1. Don't.

2. If you have to ride the subway, everyone else comes before you. It's known as yielding.

3. Is it rush hour? Don't bring your bike on the subway.

4. "But I just have to ride the train during rush hour!" Then only outbound in the morning, and inbound in the evening. Otherwise, you're an incorrigible imp. And you'll probably get a ticket.

5. At the turnstile, signal the MTA attendant in the booth by waving your arms wildly and gesturing to the gate (is there no booth at the entrance? Go the hell back upstairs and enter at a booth station entrance), swipe your Metrocard, spin the turnstile arm, walk over to the emergency entrance (if you didn't muck it up, the booth attendant will have unlocked it), walk through.

6. Don't ever, ever, ever carry your bike over a turnstile.

7. Stairs? You go last. (And now you must carry your bike.)

8. On the platform, make room. Plan to enter at either end of the train car.

9. Once on the train, don't sit down.

10. Don't lean your bike anywhere.

11. Don't lock your bike to a pole.

12. Don't straddle the frame.

13. Don't ride it.

14. Use the same attention you reserve for riding around buses and garbage trucks. Because, instead of dealing with wheels that will crush your skull, you have a train full of people who want to stab you until your intestines are a puddle on the subway car floor.

15. Hold the bar, hold your bike. In the event of sudden movement or (God forbid) an accident, you've just introduced a metal projectile to the train car.

16. Stand by the doors, you need to exit first. Last on, first off. Find a clear area on the platform. Wait a minute or two (or whenever the platform/stairs look empty, you weakest of the species), then make your next move.

17. In a city full of opinions, there's only one person whose judgment matters in this situation: Police. Listen up, or look forward to your marmalade p.b. & j. sandwich in The Tombs.

Coming across a guide of "18 Common Phrases to Avoid In Conversation," I was struck by the rightness of the article's aim: Some things should indeed never be said. But the alternate conversational choices offered by the magazine seemed a bit passive aggressive to me —for example, "Is everything OK?" as a substitute for "You look tired." Naturally, I felt it was my duty to come up with some satisfactory alternatives. READ MORE

"I never use 'Dear...' It's old-dearish."
—Jon King, managing director of the digital marketing agency Story Worldwide, weighs in on the debate over the proper salutation with which to start an email. King, who is the same Jon King who used to dance like a chicken undergoing electro-shock therapy and sing amazingly great, spiky, neo-Marxist punk rock songs with his band Gang of Four, generally begins emails to clients, "Often with no intro line at all. I assume they know who they are, and cut to the chase." READ MORE

Dear Answer Lady,

I need help. I grew up in Idaho, a pretty, if somewhat backwards, state. Recently, an acquaintance from high school posted this on Facebook [sic throughout]: "Isnt this great? Americans have put a socialist into the White House – a socialist who wants to indoctrinate our youth with his socialist agenda. Hitler was able to spread his ideas by appealing to German youngsters. Dont let obama get a hold of our children. Socialism always fails."

This is why I can barely stand to look at Facebook.

Teachable Moment?

Dear Teachable,

Two separate issues here. #1: Facebook. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEBOOOK. Of all the near-inescapable modern conveniences that simultaneously make our lives better and worse but mostly worse, Facebook is king. It's like how your DVR dutifully records every episode of Anthony Bourdain's increasingly meh Travel Channel show but inexplicably refuses to record Mad Men, multiplied by spending a day feeling sad about something you found out by Tumblr-searching your name, ALL THE TIME. You think all the time about deleting yourself from it. You even know people who have done so! And you respect them for it, but it troubles you that you now have no handy way of remembering their birthdays.

Also there's something about "deleting yourself" that's just ... well. "Deleting yourself." It doesn't sound cheery.

But then something like this happens and deletion starts looking better and better. If only you could delete some other people while you're at it! Some kind of kamikaze app.

Seriously though I think how you respond to this is: it's not enough to just hide her like you do the people who take quizzes or update you on how many novel-words they wrote that day. You probably have to de-friend this person, and you have to tell her why. Passively maintaining your acquaintance/not rocking the boat is making you feel guilty for a reason, and the reason is not that you're a perpetually-guilty East Coast liberal snob. It's that you're a good, right-thinking human being with a shred of conscience and common sense and soul, and anyone who a) calls Obama a socialist (I wish!) and b) says "socialist" like it's a bad thing is just not.

Your message goes, "Dear Tater Ann, I wanted to let you know that your status update offended me for reasons x, y and z, and it probably also offended a lot of other people who feel that you're too much of a lost cause to bother confronting you about this. I don't, which is why I'm sending you this message. But if you respond to this message with anything less than courtesy and willingness to accept that you might sometimes be in the wrong, I'll start. Your friend, Teachable Moment."

But nicer, I guess. Sorry, I am bad at "nicer."

XOXO,

Answer Lady

Previously: Teen Email Disaster!

Dear Answer Lady,