Dear Metropolitan Transit Authority,

I understand that you are currently very busy in Albany trying to fleece New Yorkers for every last nickel and dime in our pockets while cutting service and overall making our lives hell. This is an admirable goal and one of which I am fond. Lining your own pockets through graft and corruption at the expense of hard working people in and around New York City should be your number one concern. Assuming that New York could ever have a public transportation system that was both useful and efficient is far too much. Surely that Herculean task can only be accomplished in such fantastical countries as Germany, France, and Japan. For this you are forgiven.

My specific complaint is regarding a lingering odor in the downtown 23rd St station for the F and V trains. If you walk through the turnstiles and make a right, about 1/3 of the way to the end there is a 15 foot stretch along the tracks where air comes down from the street that smells like shit. And I don't mean that it just smells bad. It does that, but what I mean is that it actually smells like fucking shit. (Note, I am not referring to the scent raised by copulating with feces, rather I use the word fucking in its pejorative sense to express the intensity of my negative feelings about the smell.) Sometimes the odor resembles horse shit, while at others it's more reminiscent of toxic human shit. Regardless of its current parfum du jour, it's quite unpleasant. I do understand that this city is filled with surprising pockets of wretched stench sometimes so overbearing as to cause my eyes to water, but to have to endure the stomach churning stink of excrement every day in the subway after work on my way home is just plain unbearable.

Please rectify this situation.

Sincerely, a distraught rider,

Joe Dillingham.

PS - I don't forgive you.