
before anyone could have ever have dreamed of millions of riders each day
Still, in general, that imposing amount of straphangers could theoretically
all fit without much fuss if humanity was further along in its glacially
gradual evolutionary process. But, since we're stuck in the primitive
confines of the early twenty-first century, illogic reigns supreme and the
trains are a daily-but essentially unfunny-replay of the infamous (and
over-rated) stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers' classic 1936 film, "A
Night At The Opera." I say "over-rated," because the Marxsters did
infinitely more comical work but somehow, it is the stateroom that has
become synonymous with their genius thanks to myriad film critics afraid to
buck the system and be original
Be that as it may, once all the comfortless plastic subway seats are muy
occupado, Big Apple train riders regularly display a bizarre affinity for
the doorway...and therein, my friends, lies the rub. As each frustrated
passenger boards, they silently insist on standing within a foot or two of
the same door from which they entered. Thus, the middle of the car is a
veritable oasis of acreage-a convincing testimony to the concept of space,
if you will-but rarely does anyone even consider venturing beyond their
beloved doorway. The inescapable aftermath of this irrational behavior as
the train begins to get more and more crowded is, of course, serious human
gridlock
The preventable logjam by the door can get ugly. Very ugly. You have
hundreds of frenzied rush hour commuters who-at this precise moment-pretty
much hate their lives and their jobs. Yet, for some unexplainable reason,
they insist on standing in the most crowded portion of the car: the doorway
It doesn't get much better on the stairs. As I deboard the N Train to walk
down to the #5, I am greeted by another bottleneck, as it were. The pristine
logic of one line of drones walking down and one line walking up is not
within the grasp of Gotham's subway commuters. If I ever required evidence
as to how humanity creates more problems than it could ever dream of
solving, I need only stand back and witness the behavior on the Lexington
Avenue staircase on your average weekday morning
As I find myself an unwilling participant in this underground mosh pit, I
can hear my man Sophocles chuckling as he sez: "The keenest sorrow is to
recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."
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