Around a year ago, Hubway sent me one of its regular monthly email updates. There was a little news, a list of events accessible via the bike share system, and some tips for winter riding. Included in all this was a note about the 'new bikes' in the system. Intrigued, I opened the article and read further.
A couple of paragraphs into it, however, and I’d realized the 'new bikes' being described were actually the same bikes I’d been riding around for close to a year. A year!
How do I know this for sure? Well, reader, I know that the bikes I'd been riding for about a year have a different gearshift than the old models. They also have a unique front basket design and a longer seat pole targeted at taller riders. Most noticeably, these bikes have a blinking red light above the back wheel that makes it an ideal choice for nighttime cycling. These features that I knew all about from a year of riding the bikes were the exact features Hubway boasted about in its email update!
To this day, I don’t know what prompted Hubway to send out an over-excited article pretending these old bikes were actually new. Was I the only one not fooled by this nonsense?
Hubway isn’t the only company that tried to pull the wool over my eyes last year. I noticed last fall that Subway was doing the same type of thing. Their ad campaign that touted The Great Deal of one large sandwich for six dollars (but at select times only) did not impress me, reader. I remember the good old days when five dollars was Subway’s deal - and those good old days were like, what, two years ago?
A six-dollar meatball sub isn’t a good deal; it’s inflation, and at twenty-percent, that's a whole lot of it, especially in an economy where inflation has been pretty low lately.
Footnotes / well, an endnote
0. Moya's thoughts on Subway...
Subway’s recent marketing campaign, a great deal, great, great, six dollars for a sub, why six, why is this so great, seems like I’m being reminded all day of this, one way or another, the great Subway and the six-dollar deal, wonderful, really wonderful, for six dollars I get some bread and a rubber chicken, for six dollars, what a joke, I got this for five dollars last week, it is too bad, Moya, too bad indeed, for us old men, who can sip our whiskeys and remember the truth, too bad I’m so old that I remember when five dollars was the deal, five dollars, now for five dollars you might get a slice of bread and a napkin, five dollars, those were the days, they had a song for that deal, five five five dollar footlong, oh who would sing now, for six dollars, sing for six dollars, like anyone would, and there's Subway all the time, pretending like nothing has ever happened, always pretending…
